Chapter 4
Eric turned around and looked down at David.
"Let me ask you something." Eric walked toward him slowly. "Did you have anything to do with the Williams Group's collapse?"
David shuddered and didn't dare say a word.
"And one more thing." Eric leaned down and grabbed David by the hair, demanding an answer word by word. "Were you involved in my three brothers' deaths?!"
"No — no! Absolutely not!"
David was scared out of his mind. Every instinct told him that if he said "yes," this lunatic in front of him wouldn't hesitate to snap his neck.
Gripped by pure terror, he forgot all about his dignity as a gang boss. He grabbed the hem of Eric's shirt with both hands and begged over and over.
"Eric! I swear! I'm just a small-time errand runner. I only came here today because I saw the Williams family going under and wanted to pick up the company cheap. As for your three brothers... that's a fight between gods. Even if I had ten times the guts, I'd never touch that!"
Eric stared straight into David's eyes.
All he saw there was fear — nothing but fear. The panic written across his face couldn't be faked.
Eric let go and let David collapse back onto the floor like a heap of wet clay.
With his grandfather and Isabella watching from behind, he pushed down the urge to kill.
He'd just gotten back to Washington and hadn't fully sized things up yet. He didn't want to get too bloody in front of the old man right now.
"Don't let me see you again." Eric brushed his hands off in disgust. "Now get out. On your hands and knees."
When he heard that, David felt like a man granted a last-minute pardon.
He considered throwing out some tough words to save face — something like "you'll pay for this" — but the moment he looked up and caught Eric's gaze, raw and predatory like a beast, every word died in his throat.
"Looks like you didn't catch what I said." Eric's expression was flat. "I said crawl out. Not walk out."
"You... you've gone too far!" David pressed his stomach, his voice shaking.
"Three." Eric skipped the speech and started counting down.
"Two..."
The moment that word landed, a crushing pressure slammed down on David like a wall.
He couldn't afford to hesitate anymore. Ignoring the pain ripping through his body, he gritted his teeth, rolled across the floor, and literally tumbled his way out through the study door.
The bodyguards with their broken arms saw that and didn't need any more convincing to leave.
Every one of them choked back the agony of their shattered bones, followed David's lead, and crawled and rolled their way down the stairs and out the front door of the villa.
It wasn't until they'd rolled out onto the street that David finally let one of his men pull him to his feet.
He turned back, his swollen face twisted with hatred.
"That piece of trash... just got out of prison and thinks he can humiliate me like this!" David spat out a mouthful of blood, then reached into his pocket with trembling hands and dialed a number.
"Hello, Richard? It's David... Yeah, I took a loss today in the Angel District. That Williams kid Eric — the one who just got out — he's back, and he's brutal. Put all my guys out of commission. I need you to step in and teach this punk a lesson."
An old, raspy voice came through on the other end. "You know how this works. The Williams family is down, but a fallen elephant still outweighs a horse. I can handle it — one million dollars. I'll come down in two days to check the results."
"Done! As long as that bastard ends up dead, I'll pay two million!" David ground his teeth and slammed the phone down.
"Eric, just you wait. I'll make you pay back every last bit of this — ten times over, a hundred times over!"
Back in the study, with that pack of thugs gone, the room finally went quiet.
Eric turned around and looked at William — white-haired and gaunt — and felt something sharp twist in his chest.
He dropped to his knees in front of the old man.
"Grandfather, I've been a terrible grandson. Five years ago, I acted on my own without telling the family..." Eric gripped the old man's sleeve, his voice catching in his throat.
He'd been young and reckless back then. He'd taken the fall for someone else just because Elena said a word, never thinking about what it would cost the Williams family — or the shadow it would cast over them in Washington.
While he was locked away, the family had been torn apart. His three brothers, all elite soldiers, had died in battle. His grandfather had buried them one by one and worked himself into illness. And Eric had been sitting in that prison, completely unaware.
The guilt sat in his chest like a stone.
"Get up, child. Come on, get up."
William let out a long sigh, reached out with a rough, trembling hand, and gently stroked Eric's hair.
"Five years, and you've finally grown up." The old man's voice softened. "That right there — that was how a Williams man handles things." He followed that with a long, rough fit of coughing.
When he'd first heard his grandson had taken the blame for a woman, William had been so furious he'd flipped a table and declared in front of everyone that he no longer had a grandson like that.
But now, watching this young man step up and put himself in front of his family when it mattered, all that disappointment had faded away.
The Williams bloodline didn't produce cowards. John and the others were gone — but Eric could hold this family up.
Isabella stood behind them watching. She stepped forward, face cold, her voice heavy with exhaustion. "Alright. This isn't the time for a reunion. Eric, what you just did was reckless."
Eric stood up and looked at her.
"You've clearly got skills, and I'm sure you fought plenty in prison. But this is Washington — not some place where fists solve everything." Isabella's brow was tight, her tone sharp. "David might just be a gang boss, but the Garcia family behind him runs deep here. You humiliated him like that today — he will come after us hard. What does the Williams family have left to fight back with?"
As she said it, a flicker of despair crossed her eyes.
She had hoped Eric, after getting out, would keep his head down and help carry some of the weight.
But now it was clear that all he knew was violence. He had no understanding of how the real game was played — the politics, the strategy, the back-and-forth of business.
If the future of the Williams family ended up in the hands of someone like this — all brawn, no brains — then ruin wasn't far off.
Eric didn't push back. He just listened.
He knew Isabella had been holding this broken family together alone for three years, and it had cost her more than anyone could see. The wariness and distrust in her eyes hadn't come from nowhere — the world had beaten them into her.
"Before, I didn't know any better. All I did was eat, drink, and cause trouble — and let you and my brothers worry about everything."
