Adrian's POV
I always wondered how long it would take before Elias noticed the cracks.
Turns out—ten years of silence, power, and glass towers can't bury blood.
The building is exactly what I expected. Cold. Efficient. Polished to the point of sterility. It reeks of control—the kind my brother mistakes for peace.
People stare when I walk through the halls. Not because I'm loud. Because I'm wrong for this place. I don't belong to systems that pretend chaos doesn't exist.
Elias does.
I catch my reflection in the elevator mirror. Same sharp eyes. Same dark hair. Different damage.
Funny how trauma rearranges people.
When I step onto his floor, I feel it immediately—him. You don't grow up with someone like Elias without learning how to sense his presence. He's a pressure change. A shift in air.
Then I see her.
She's sitting at her desk, focused, unaware she's being observed. Not fragile. Not loud. There's something steady about her, something that doesn't perform. That's rare here.
Interesting.
I say his name without a title.
A test.
Her reaction is subtle—but telling. Defensive posture. Guarded tone. She's protective already.
Oh.
So that's new.
Then Elias appears.
And there it is—the look.
People think fear is loud. It isn't. Fear is when someone who never hesitates freezes for half a second too long.
I smile because I can't help it.
"You look well," I tell him. "Successful. Empty."
He tells me to leave.
Of course he does.
Elias has always been good at erasing things he can't control. People. Memories. Me.
As I walk away, I feel her eyes on my back. Curious. Careful.
Good.
Because she's going to ask questions.
And Elias is terrible at answering them.
Elias's POV
I don't breathe until Adrian is gone.
Even then, my lungs burn like I've been holding air underwater for years.
I knew this day would come. I just hoped I'd be dead—or numb—by then.
Adrian doesn't belong here. He never did. He's disorder incarnate. Reckless, perceptive, incapable of pretending the past didn't happen.
I built this life to keep him out.
To keep that night buried.
I turn and find Mira standing a few steps away, concern written plainly across her face. She isn't trying to hide it. That's the problem.
"Don't ask," I say.
She doesn't speak.
That's worse.
"Go back to work," I add.
She does—but not before I see it. The shift. The moment she understands that what just walked through this office wasn't a stranger.
It was history.
And history always collects its debt.
Mira's POV
They're alike.
I notice it only after the shock settles—the way they hold themselves, the intensity behind their stillness. But where Elias's silence feels controlled, his brother's feels volatile. Like a storm pretending to be human.
Brother.
I don't know how I know. I just do.
Blood recognizes blood.
That man didn't come here to reconnect. He came to provoke. To remind. To reopen something Elias worked desperately to seal shut.
At my desk, I pull up employee records under the excuse of routine.
There's nothing.
No mention of family. No emergency contacts beyond a lawyer's firm.
Elias Floren doesn't exist before the age of twenty-five.
No childhood records. No education trail until suddenly—elite degrees, rapid success, absolute dominance.
You don't build a man like that without fire.
And now the fire has a name.
Adrian.
I close the file, heart pounding—not with fear, but with certainty.
Elias isn't cold.
He's hiding from someone who knows exactly how to destroy him.
And I have the unsettling feeling that, whether he wants it or not—
I've just been pulled into the space between two brothers who never healed.
If you want, next we can:
Let Adrian approach Mira directly (dangerous, revealing)
Expose the night that broke the brothers
Or force Elias into a choice: control his empire—or protect her
Just tell me which path.