“Can I be your real son?”

The camera angle shifted to a tight close-up of Miles.

The seven-year-old boy, still sitting in his champagne velvet chair, looked past the dark, tailored fabric of his father's suit. He did not look at Sabine. He looked directly at Caleb.

The fair, rosy skin of Miles's cheeks was damp with continuous tears. He had been terribly confused, his innocent mind struggling to comprehend the cruel rejection he had been subjected to by the woman who was supposed to become his stepmother. He had internalized the toxic venom Sabine had poured into his ears for three weeks, genuinely believing that his adoption made him a temporary, disposable fixture in the grand mansion.

But feeling the heavy, reassuring presence of his father standing as a physical shield between him and the monster across the table gave Miles a sudden, desperate surge of courage.

Tears gathered heavily along Miles’s lower eyelids, matching the tears of the housemaid standing beside him. His lower lip trembled violently, the adrenaline and trauma threatening to overwhelm his small frame.

He took a shaky breath, forcing himself to speak. He asked the question with a fragile, heartbreaking hope, desperate for validation from the only man who had ever shown him true safety.

“Can I be your real son?”

The question struck the dining hall with catastrophic force. The absolute, pure innocence of the plea shattered the hardened exteriors of the men and women seated at the tables. It was the devastating consequence of Sabine's psychological warfare, laid bare in the bright, golden light of the crystal chandeliers.

The collective silence of the wealthy, powerful guests transformed into a suffocating vacuum. The level of calculated, psychopathic ambition required to break a child's spirit so thoroughly sickened the syndicate.

Caleb remained perfectly still. The cold, terrifying edge of the Mafia boss fractured for a microsecond.

The camera shifted to a close-up of Caleb.

Caleb held Miles’s tear-filled gaze for a brief, painful beat. He absorbed the sheer trauma radiating from his son, the innocent boy who had been made to feel like an imposter in his own home. The rigid lines of his angular face softened by a fraction of a millimeter toward the boy, a silent, roaring promise of absolute, uncompromising protection. He squeezed the back of the velvet chair, his knuckles turning white beneath his tattoos.

"Are you not already the very blood in my veins, Miles?" Caleb whispered, his deep voice thick with an unprecedented, raw emotion.