Chapter 7 Brick by Brick
Roman's POV
People like to assume I was born with power. They’re wrong.
Power was something I learned to survive. I don’t remember my mother clearly. Only fragments: soft hands, a voice I can’t place anymore, and then… absence. The kind that doesn’t fade. The kind that teaches a child that love is temporary.
After she died, my father filled the house with noise. The house became a structure of loud rooms. It was filled with women, parties, laughter that never reached his eyes. That was when Liam came into the world. Same father. Different mother. A woman he never bothered to respect enough to call anything more than a mistake that stayed.
Then everything collapsed.
The company my grandfather built—the empire my name would eventually be tied to—began to rot under my father’s recklessness. He kept accumulating bad deals, making worse decisions, debt that didn’t care about last names.
I remember the day the men came. They weren't businessmen. They were men who laid the rules behind the city, and they came for their money—which my father didn't have at the time. So they pulled the trigger on him. After that, there was blood, silence, and the limp body of a man who was once called my father.
Just like that, I stopped being a child.
It was only us… and the old man who didn’t break when everything else did. My grandfather didn’t cry. He didn’t collapse. He rebuilt. Brick by brick, debt by debt, humiliation by humiliation, he pulled what was left of our name back from the ground. But survival is not the same as living.
We had food, we had walls, we had a name again—but what we didn’t have was peace. There were nights I watched him sit in his study long after midnight, staring at papers that never seemed to end.
At some point, I stopped asking questions, because questions don’t fill empty rooms, they don’t erase hunger, and they don’t stop pain.
So I left without a warning, without a goodbye—not even to Liam. I disappeared into a world that didn’t care who I used to be. A world where weakness wasn’t punished; it was erased.
Seven years later, I came back, but I wasn’t the same person who left. I didn’t come back for family. Family is nothing but a bondage that holds men down with emotions that make them vulnerable. I came back because I was no longer the one who needed saving.
Money followed me first… then power… then fear.
They started calling me things I didn’t correct because they were all true: Terror. Monster. Beast. Ro.
The empire rose again under my name, but this time I didn’t rebuild it with hope. I rebuilt it with control.
And somewhere along the way, I learned something simple: Love is a liability. Emotions are leverage. And women… women are either distractions or tools.
A vibration jolted me from the memory I was reminiscing.
“Boss,” my right-hand man’s voice came through the line immediately. “The shipment is ready. All routes are secured. Warehouse team is standing by.”
I turned slightly from the window, expression unchanged. “Any issues?”
“No, sir.”
“Ensure there are none,” I said quietly. “I don’t want surprises.”
“Yes, boss.”
The line cut.
I exhaled slowly and slipped the phone back onto the desk. My gaze returned to the city, but my mind didn’t stay there for long. It drifted—not to war, not to business—to her. Scarlet Blair. A debt that didn’t behave like one. And worse… Liam.
The thought came sharper than it should have. I had seen the way he looked at her—not like a man observing a servant. Like a man deciding something he shouldn’t. My jaw tightened slightly. Why is Liam interested in my lamb?
Meanwhile
Elijah, Roman’s right hand man, ordered some men to scout the area for safety.
“It’s all clear, Sir,” one of the men said, and they began to sail along with the three shipments.
The men who were watching out for security on the ship suddenly fell to their knees, and when Elijah looked closely, bullets were lodged in their chests.
“Fuck! They’re using silencers. Everyone, be on guard!” he shouted, and the men instantly pulled out their guns.
Suddenly, the helmsman screamed.
Elijah rushed toward him, only to see blood running down his forehead. A bullet sat right between his eyes. He was…..dead.
Elijah turned sharply and saw another ship approaching theirs, armed men standing on it with rifles pointed forward.
He needed no one to tell him what they were after.
“The shipments…” one of the men muttered fearfully.
“Dive into the water now!” Elijah barked.
Without hesitation, they all jumped into the water while the armed men sped away with the containers.
When the area finally became quiet again, Elijah and the remaining men swam out and rested at the bank, breathing heavily.
“We need to tell Ro about this,” Elijah muttered and quickly brought out his phone.
--
In the office, my phone rang again.
“Boss,” Elijah’s voice came, ragged. “An unknown gang attacked us and made away with the shipments.”
“Investigate the attack. I’m coming.” I ended the call without waiting for a reply.
I walked to the cabinet and opened a briefcase filled with different kinds of guns. My fingers brushed past several before I picked two and slid them into my pockets. Then I left the room.
As I stepped into the hallway, I saw Scarlet walking toward her bedroom.
She saw me—dressed in black, dark shades covering my eyes. The way she froze for a fraction of a second told me everything. To her, I probably looked less like a man and more like the devil himself.
I walked past her without a glance. Behind me, I heard the smallest, almost involuntary exhale of relief. She thought she was safe.
Seconds later, I was in the car. The engine roared, tearing the silence of the compound apart.
I had been laying low for a while now, but this worthless gang simply refused to let the sleeping lion lie. Now that I’d been awakened… there was no going back.
