Xavier's POV
The house was silent when I got home.
Not peaceful.
Controlled.
Atlas houses were built to absorb sound, not echo it. Wide corridors. Stone floors. Glass and steel and nothing soft enough to leave an imprint. Even footsteps felt monitored.
I shut the door behind me and didn't move.
Aylia's face flashed behind my eyes—neutral, professional, refusing to look at me when I left.
That was the part that stayed.
Not the humiliation.
The restraint.
"You're late."
My father's voice carried from the study, calm and sharp enough to cut through walls.
Of course he knew.
"I had things to handle," I said, loosening my tie as I walked in.
He didn't look up from his tablet. He never did unless he intended to dismantle something. The screen reflected in the glass case behind him—awards, acquisitions, framed headlines. Atlas & Co. Expands Again.Visionary Leadership Before Twenty.
Legacy, preserved like evidence.
My mother sat across from him, posture perfect despite the fatigue she wore like a second coat. She'd come straight from the hospital—still in heels, still precise.
"You missed dinner," she said.
"I wasn't hungry."
She looked at me longer than necessary. "That's new."
I ignored it.
My father finally set the tablet down. "I had a call with Dubai."
I already knew.
"They want you present for TQ5 negotiations," he continued. "Not observing. Participating. You're running out of time to behave like a student instead of a successor."
"School isn't optional," I said evenly.
"No," he replied. "But distractions are."
My jaw tightened. "I'm not distracted."
He studied me now. Really studied me. "You've been volatile."
"Careful," I said quietly.
He smiled thinly. "You don't threaten me in my own house."
My mother intervened before it escalated. "Your heart rate is elevated."
I turned to her. "I'm fine."
"You said that after Reese stopped sleeping," she replied softly.
The name landed like a blade.
Reese.Twenty-one.Gone.
The room went still.
"He isn't here," I said flatly. "So don't use him as a benchmark."
My father's expression hardened. "Reese understood discipline."
"He died following orders," I shot back.
Silence snapped tight.
My older brother stood frozen in the doorway. Twenty-four. Watching. Always watching. Concern flickering behind restraint. He never interrupted—but he never looked away either.
"I didn't raise you to unravel," my father said.
"You raised me to win," I replied. "And I am."
"Then explain this," he said sharply. "Explain the reports I get about your behavior."
I laughed once. "You have reports now?"
"I have eyes everywhere," he said calmly. "Always have."
I believed him.
"You're being reckless," he continued. "Inconsistent. Emotionally disengaged."
Cold.That word again.
"Cold works," I said.
"It doesn't if you lose control."
I stepped closer. "I don't lose control."
My mother stood. "Enough."
She touched my arm briefly—clinical, cautious. "You don't have to carry everything alone."
I pulled away. "Yes, I do."
She flinched. Just slightly.
She left the room.
My father watched me carefully. "You're being watched, Xavier."
"I know."
"That's good," he said. "Fear keeps people sharp."
As I turned to leave, my older brother finally spoke.
"You don't have to shut everyone out."
I stopped.
Didn't turn around.
"Stay out of my way," I said quietly.
Upstairs, the walls closed in.
I shut my bedroom door harder than necessary and leaned against it, exhaling through my nose like pressure had somewhere to go.
It didn't.
The café replayed again.
The way Alicia smiled.The way Aylia stood perfectly still.The way she hadn't looked at me.
I poured a drink and didn't touch it.
This wasn't guilt.
Guilt implied regret.
This was irritation—at Alicia, at myself, at the fact that I'd let something unfold without defining it.
Control didn't tolerate ambiguity.
Aylia Zehir was an uncontrolled variable.
She wasn't fragile.She wasn't loud.She endured.
That kind of strength didn't disappear.
It adapted.
And that was dangerous.
I pulled my phone out. Scrolled without reading. Names, updates, surveillance disguised as concern.
I knew where she worked.When she worked.Who she lived with.
Not because I cared.
Because knowing steadied things.
Alicia's voice echoed in my head.
You're already invested.
"No," I muttered aloud.
Investment meant attachment.
This wasn't attachment.
This was correction.
Rules needed to be set.
Boundaries established.
If she stayed in my orbit, nothing happened without my awareness.
That was safer.
For both of us.
I stared out at the city lights—wealth, distance, power stretching endlessly below.
Reese used to stand here with me.
You don't always need to win, he'd said once. Sometimes you just need to let go.
Letting go was what left empty chairs.
Letting go was weakness.
Aylia hadn't broken today.
Good.
That meant there was more to test.
And next time—
Next time there would be structure.
Terms.
I didn't know yet that guilt, twisted long enough, becomes cruelty.
But standing there, alone in a house built for legacies and ghosts, I made one decision with absolute clarity:
I wouldn't let her exist outside my reach again.
Not because I wanted to hurt her.
Because losing control once was enough for a lifetime.
And I wasn't losing anything else.