The headmaster's office at the Lycée de L'Élite in Switzerland smelled of lemon polish, old money, and cold disapproval. Aris Thorne, fifteen years old and vibrating with a furious, self-righteous energy, sat slumped in a velvet wingback chair that was too large for him, making him look like a petulant child playing king. He refused to meet the gaze of Headmaster Dubois, who was pacing behind his mammoth oak desk, a letter of expulsion practically already in his hand.
"To breach the academic firewall, Mr. Thorne. To alter administrative records. This is not a prank. This is a profound violation of ethics and law!"
"He was taking bribes!" Aris snapped, his head jerking up. His eyes, the same striking Thorne blue as Cassian's but burning with an un-tempered fire, locked onto Dubois. "Professor Laurent. He was changing the grades of idiots whose parents wired him money. I didn't change my grades. I exposed a corrupt system. You should be thanking me."
"You are a student, not an auditor! You have no proof that would stand in any court!"
"I have the fucking server logs!" Aris shot back, his voice cracking with the strain of what he saw as glorious martyrdom.
The door opened silently.
Both Aris and Headmaster Dubois turned. Cassian Thorne stood in the doorway. At twenty-nine, the mantle of Thorne authority was not just settling—it was fully forged, a second skin of grim responsibility worn since Samuel's death. He wore a perfectly tailored, somber black suit, his expression not angry, but deeply, forbiddingly calm. He didn't look at Aris. His gaze went straight to Dubois, and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees.
"Headmaster Dubois," Cassian said, his voice a low, controlled baritone. "My apologies. May I speak with my nephew? Alone."
It wasn't a request. It was a directive wrapped in polite frost. Dubois, who knew the weight of the Thorne endowment to his school, nodded stiffly. "Of course. I'll be outside. But Mr. Thorne, the board's position is firm. Expulsion is the only recourse for such a flagrant breach."
"Understood."
The door clicked shut. Cassian didn't take the headmaster's chair. He pulled a straight-backed wooden chair from the corner and placed it directly in front of Aris. He sat, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. For a long moment, he just looked at the boy. Aris glared back, a cornered animal, pride his only armor.
"Well?" Aris finally burst out, unable to bear the silence. "Are you here to sign the papers? Ship the disgrace back to New York? My father isn't here to stop you this time, is he?"
The mention of Samuel was a deliberate, cruel jab. Cassian didn't flinch, but his eyes grew colder, harder. "Your father is dead," he stated, the words flat and absolute. "Which means the responsibility for your idiocy falls to me. Start from the beginning. Not the hack. The why."
Aris blinked, thrown by the lack of reaction. "I told you. Laurent was corrupt. He was letting rich morons buy their way into Oxford and Cambridge. It was wrong."
"And your solution was to commit a felony."
"It wasn't a felony, it was—"
"It was unauthorized access to a secured computer system with intent to defraud. That's the legal definition, Aris. In the eyes of the law—and the board who wants to make an example of you—you are now the story. Not the corruption. You gave them a reason to dismiss the truth. You handed them your own crime to focus on, so they never have to look at his." Cassian's words were precise, surgical. "The act showed spine. The method was juvenile. Reckless. You left a digital trail a child could follow. You acted on emotion, not strategy. That is a luxury you do not have. Not with our name, and not in this world."
"Our name," Aris sneered, gesturing wildly around the opulent office. "The name that's going to be on my expulsion letter. The great Cassian Thorne, can't even keep his own nephew in school."
Cassian leaned back, studying him. The uncle—the ghost of the brother who might have known how to reach this angry, brilliant boy—was buried deep under the weight of leadership. He saw only the liability, the unchecked arrogance. But a flicker of duty, a ghost of Samuel's hope, made him try one last time.
"You're not being expelled," Cassian stated.
Aris's eyes widened in shock, then a smug, triumphant glee began to dawn. "You… you paid them off."
"No," Cassian said, and the word cut the triumph short. "You will stand before the disciplinary board tomorrow. You will read a statement. You will apologize, unreservedly, for your 'profound error in judgment' and your 'violation of the school's sacred trust.' You will accept a four-week suspension and disciplinary probation."
"Apologize?!" Aris erupted, leaping to his feet. "To them? After what he did? I won't do it! That's humiliation! My father would never—"
"Your father is not here!" Cassian's voice finally sharpened, a crack of impatience in the ice. "I am. Sit. Down."
Aris, shaking, sat, his face flushed with rage and unshed tears of frustration.
"While you are delivering your apology," Cassian continued, his voice dropping back to that deadly calm, "a packet of information—obtained through entirely legal, third-party financial audits—will be delivered to the board chairman. It will detail Professor Laurent's offshore accounts, the wire transfers from specific parents, and the corresponding grade alterations. He will be asked to resign. Immediately. Quietly."
Aris stared, his mind racing. "You… you had him investigated? For me?"
"I had the situation contained," Cassian corrected, mercilessly. "The truth doesn't need a crowbar, Aris. It needs a scalpel. You will take your punishment—the public consequence for your messy, emotional method. And he will lose his career—the quiet consequence for his corruption. The problem is solved. But it is solved cleanly. That is the only way it lasts. That is the lesson. If you're going to break a rule, you must be ready to face the consequence. And you must be so clean in your motive, so flawless in your execution, that the consequence is worth it. You were not."
The meeting with the board was a masterclass in cold theater. Aris, in a stiff blazer, recited the contrite words from the card in his sweating hands, hating every syllable. He saw the smug satisfaction on the board members' faces. See the mighty Thorne heir, humbled. As he finished, a secretary entered and whispered to the chairman, whose face went ashen as he scanned the dossier placed before him.
The ride to the private airfield was conducted in a thick, toxic silence. Aris stared out the window of the black sedan, the majestic Alps now just a backdrop to his shame. The forced apology echoed in his skull, louder than any victory.
"You could have just made it go away," Aris said, his voice low and venomous. "A donation. A threat. That's what you do, isn't it? You could have made them swallow it all—the hack, the truth, everything. But you didn't. You made me kneel."
Cassian, who had been typing on his phone, set it down slowly. He looked at the boy—his brother's son, his own flesh and blood—and saw only the resentment. The lesson had not been received; it had been weaponized against him.
"I didn't save you, Aris," he said, his voice hollow with a finality that had nothing to do with the school. "I gave you a lesson. One day, you will inherit a share of an empire. You need to understand the difference between getting away with something, and being right. Between force that shouts, and power that silences."
Aris let out a short, bitter laugh. "A lesson. Right. You enjoyed that, didn't you? Showing me how it's really done. Putting me in my place. Making sure I never forget that you're in charge now. That my father's gone, and you're the one with the scalpel."
Cassian closed his eyes. In that moment, he wasn't the untouchable warlord. He was just a man, too young for this burden, mourning his brother, failing his nephew. He had offered strategy, sacrifice, a path through the mess. Aris had only felt the sting of the slap.
When Cassian opened his eyes, the fleeting vulnerability was gone, sealed away. The attempt at mentorship was over. Permanently.
"I was trying to show you how to be better than just clever," Cassian said, the words flat, an epitaph for their relationship. "I failed."
He picked up his phone, his attention shifting to the next crisis, the next decision. The wall between uncle and nephew was now complete and impenetrable.
Aris turned back to the window, the words 'I failed' twisting in his gut. He mistook the weary regret for cold contempt. He took the complex, painful gift of his salvation—the strategic, self-sacrificing choice—and saw only a public shaming designed to break him. The seed was planted, deep in the fertile soil of his adolescent pride and fresh grief: Cassian didn't protect him; Cassian controlled him. Cassian didn't share authority; he enforced it.
It was the last time Cassian would ever try to reach the boy. From that day, he would manage the asset. And Aris would nurture his grievance, letting it ferment through the years into a potent wine of hatred, until it poisoned him enough to flee his wedding and align with monsters. The prodigal never learned the lesson. He only ever collected the debt, and he would spend the rest of his life believing Cassian was the one who owed him.