Chapter 5 - The Reckoning of the SoulVincent Kane offered us something else. Not money. Not protection.
He offered us a way to be independent.
“There’s a business in the city,” he said. “A logistics company. The owner owes me a debt he can never pay. I’m going to transfer the ownership to you, Elena. It’s clean. It’s profitable. It’s legitimate. And because it’s mine, no one will ever bother you again.”
My mother looked at him with skepticism. “Why?”
“Because,” Vincent said, looking at his own hands, “I have no children. I have no legacy. I have built an empire of glass and blood. I am tired of the blood, Elena. I want to build something that isn't cursed.”
It was the most human thing I had ever heard him say.
My mother accepted. It was the only way to break free.
We didn't move away. We stayed in Chicago. But everything changed. My mother became the CEO of a mid-sized shipping firm. We moved into a house with a garden. I went to a private school where the other kids played lacrosse and didn't know what it meant to go hungry.
But the danger didn't disappear completely.
Years passed. I was twelve now. I didn't see Vincent much. He was a myth, a shadow in the background of our lives. But he was always there. If a school bully tried to threaten me, they suddenly found their father’s business audited. If a competitor tried to undercut my mother’s firm, their supply lines dried up.
We were untouchable.
But then, the final threat came. It wasn't Sterling. It was a new organization—a younger, hungrier syndicate that wanted the logistics firm for their own trafficking routes. They didn't know who owned the company. They thought it was just a woman and her daughter.
They kidnapped me on my way home from school.
It was fast. A van, a cloth over my face, and darkness.
When I woke up, I was in a warehouse. I wasn't scared. I was angry. I was twelve, and I had been through this before.
A man with a jagged scar walked in. “Tell your mother to sign over the company, kid.”
I looked at him. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Am I?”
“Do you know who owns this company?” I asked, my voice steady.
“The lady,” he laughed.
“She’s the owner,” I said. “But the partner… he doesn't like it when people touch his assets.”
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Before he could respond, the warehouse doors blew open. Not with police, but with the silence of a grave.
Vincent Kane walked in. He wasn't alone. He had an army.
