Chapter 38: A son’s promise

Alejandro didn’t abandon his father.

Perhaps he felt some guilt, but more than anything, Alejandro refused to accept that loving Rosalie meant discarding everything Augustus had spent years preparing him for.

So he made his father a promise.

He would continue working for the family company and make it flourish. More importantly, he would prove that the family he’d chosen would never become a burden to the Vance name.

Augustus eventually accepted the marriage.

Acceptance, however, wasn’t quite the same as approval.

The older man also couldn’t seem to let go of one concern.

Alejandro needed an heir.

A child of his own.

Alejandro never treated Ben as anything less.

When Rosalie eventually gave birth to another son, they named him Alexander.

For years afterward, life seemed determined to prove Augustus wrong.

Alejandro rose steadily through the company while Rosalie settled into their new life, and Ben became the protective older brother who never seemed particularly bothered that Alexander followed him everywhere.

If Ben climbed a tree, Alex climbed after him. Fishing trips somehow acquired a much smaller companion carrying his own pole. At the same time, piano lessons eventually became another activity Alexander decided he needed to learn simply because his brother could do it.

When Ben learned to drive, naturally, Alex wanted to learn too.

And if anyone had tried telling the younger boy that the brother he’d spent his entire childhood worshipping wasn’t entirely his brother, Alexander probably would’ve wondered what the hell that meant.

By the time Augustus retired, Alejandro had taken over the company and expanded it far beyond what his father had originally built.

Eventually, it became Vance Holdings.

For a while, the years were kind to them.

Even when Rosalie didn’t see eye to eye with Augustus, she learned to give him his space, particularly when he had visitors courting his approval. Victoria Sebastian was certainly among the most persistent.

Then one summer changed everything.

Ben had recently finished high school and intended to enter military training. With only weeks left before he left, he’d apparently decided his younger brother needed one final essential lesson.

"You brake too hard."

"I’m stopping."

"You’re trying to send me through the windshield."

Alexander frowned at him from behind the wheel of their pickup.

"You told me to brake."

"I said slow down. Those are different things."

"Do you want to drive?"

"No. You’re learning."

"I already know how to drive."

"Then stop trying to kill your passenger."

Alexander gave him an offended look.

Ben laughed.

He’d already taught his younger brother enough that neither of them considered Alexander inexperienced anymore.

That’s why Alex was driving when the delivery truck barreled toward them.

He remembered the horn and Ben shouting his name just before metal folded into metal.

After that, nothing.

The investigation eventually determined that the delivery truck’s brakes had failed, causing its driver to lose control before crashing directly into their pickup.

Alexander survived.

Ben didn’t.

When Alex woke in the hospital, his first question was about his brother.

No one answered immediately.

That was answer enough, but he asked again anyway.

"Where’s Ben?"

Alejandro was beside his bed.

His father lowered his head, and Alexander understood.

The truth about Ben came later, though Alex would never quite remember who finally told him.

Ben wasn’t Alejandro’s biological son.

Alexander had always known they were brothers. He simply hadn’t known they were half-brothers.

It shouldn’t have mattered.

To Alexander, it didn’t.

To Rosalie, however, grief had complicated everything.

She had lost the child she’d raised through the hardest years of her life, the little boy who’d been beside her long before Alejandro came home and chose both of them.

And the child who survived had been behind the wheel.

The investigation cleared Alexander, and Rosalie knew the accident wasn’t his fault. Unfortunately, knowing something and surviving the grief were very different things.

There were days when she couldn’t look at him for long, while on others she hovered so closely throughout his recovery that Alexander almost wished she’d leave the room. Then came the days when she barely left her own, shutting herself inside the guest room while the rest of the household learned to move quietly around her.

Their home gradually became a place where everyone seemed afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Alejandro responded in the only way he knew how.

He worked.

What began as longer hours eventually consumed more and more of his life, until Alexander had long since recovered from his physical injuries while the family itself remained fractured.

Then Augustus died.

By then, Alexander was old enough to understand that families didn’t always break all at once. Sometimes they simply lost pieces of themselves until someone finally noticed how quiet the house had become.

He eventually joined Vance Holdings.

Rosalie remained at the ancestral home for some time afterward, but she was never quite the same woman who had once laughed at Alejandro for deliberately ruining the rotation at a barn dance.

Eventually, she left.

No dramatic announcement or public scandal. She simply reached a point where staying among so many memories became harder than walking away.

Alejandro retired earlier than anyone expected.

Officially, he’d done enough.

Unofficially, Alexander suspected his father had spent a great deal of time hoping that if he finally stopped choosing the company over everything else, Rosalie might find her way home.

She never did.

And so the ancestral house that had once struggled to contain an entire family gradually became home to one man, several longtime household staff, and far too many memories.

In time, the family’s controlling interest in Vance Holdings passed to Alexander, making him not only its chief executive but also its largest individual shareholder.

He inherited the house too, although inheriting a house and inheriting a home turned out to be very different things.

Along with them came the weight of the Vance name and everything Augustus and Alejandro had spent their lives building.

Alexander didn’t know his grandfather had left something else behind.

A decision made years before his death.

Augustus had watched his son choose a woman without his blessing and spend the rest of his life living with the consequences.

He had no intention of allowing his grandson to do the same.

And apparently, he’d made arrangements to make sure of it.