Chapter 4 - The House of Glass
No one answered.
The forty-seven guests sat paralyzed, their eyes darting between Daniel and the unconscious guard leaking blood onto the white marble floor near the base of the ancestral display.
Grace stepped forward, her face tight with a mixture of maternal entitlement and sudden, desperate fear.
“Daniel, control yourself,” she commanded, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to sound imperious. “Your wife was disrupting a traditional family ceremony. She refused to show proper respect to her elders. We were merely restoring order to this household—order that has deteriorated significantly since you allowed her to forget her place.”
Daniel turned slowly to face his mother.
For ten seconds, he said nothing. He just looked at her—the woman who had birthed him, the woman who had taught him how to survive in the brutal underworld of the Chicago syndicate. In that quiet gaze, Grace saw something she had never seen before: a stranger. A monster she had created, now turning its eyes toward her.
“You set up a kangaroo court in my house,” Daniel said softly. His voice was so quiet that people in the back rows had to strain to hear it. “While I was securing the syndicate’s future across the Pacific, you humiliated my wife. You locked her out of her own security grid. You brought outsiders into our home to stage a coup.”
“She is an outsider!” Jason blurted out, stepping up beside his mother. His phone was still in his hand, angled downward, though the recording had stopped. “Look at her, Daniel! She’s a bleeding-heart lawyer who thinks she can police our operations! She’s a liability to the family!”
Daniel didn't look at Jason. He motioned with two fingers toward Miller.
Before Jason could blink, Miller and two tactical operatives materialized behind him. Miller’s hand descended onto the back of Jason’s neck, driving him face-first onto the long mahogany table among the crystal glasses and silver platters.
“Get your hands off me! I’m a Kang!” Jason shrieked, thrashing wildly.
Miller retrieved the phone from Jason’s trembling hand, popping out the memory card and snapping it in half between his fingers before dropping it into his pocket.
“You’re an employee, Jason,” Daniel said coldly, walking over to stand directly in front of his mother. He towered over Grace, casting a dark shadow across her face. “And right now, you’re a terminated one.”
Grace’s breath hitched. She looked up at her son, her eyes flashing with defiance. “You wouldn't dare. I built this empire with your father before you were even old enough to hold a gun. Without us, you are nothing.”
“Without you,” Daniel whispered, “I would have had a soul much sooner.”
He turned away from her, walking back to where Nia stood. He reached out, his large, scarred hand gently wrapping around her wrist, covering the red mark left by the guard. The terrifying, ice-cold fury in his eyes instantly dissolved into something raw, fragile, and intensely protective as he looked down at her.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice dropping into a register meant only for her.
May you like
Nia looked up into his dark eyes. The exhaustion of the past week, the stress of the isolation, and the weight of the war she had been fighting alone all melted away. She gave him a small, resolute nod.
“I’m fine, Daniel,” she said softly. “But we have some cleaning up to do.”
