Walking With His Fiancée, the Mafia Boss Saw the Woman He Thought Had Died—Now Pregnant Spotlight8

Grandma Birdie told it. Her voice was even, slow, unbroken.

Five months earlier, one afternoon, someone had knocked on the door. She opened it and saw an older man in a suit holding an oak cane, alone, with no one beside him.

He introduced himself as Desmond Holloway.

She knew that family name. Everyone in this area knew it.

He came into the house, sat in the exact chair Grant was sitting in now, drank a glass of water, and then began to talk.

He spoke politely, his voice soft, never raised, never threatening.

He said her granddaughter was carrying a child who, if born and known, would destroy an important financial alliance of the Holloway family.

He said he didn’t want anyone hurt. He only wanted to make an offer.

This house would be transferred into Grandma Birdie’s name. Monthly living money would be brought directly to her. And in exchange, Jolene would disappear from Grant Holloway’s life. Disappear completely. On paper, she would no longer exist.

Grandma Birdie said she had meant to refuse. She had opened her mouth to say no.

But Desmond didn’t let her speak.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, took out a photograph, and placed it on the table right in the middle, turning it so she could see it.

It was a photograph of a man about forty years old, standing in front of some store, looking to one side, unaware that he was being photographed.

Desmond didn’t explain the picture. He only said, his voice still soft, still polite:

“This man once caused trouble for my family. Now no one knows where he is.”

Then he went quiet. He said nothing more. He didn’t need to say more.

Grandma Birdie looked at the photograph, then looked down at her own hands resting on the table—the curled fingers, the swollen knuckles, the hands that had once carried her granddaughter, once cooked meals, once mended clothes, and now could no longer hold a spoon tightly.

She lifted her eyes to Desmond and said:

“Look at these hands, Mr. Holloway. These aren’t the hands of someone who can protect her granddaughter from your family anymore.”

Then she accepted.

No bargaining. No crying. No asking for anything more.

She signed the papers Desmond had prepared before he ever arrived—which meant he had known her answer before she said it.

Grandma Birdie finished telling the story and sat in silence. She didn’t ask for forgiveness, didn’t explain anything more. She had told it, and that was all she intended to give.

Grant sat across from her, silent for a very long time.

Then he said, his voice neither high nor low:

“I didn’t come here for you to ask forgiveness.”

Grandma Birdie looked at him and tilted her head slightly. “Then what did you come here for?”

Grant opened his mouth, then closed it.

He had no answer.

He didn’t know what he had come here for. To find Jolene? To hear the truth? To make things right?

He didn’t know.

And for the first time in a very long time, Grant Holloway sat before a seventy-eight-year-old woman whose hands could no longer hold a glass of water, and he couldn’t find a single thing to say.

He—a man who had never run out of words before anyone in any room—had lost today to one question from a woman who had nothing in her hands but the truth.

Grant left Grandma Birdie’s house without saying goodbye.

He stepped out the door, walked straight toward the car, opened it, and got in.

Perry looked through the rearview mirror but didn’t ask.

Grant said two words: “Go home.”

All the way back, he didn’t say another word. He sat in the back seat, his eyes looking out the window but seeing nothing. His right hand slowly turning the silver ring.

In his mind, Grandma Birdie’s question still lay there—whole and unanswered.

Then what did you come here for?

But beside that question, something else was growing.

Not an answer.

Anger.

And now that anger had a name.

Perry stopped the car in front of the Holloway mansion. Grant got out, walked straight through the foyer, went up the stairs, turned left, and pushed open the study door.

Desmond was sitting there.

He was seated in the leather armchair on the left side of the desk—the place where he always sat every evening when he read financial reports. The oak cane rested against the side of the chair. The gold family crest ring on his left ring finger gleamed under the desk lamp.

A glass of liquor had already been poured on the small table beside the chair, one-third of it gone.

He was reading a stack of papers, leisurely, as though nothing unusual was happening anywhere in the world.

Grant closed the door behind him. He didn’t lock it.

He stood in the middle of the room, looked at his uncle, and said:

“She’s alive.”

Desmond didn’t look up right away. He finished reading the line he was on, set the papers down on the table, and only then looked at Grant.

His eyes were calm—not a trace of surprise. Not a single blink from a man caught in the act.

He said one word:

“Yes.”

Then he lifted the glass, took a sip, and set it down.

One word. No explanation. No apology. No denial.