The villa's marble hallway stretched like a tunnel, but Jamieson barely saw it. The guards flanked him (his guards now), their boots echoing in perfect sync, yet every step landed inside his skull like a hammer on bone. The envelope was still pressed to his chest, sealed with red wax that looked like dried blood. He couldn't feel his fingers.
Bastard.
The word looped, louder each time, until it drowned out the ocean crashing against the cliff below.
He'd spent nineteen years swallowing that word without knowing it existed. Every cracked knuckle from hauling lumber, every dawn run to the city for warm croissants, every time Victor's boot pressed between his shoulder blades (kneel, boy)—it hadn't been discipline. It had been exile. Punishment for a crime committed in a Cabo hotel room before he'd even drawn breath.
His lungs seized. He stopped dead in the middle of the corridor, one palm slamming against the wall to keep from folding. The nearest guard started to speak; Jamieson's glare shut him up.
Not my father.
Not my name.
Not my mother's eyes when she looked at me.
He saw it now, every memory refracted through the new lens.
The way Victor's lip curled when Jamieson aced a math test (*anyone can crunch numbers, try swinging a hammer*).
The way Lourdes's hugs lingered half a second too long, guilt stitched into her perfume.
Elias's smirks (*golden boy*), because he'd known. They'd all known.
Flash: Age sixteen.
Elias drunk, laughing in the pool house: "Dad says you're the help with better DNA." Jamieson had punched him then, split his lip, taken the belt across his own back for it.
Better DNA. The joke had been on him the whole time.
Each memory detonated, shrapnel lodging deeper. His chest caved inward, ribs crushing the hope he'd carried like a torch: Someday she'll choose me. Someday I'll be enough.
Enough for what? A woman who'd hidden his origin like a stain? A father (no, a stranger) who'd used him as a punching bag for another man's sin?
He wanted to roar until the villa cracked. Wanted to put his fist through every mirror so he wouldn't have to see the face that wasn't Victor's after all. Wanted to drag Lourdes into the nearest room and demand every truth with his hand around her throat (then kiss the lies from her mouth until she admitted she'd always wanted him).
Instead he walked. One foot, then the other. The guards kept pace.
At the end of the hall, double doors opened onto the terrace. Caribbean wind slapped his face, salt and gunpowder in the air. Below, the sea churned black under a bruised sky. He gripped the balustrade, knuckles white, stone crumbling under his fingers.
Who am I?
The question was a blade twisting in his gut.
Jamieson Hargrove (fake name, fake father).
Jamieson Castillo (grandson by decree, not blood).
Jamieson nothing a signature on a birth certificate that lied.
He pictured the tennis coach (some tanned nobody with a good forehand) and hated him with a purity that scalded. Hated Victor more for weaponizing the truth now, when it could wound deepest. Hated Lourdes for every bedtime story, every mijo, every time she'd let Elias touch what Jamieson bled for.
The betrayal wasn't a single cut. It was a thousand paper-thin slices, each one whispering: You were never one of us. You were the price she paid.
His reflection in the dark glass doors showed a stranger (taller, harder, eyes ringed with red). The alpha stared back, promising vengeance. But behind the mask, the boy he'd been was screaming, curled fetal in the ruins of every dream.
He pressed the envelope harder against his heart, as if the wax seal could cauterize the hemorrhage inside.
They took my name. They took my mother. They took nineteen years.
I will take everything back.
The wind howled. Somewhere inside, Victor was locked in a room, pounding on a door that wouldn't open. Elias and Valentina were probably plotting in whispers. Lourdes (God, Lourdes) was probably crying into silk pillows, beautiful even in ruin.
Jamieson closed his eyes. The turmoil roared louder than the ocean.
Hope is dead.
Love is a lie.
But power… power is real.
He opened his eyes. The alpha won. For now.
He turned from the railing, envelope now tucked inside his jacket like body armor.
"Get the jet ready," he told the nearest guard. "We're going home. And someone find my mother. Tell her the bastard wants to talk."
His voice didn't shake. Inside, the storm kept raging, but he'd learned long ago how to smile while bleeding.
The war had just begun.