Gio left Arianne’s office and didn’t return to his desk for a long time.

He walked the corridors of Rochefort Group instead, his tablet tucked under his arm, his face arranged into the neutral expression he’d perfected over years of practice. No one stopped him. No one asked if he was all right, and that was how he preferred it.

How long do you plan to torture yourself?

Her voice followed him down the hallway. Through the elevator. Into the lobby where the receptionist nodded at him and he nodded back. He understood what she’d meant. He wasn’t oblivious. He knew exactly what he’d been doing for eight years. He knew exactly why.

He just hadn’t expected her to say it aloud.

Evening found him in the south wing of the estate.

The main house was quiet. The twins were already asleep — Lily with Petal, Leo with the Lion and the whale. Arianne was upstairs. Franz had already departed that morning. Gio had passed through the kitchen briefly, exchanged a few words with Aunt Estella, and retreated to his own quarters.

His room was sparse. Functional. A desk with a laptop and a second monitor. A shelf of books he’d actually read. A bed with a plain gray cover. A window that looked out onto the garden’s south corner, where the hedges were trimmed. He’d lived here for over a year now, since Arianne had taken over Rochefort Group and needed him close.

Before that, he’d lived in a manor with Arianne and Aunt Estella in the city. Before that, a dorm room abroad. Before that, a series of places that were never really home.

He sat at his desk and opened his laptop. The quarterly assessments were waiting. He should work. He didn’t.

Instead, he thought about being ten years old.

His mother had died when he was young. Gio barely remembered her face. What he remembered was her absence, and the three older boys who filled it.

His half-brothers. Her sons from before. They were older than him — teenagers by the time he was old enough to understand what was happening. They hated him. He was the proof of their mother’s infidelity, the child of a man who wasn’t their father. They made sure he knew it. Every day. With fists and harsh words. With the particular cruelty of boys who’d been given someone weaker to torment.

He learned to be invisible and to be quiet. To never ask for anything. He learned to read the temperature of a room the moment he entered it, to make himself so small and so useful that no one would have a reason to hurt him. He was ten years old and already a strategist.

When Gabriel Summers died, there was no one left to protect him, not that his father ever cared about him in the first place. His half-brothers escalated. The bruises got worse. He stopped going to school because he couldn’t explain the marks.

And then Arianne appeared.

She was thirteen. Three years older than him, but she carried herself like someone who’d already lived through everything the world could throw at her and survived. She’d just lost both her parents. Her father was dead. Her mother was dead. She should have been drowning in grief. Instead, she walked into that house, looked at him — this illegitimate half-brother, this boy with bruises he couldn’t explain — and said: "You’re coming with me."

He assumed it was pity. He was pitiful. A beaten dog. A burden. Someone she’d taken in out of obligation or charity or guilt over their shared blood. He was grateful, but didn’t trust it. Pity didn’t last. Pity turned into resentment when the burden became too heavy. He’d learned that from his half-brothers.

But Arianne didn’t resent him. She didn’t look at him like a burden. She looked at him like she recognized something.

It took him years to understand what it was.

She saw herself in him.

She was the legitimate child. The heiress. The one who should have been wanted. But she wasn’t. Her father had named her after his dead lover. Her mother’s last words had been a curse. The family had sent her away. She was unwanted too. Unloved too. She knew what it felt like to be a blemish in someone else’s lineage, a reminder of sins you didn’t commit.

She didn’t take him in because she pitied him. She took him in because she recognized him. The way you recognize someone who’s been through the same fire.

He understood his position. He’d always understood it.

For the Summers family, he was the proof of Gabriel Summers’ infidelity to Ysabella. The living evidence of their father’s betrayal. They looked at him and saw his mother.

For the Conways, he was a poor child who shouldn’t have been born. His existence next to Arianne — their legitimate heiress — was a blemish that couldn’t be removed. When they visited the Conway estate, he was tolerated but never welcomed. Joyce was kind. Yosef was silent. Evelyn looked at him like she was calculating his usefulness.

He accepted this. He never expected more. He was grateful to Arianne for giving him a home, a purpose, a place to belong. He would never cause her trouble. He would never give anyone reason to question her decision to take him in.

So he made rules for himself.

He listened to Arianne and Aunt Estella. He never talked back. He never complained. He never got involved in fights, despite being repeatedly mocked for being a mistress’s child. "Bastard." "Illegitimate." "Your mother was a whore." He heard it all. He absorbed it. He said nothing.

The only line he drew was Arianne.

They could say whatever they wanted about him. He would not let them say a word against her.

It happened once during high school.

He was sixteen. Arianne was nineteen, studying abroad. A group of boys cornered him after class. They knew who he was. They knew who his sister was. They’d been drinking — he could smell it on their breath.

"Your sister," one of them said. "The Summers heiress. I’ve seen her picture. She’s hot."

Gio’s hands clenched at his sides.

"I hear she’s ice cold, though. She probably needs someone to warm her up. Maybe I’ll—"

Gio didn’t remember the rest of the words. He didn’t remember deciding to swing. What he remembered was the impact of his fist against the boy’s face. The crunch of cartilage. The spray of blood. The way the other two tried to pull him off and he turned on them instead.

When it was over, one boy had a broken arm. Another had a concussion. The third had fled. Gio had a split lip, bruised knuckles, and the cold certainty that he’d just caused Arianne an enormous amount of trouble.

He was right. The parents demanded compensation. They threatened to press charges. Arianne, as his legal guardian, had to fly back from overseas to deal with it.

He sat in the principal’s office, his hands wrapped in bandages, and couldn’t meet her eyes.

She walked in. She didn’t yell or lecture. She looked at his split lip, his bruised cheek, the bandages on his knuckles.

"Did you beat him enough?"

He blinked. "What?"

"The one who started it. Did you beat him enough to exert your frustration?"

He stared at her. This was not what he’d expected. He’d expected fury. Disappointment. A lecture about responsibility and restraint and the cost of his actions. Instead, she was asking him if he’d hit the boy hard enough to feel better. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

"I didn’t mean to break his arm," he said. His voice came out rough. "I only wanted him to stop. He was saying things about you. Terrible things. I couldn’t—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I couldn’t let him."

"Some stupid people need a good beating to stop spouting nonsense," Arianne said. "If he needed one, he needed one."

"But his arm—"

"Will heal." She sat down across from him. "Gio. Look at me."

He raised his eyes. She was nineteen years old, and she looked at him with the same steady, unblinking gaze she’d had at thirteen, when she’d walked into that house and told him he was coming with her.

"You don’t need to react to what others think of me. Especially strangers who know nothing about me. Their words can’t touch me. They don’t matter." She paused. "But more importantly — you can’t stay under my shadow forever. You need to find the path you want to pursue. Your own path. Not mine."

"I don’t understand."

"You can be selfish. For this one thing. Whatever it is you want to do with your life — I’ll support you. You don’t owe me your future."

Gio didn’t know what to say. No one had ever told him he could be selfish. No one had ever suggested he deserved something of his own. He’d spent his entire life trying to be invisible, trying to be useful, trying to be anything other than the burden his half-brothers had convinced him he was.

Arianne stood. "We’re done here. The parents have been paid. The boy’s arm will heal. Don’t do it again unless it’s necessary."

"And if it’s necessary?"

She paused at the door. Glanced back at him.

"Then make sure you win."