CHAPTER 264: BLOOD AND EMPIRE

The rain hadn’t stopped.

It poured like judgment—soaking through blood and betrayal.

My chest burned; every breath felt like someone sliding a blade across my ribs. My back ached with old fire and fresh cold. My palm throbbed where the skin had blistered and split. I couldn’t tell if the shaking was from exhaustion or rage.

Caden’s voice broke into a hoarse sob—the sound of a man stripped of something he’d worshipped.

"Pop... it hurts. He—he almost killed me."

His hand clawed at the mud, fingers sinking in as if he could anchor himself to the earth. Such a clown.

Then my father moved.

He didn’t rush. He didn’t shout. He stepped from under the umbrella— his coat a dark, dry line in the rain— and he slapped me. clean, hard. The sound a blunt punctuation. The slap landed across my cheek and the world tilted.

The sting on my face was a cold, stark contrast to the heat raging through my veins. It was a sound, a physical manifestation of my father’s disapproval, a sharp, unwelcome decree that my fury had transgressed.

"You almost killed my son," he said, a sentence folded into velvet and steel. Not a question. Not a plea. A verdict.

I didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just stared at the man who had shaped my life, now standing over me like a stranger.

My father’s expression didn’t channge either. He turned slowly to his guards and waved a hand. "Help him up," he said, as if asking someone to close a window.

They obeyed instantly, lifting the broken man from the mud.

Then rage flared so hot it burned out the pain. I laughed—a hollow bitter sound. "You dare lay hands on me... for that defect? Have you forgotten I am? The head of the Walton empire? The throne you left for me to pick up." I spat, rain spattering my lips. "Why? Why do you favor that fool!?"

The storm raged on, the sky a bruised tapestry of black and violet. My father didn’t flinch at my words—not even a flicker in those glacier eyes. Instead, he exhaled slowly, as if I were an unruly child throwing a tantrum over a snapped toy.

His voice, when it came, was small and terrible. "Because he is my real son."

The sentence landed like a bomb.

I opened my mouth, a choked gasp escaping. Not a sound, not a word. Just the tearing of flesh and spirit.

Then, the laughter. Mine. It began as a low, guttural sound, a broken thing in the deluge, and escalated, a wild, uncontrolled hysteria that tore through the storm. It was the sound of a man unraveling, of a lifetime of assumptions shattering into a million sharp shards. I laughed at the absurdity, at the cruel, cosmic joke that had been my entire existence. I laughed at the man who had deemed me less than, who had held Caden, the perpetrator of unspeakable horrors, in higher regard.

My father watched me, his expression unreadable, as if witnessing a peculiar specimen of his own creation. His guards, their faces impassive, continued to tend to Caden, wrapping him in a tarp, his whimpers muffled.

"You are mistaken," I managed between gasps of my own laughter. "Mistaken and blind." I stumbled forward, my vision blurring, not from the rain, but from the unshed tears. "The blood of the Waltons flows through my veins. I am this dynasty. You built this empire, and I took the crumbling pieces and forged them anew, I made you immortal while you... were playing father of the year with him." I gestured wildly at Caden, who had gone silent, his gaze fixed on my father, a flicker of something like triumph in his pain-filled eyes.

My father’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "You do not understand what it means to be a son, Adrien. You understand power. You understand control. But you do not understand loyalty. You do not understand love."

"Love?" I spat the word out like poison. "You speak of love? You abandoned me. You let me grow up far away from you, made me a tool to clean up your dirt and rise up the empire, expecting nothing but more. And now, for that

", I pointed a shaking finger at Caden, "you deem me the lesser son? Even when he is the son of your mistress?" Is this a fucking joke?

"Wrong." His tone didn’t waver. "I dated Caden’s mother before I met yours. Yvonne was my first love. Everything was perfect and I was supposed to marry her. We were happy. Then your mother... she entered the picture. A whirlwind. A distraction."

Wow. Another lore??

"But then, I was forced—by appearances, by my parents, by the board—to marry your mother before my father could handover the empire to me When Yvonne’s husband died, I... reunited with her. By the time your mother went into labor, Yvonne was pregnant too. So I had to be responsible for two women."

My breath caught.

"I raised you as my heir because the board demanded an heir of a particular pedigree. Caden—he is my blood as well. I hid him to protect the legacy. To protect you. But he is mine."

A choked laugh escaped me. "You raised me because the board demanded it. Caden because your heart wanted it. How poetic."

Caden’s grin split bloody and proud. "Father always wanted to keep this from you," he murmured. "But secrets don’t stay buried, do they?"

Thunder rolled in answer.

Father inclined his head once. "I gave you power. You outgrew the leash. You became dangerous in ways I did not intend. You were becoming a liability, a force that threatened the very stability I had built. I could have ended you—if you had not been my blood. I had to find a way to clip those wings. And everything ends today, all thanks to my smart and loyal son."

A hysterical laugh bubbled up, escaping my lips before I could stifle it. It was a broken sound, a testament to the sheer absurdity of it all. All this time, the power struggles, the betrayals, the lives ruined and taken – it was all a twisted family drama. My father, the architect of this entire charade, had orchestrated it all, playing both sides, pitting son against son.

I smiled—small, cracked, terrifying. "So you were the power behind him."

"Yes." The admission fell like a stone thrown through glass. "I placed him where he could hurt you without staining my hands. I used others. I directed influence. You are... useful, but not blind."

Caden scoffed. "We had help," he says. "From men you know. Your reign ends tonight."

I smirked. "Who decided that?"

And then the universe rearranges itself with a new, violent punctuation.

One by one, the men holding me collapsed like cut ropes. Shots rang clean and precise, echoing off steel.

Gray’s voice—near and steady—cut through my ear. "Boss—contact neutralized. We’re on you."

Two of my operators moved like shadows through the rain as they followed Gray, boots silent on wet concrete. They ran to my side; one yanked an umbrella over my head, forming a black, moving shield against the lash of water, the oother covered the left flank. In the background, my men — had swarmed up the dockyard. They’d taken out the father’s security before he or Caden even realized what had shifted.

A trio of my own security leveled guns at my father, faces hard, removing the umbrella and flooding the scene with the smell of cordite and authority. At the same time, Caden had been pinned to his knees and they cuff him, his body a map of my blows.

Gray crouched beside me, pressing down on the bleeding at my abdomen. "Boss, sorry I’m late," he muttered, rain streaking his face. "They moved faster than expected."

The officers around my father kept their weapons trained, though nothing moved. My father’s mouth was a thin line; his eyes were distant under the slick hairline.

"How dare you attack your own blood?" he said finally, as if offended by the idea anyone could be violent to him. There was no terror in it—only the arrogance of someone who’d made the world bend.

"You underestimate me," I said, pushing myself to my feet, the rain washing away the last of Caden’s blood from my hands. "You taught me everything I know about power. About strategy. You taught me that loyalty is a currency," I looked at Caden, broken at his feet. "And you just spent yours on the wrong man."

I turned to Gray, a silent command passing between us. The gunfire that had punctuated the earlier confrontation had ceased. Now, a different kind of tension filled the air.

"Father," I said, my voice resonating with a newfound authority, "you wanted to clip my wings? You tried— and you succeeded halfway. But you forget who I am. I am Adrien Walton. The most powerful Walton and the most powerful in this country. And Walton’s don’t disappear." I paused a little. "They reign."

Gray’s assistant, breathing hard, approached. "Boss—what do you want to do with them?"

I looked from my father to Caden. The rain blurred everything into a watercolor of menace. The board clock ticked in the back of my mind—minutes away? demands piling like thunder.

"Take them to the warehouse," I said, voice low, each word an order. "Put them in the maggot container. Make sure they’re alive until I come back."

"Yes, boss."

My men moved like wolves that know the voice of their master. They hauled cuffs on my father’s remaining security, they bundled Caden and his lieutenants toward a freight container. One of my guards spit in the rain at Caden as he passed.

Gray placed a steady hand on my shoulder. "Boss," he said quietly, "you’re thirty minutes late for the meeting. Cameron says doors are locked. No one can leave or act until you arrive."

I nodded once. "Then let’s move."