Blood chose the heir. Training chose the sacrifice.
Alexandra remembered the cold before she remembered her name.
It was not the kind that bit or burned. It crept—slow and deliberate—settling into the spaces where warmth should have lived. It pressed into her bones, taught her stillness, taught her how to breathe shallow so nothing hurt too much.
The orphanage smelled of disinfectant and overcooked rice. Clean, but never comforting. White walls scrubbed of personality, scrubbed of memory. Children were not meant to linger here—only wait.
Alexandra sat with her hands folded in her lap, feet dangling just above the floor. She counted the cracks in the tiles because counting meant there was an end. She liked endings.
She was six years old.
She did not cry.That was what made her noticeable.
The woman stood in the doorway for a long time before entering. Tall. Controlled. Dressed in black so precise it looked intentional, ceremonial. Her presence rearranged the room without touching anything. The caretaker straightened. Voices softened.
The woman's gaze moved carefully—from child to child—not lingering, not kind. Then it stopped.
On Alexandra.
"She hasn't made a sound," the woman observed.
"She doesn't anymore," the caretaker replied. "Not since she arrived."
Alexandra looked up at her hands. She knew better than to stare.
The woman nodded once.
That nod was the beginning.
The man arrived an hour later.
Alexandra didn't know words like power yet, but she understood gravity. The way adults instinctively stepped back. The way conversations ended mid-sentence. The way the air itself seemed to wait.
He crouched in front of her, bringing his eyes level with hers. He smelled like leather and rain and something sharper beneath—control, maybe.
"What's your name?" he asked.
Names were dangerous. Names were things people took away.
"…Alex," she said after a pause.
He studied her face, her posture, the small scars on her knuckles. He wasn't looking for innocence.
He was looking for absence.
"Would you like to come with me?" he asked.
Children were taught that this question was a miracle.
Alexandra did not feel rescued.
She felt chosen.
The car ride was quiet. City lights smeared across the glass as they passed, reflections doubling and breaking apart. Alexandra pressed her forehead to the window, watching a world she didn't belong to slide by.
The woman sat beside her.
"You're safe now," she said.
Alexandra nodded politely.
Safety had never been the problem.
The house was enormous, but not loud. No warmth. No welcome. It felt like a place designed to observe rather than live. Alexandra's shoes were removed. Her coat taken. She was bathed, fed, dressed in clean clothes that didn't quite feel like hers.
Care performed with precision.
That night, she lay in a bed too soft to trust. The man stood in the doorway, framed by shadows.
"You will call me Father," he said.
She waited.
"Not because I am," he added. "But because it will protect you."
She didn't understand—but she understood enough.
"Yes, Father," she said.
He turned to leave, then paused.
"You will learn discipline here," he said. "Control. Loyalty. Silence."
Alexandra swallowed. "Will I be good?"
He looked at her for a long moment.
"You will be useful."
The door closed softly behind him.
Andre — Memory
Andre watched from the staircase.
He had been told not to be seen.
The girl stood in the foyer, small against the polished marble, hands folded like she was bracing herself for something unseen. She didn't look like him—different hair, different eyes—but something about her posture unsettled him.
Like someone already used to falling.
"She'll stay," his father said.
Andre tightened his grip on the railing.
He didn't know why his chest felt tight. Only that something had shifted, and no one had explained it to him.
Alexandra
The lessons began gently.
Balance exercises disguised as games. Silence praised as maturity. Observation rewarded more than curiosity.
She learned how to stand without swaying. How to listen without reacting. How to accept correction without flinching.
Praise was rare. Correction was constant.
The woman oversaw most of it.
"You are not fragile," she would say, adjusting Alexandra's stance. "Fragile things break. You will bend."
Sometimes Alexandra asked about the boy.
The woman smiled, pleasant and dismissive. "You don't need to concern yourself with him."
That answer never changed.
Luca — POV
Luca met Alexandra on a training floor that smelled like sweat and iron.
She was twelve. He was fifteen. He had been fast then—reckless, loud, certain of his own talent.
She disarmed him in under five seconds.
He hit the mat hard, staring up at the ceiling, stunned.
"She fights like she's already lost," he muttered.
No one laughed.
Alexandra offered him a hand. Her grip was steady. Strong.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
He took her hand.
That was how loyalty began.
That was also how it would eventually break.
Alexandra
At thirteen, she learned to shoot.
At fourteen, she learned when not to.
At fifteen, she learned how pain could be delayed if you trained your mind correctly.
Her father watched occasionally. Never intervened. Never corrected.
He watched her endure.
Once, after a particularly brutal assessment, she asked the question she had been holding for months.
"Why am I training like this?"
He regarded her in silence.
"Because one day," he said, "someone will need to believe you are capable of destroying everything."
She thought it was ambition.
She was wrong.
Andre
Andre was trained differently.
Strategy. Numbers. Appearances.
He learned how to inherit without bleeding.
Sometimes he saw Alexandra in passing—bruised, focused, distant.
He wondered what she was being prepared for.
He never imagined it was for him.
Alexandra
The truth did not arrive all at once.
It surfaced in patterns.
She was present when deals collapsed. Sent when operations failed. Her name appeared in places it shouldn't.
And each time, the woman would say, "Good. They're watching you."
"Who?" Alexandra asked once.
"The future," the woman replied.
The night Alexandra overheard the word adopted, she did not cry.
She sat very still.
Years later, she would understand the rest.
That her father had known the empire was already dying.
That bloodlines were liabilities when blame was assigned.
That Andre was not simply protected—he was preserved.
And that she had been brought in not to inherit—
—but to absorb the fall.
Alexandra woke with a sharp inhale, bitterness coating the back of her throat.
Not coffee.
Something older.
Something learned.
And far away, in a world that had not yet caught up to the truth, Andre was beginning to ask questions no one wanted answered.
The past had already chosen her.
And this time, it would not let her look away.