Chapter 7 - THE CLIFFSIDE COTTAGE
The freezing wind ripped at Vincent’s overcoat as he walked up the wooden steps of the porch, the wet snow stinging his face. He didn't hesitate. He raised his hand and knocked twice on the heavy oak door.
The seconds ticked by like hours.
Inside, the faint sound of shuffling footsteps scraped against the hardwood floor. A wooden bolt slid open with a heavy clack, and the door creaked inward by a few inches.
A middle-aged woman wearing a simple nurse’s uniform peered out into the darkness, her expression cautious and defensive. But when her eyes adjusted to the porch light and locked onto Vincent’s face, her breath caught in her throat.
She didn't need to ask who he was. The resemblance was an absolute mirror image.
"You're... you're Vincent," she whispered, her eyes widening. Clara must have briefed her.
"I am," Vincent said, his voice straining against the wind. "I need to see her."
The nurse stepped back, pulling the door wide open. "She’s in the sitting room by the fire. She doesn't have many good days, Mr. Kane. Be gentle with her."
Vincent stepped past her into the warm, quiet interior of the cottage. The air smelled of old paper, burning cedar logs, and faint antiseptic. He walked down the narrow hallway, his boots making no sound on the thick wool runner rug, until he reached the open doorway of the sitting room.
There, sitting in a high-backed rocking chair facing a roaring stone fireplace, was a woman with silver hair draped loosely over her shoulders, wrapped in a thick wool quilt. Her hands lay folded gently in her lap, staring into the dancing orange flames.
Vincent stopped on the threshold. His chest tightened so violently he couldn't draw a breath.
For thirty years, he had imagined this moment in a thousand different ways—in boardroom fantasies, in quiet moments of solitude, in the dark corners of his mind where the most ruthless version of himself lived. But now that he was standing here, all the power, all the wealth, and all the terrifying authority of the Vincent Kane empire felt utterly meaningless.
He was just a little boy standing in the doorway, waiting for his mother to turn around.
"Mom," he whispered.
The word was barely audible over the crackle of the fire, but the woman in the rocking chair froze.
The gentle rocking motion stopped instantly.
Slowly, agonizingly, the woman turned her head. Her striking gray eyes—the exact same eyes he saw every morning in his own mirror—locked onto his face.
She didn't speak. She didn't cry out. She simply stared at him for a long, endless heartbeat, her brow furrowing as she searched through the foggy corridors of a mind fractured by decades of isolation and trauma.
Then, her lower lip began to tremble.
May you like
"Vincent?" she breathed, her voice a fragile, broken whisper. "My little boy... you grew up."
Vincent crossed the room in two rapid strides, dropping to his knees beside the rocking chair, burying his face in her hands as the dam broke, and the most feared man on the East Coast wept like a child in the warmth of the fire.
