Chapter 13: The Truth
The letter arrived in a plain envelope.
No return address. Just a faded stamp and a name scribbled in unfamiliar handwriting: Eli Reyes.
It sat on Eli's desk for two days, untouched, while Crown hummed around him like a living machine. Contracts were signed. A new community garden broke ground. The first Crown-sponsored scholarship recipient boarded a train to Howard University. Harlem was thriving.
And still, the letter waited.
On the third day, Eli opened it.
Inside was a photograph—grainy, sun-faded. A man in his 30s, dark-skinned, clean-shaven, with eyes that looked exactly like Eli's. Behind him, palm trees. A woman laughing beside him. A beach.
Attached was a note:
"The dead don't smile like this."
—M
---
Rosa
Rosa sat on the Crown Tower balcony, sunlight painting her skin gold, Maya curled beside her sketching cranes in the sky.
Silas joined them, two coffees in hand. He didn't say much. He never did, not when Rosa looked this peaceful. Harlem had taken so much from her—but this rooftop, this quiet, felt like something returned.
Rosa accepted the coffee and gave him that small, amused smile she reserved only for him.
"You ever think we're allowed this?" she asked.
"No," Silas said truthfully. "But I'm not giving it back."
Maya giggled beside them. "Mama, Silas drew a bird and it looks like a potato."
Silas grinned. "Harlem pigeons do look like potatoes."
Rosa laughed, leaning back against him. It wasn't loud or fiery, this love. It was slow. Earned. Something that had grown in the cracks left by grief and fire.
But even roses growing from concrete have thorns.
Because that afternoon, when Eli came to her with the photo, Rosa went silent.
Her fingers trembled. Her breath caught.
And then, in a voice that broke: "He promised he'd never run."
---
Eli
The walls of Crown felt smaller now.
"He left us," Eli whispered, pacing his office. "Took money meant for the community fund. Faked his death. Let us drown so he could sip rum on some beach?"
Vance stood by the window, arms crossed. "You always knew something didn't add up. The 'accident' was too clean. No witnesses. No blood."
Eli stared at the photo again. There was no mistaking it. His father was alive.
And worse—he was free.
"I built all this," Eli said, gesturing to the city beyond the glass. "To make peace with a grave that wasn't real."
Vance didn't respond. Some truths didn't need an answer.
---
South Bronx — Ridgeway's Warehouse
Smoke coiled from Ridgeway's cigar as he studied the surveillance footage from Crown's construction site.
"The kid's got Harlem eating out his hand," growled Lenny Valenza, a Bianchi enforcer-turned-sellout. "But if that letter hits the streets..."
Ridgeway grinned. "You don't kill a symbol. You unravel it."
He flicked ashes onto a map of the city, a red circle drawn around Eli's new trade hub in Hamilton Heights.
"Make them doubt his blood. His legacy. That's where we break him."
A woman in the corner—Claudia, former Urban Renewal Trust lawyer turned rogue—smiled thinly. "We don't just expose his father. We resurrect him. Publicly. Then we make Eli answer for all the dirt he buried under those polished buildings."
The enemies were circling. But they wouldn't strike yet.
Not until the king felt safe.
---
Silas
That night, Silas poured whiskey into two glasses and placed one beside Rosa.
She didn't drink it.
"You knew," she said flatly. "Didn't you?"
"Not until a year ago."
"And you didn't tell me?"
Silas didn't flinch. "I didn't tell Eli. That was your choice."
She looked out over the city. Harlem shimmered, built on stone and blood.
"He built heaven to bury a lie."
Silas stepped closer. "No. He built it because the world still lies. And because he refused to be small. Your boy didn't break. He became something the streets had never seen before."
Rosa turned to him, eyes glassy. "He's just a child."
"He's the future," Silas said. "And now... the past wants in."
---
Eli
In the dark, Eli burned the photo.
Then he picked up the burner phone he hadn't touched since Deon Albright's execution.
He dialed a number Ridgeway didn't know he had.
A voice answered. Neutral. Male.
"Status?"
Eli's voice was steady.
"Activate the fail-safes. Ridgeway's moving. The Trust is rebuilding. And my father... if he's alive... I want to meet him. Alone."
Pause.
"You sure?"
Eli stared out over Harlem.
"I'm not ten anymore."
"Understood. Crown will move silently."
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