The next three days, I didn’t exist. I was a ghost in my own penthouse, haunting the rooms where my son’s laughter should have been. The silence, once a heavy blanket, was now a screaming, echoing void.
I didn’t sleep. I just sat in the dark, the golden pocket watch in my hand, its soft, musical chime—the one Theo had loved—sounding like an accusation. My private investigator, a man I paid a fortune for his ruthless efficiency, called in 18 hours.
The kind of speed only money can buy. But the results didn’t bring me power. They brought me to my knees all over again.
“Dylan Cruz, age 11,” the dossier read. “Son of Carla Cruz, 35, widowed. Address: Hopeview Apartments, Unit 3B, Southside.
Employment: Janitor, St. Grace Medical Center.”
St. Grace.
The same hospital where Theo had spent the last year of his life. The same hospital I had endowed with a new leukemia wing. A wing my son had apparently been escaping from.
I didn’t wait for the full report. I needed answers. I needed the truth, not another spreadsheet.
The Rolls-Royce felt obscene as it rolled down the narrow, cracked streets of Southside. Laundry was strung between balconies, graffiti splashed across the brick like angry, colorful wounds. For the first time, I, Rick Vale, felt like the outsider.
I wasn’t the commanding CEO here. I was just a man, lost in a world where my money meant nothing. I stood in front of Apartment 3B.
The paint was peeling. My hand trembled as I knocked. The door opened.
She wasn’t what I expected. She was in a simple cleaning uniform, her hair tied back, her eyes deep and tired, but impossibly calm. There was no fear in them.
Just a profound, unsettling dignity. She wasn’t the kind of beauty I was used to—the kind that adorned red carpets. She was just… real.
“Mr. Vale,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m not surprised. Dylan told me you might come.”
“I need to talk to him,” I said. My voice was too blunt.
Too cold. Carla didn’t move. “My son already told you the truth.”
I rubbed a hand over my unshaven face, the exhaustion of the last four months, of my entire life, crashing down on me.
“Please,” I whispered, the word feeling foreign. “I just… I need to understand. Who was my son?”
Something in her expression softened.
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