I realized then that my mother hadn’t just endangered Hue. By using the family name as a shield for David’s gambling, she had invited a predator into our lives that didn’t care about insurance policies or corporate takeovers. They were coming for the baby.
The image of David on my screen was a jagged, low-resolution nightmare. My brother—the golden boy, the one our mother had starved my wife to protect—was slumped in a plastic chair, his face a map of swelling and dark bruises. The hand on his shoulder was heavy, tensed, the knuckles scarred. It wasn’t the hand of a banker. It was the hand of a reaper.
“The debt is moving to the next generation.”
I looked at my daughter, wrapped in a soft pima cotton blanket, her tiny chest rising and falling in a perfect, rhythmic slumber. The “next generation.” They weren’t just talking about David’s future; they were talking about the infant in the room with me.
I stood up, my legs feeling like they were made of lead, and walked into the parlor where Elias, my head of security, was waiting. He had been a Texas Ranger for twenty years, and he had the eyes of a man who had seen the worst things humanity had to offer in the scrub brush of the border.
“You saw the message?” I whispered, sliding the phone across the mahogany table.
Elias looked at the screen, his jaw tightening. “Macau. These guys don’t negotiate, Nathan. They don’t care about your C-suite titles or your ‘fraudulent activity’ freezes. To them, a debt is a physical thing. If the money doesn’t exist, they take the equivalent value in blood.”
“They’re coming here, Elias. They’re coming for the baby.”
“Not on my watch,” Elias said, pulling a tactical tablet from his bag. “I’ve already moved a team to the St. Anthony perimeter. We’ve got eyes on the lobby, the service elevators, and the roof. But Nathan, we have a bigger problem. Your mother.”
“What about her? She’s at the beach house.”
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