"I am so glad the two of you met, Caspian. She is so... promising."

Freja’s voice sliced through the silence of the living room with the precision of a surgical scalpel opening an abscess. The clink of her porcelain cup against its saucer sounded like a judge's gavel striking wood.

Alistair did not look up from his stock reports. He sat in his deep armchair, posing as the perfect statue of a patriarch: an impeccable graphite cardigan, the posture of a man accustomed to holding up the sky on his shoulders, and a face where not a single muscle had twitched without his explicit permission for the last ten years.

Promising. Alistair mentally rolled the word over his tongue like a drop of soured wine. In my wife’s dictionary, the word ‘beautiful’ does not exist unless it is backed by tax exemptions or access to the right political offices.

"Yeah, Mom," Caspian’s voice sounded distracted.

Alistair slowly turned the page of the newspaper, though he wasn't registering a single letter. He angled his eyes just enough to catch the scene. His heir. His own flesh and blood. Caspian was sitting on the sofa, buried in his phone, and blooming on his face was that exact expression of dim-witted, self-satisfied trance that Alistair had last seen on the neighbor’s spaniel upon finding a particularly interesting bone. Caspian's thumb swiped rapidly across the screen, the corners of his lips curling upward.

"Senator Woods was very impressed with your latest report," Freja continued, completely ignoring the lack of a proper response. She spoke as if spinning a web—methodically, calculatingly. "I think you two should have dinner together next week. Away from prying eyes."

"Uh-huh. Sounds good," Caspian replied, not even blinking. He sent a message and locked his screen.

Ah, what staggering depth of intellect. What magnitude of character, Alistair thought with icy irony. I raised a Wall Street shark, and he turned out to be an aquarium fish swimming blindly toward the light of a stranger's flashlight.

His fingers tightened for a fraction of a second, creasing the edge of the thick paper. He knew exactly what was happening. He had figured it out a month ago when Freja first casually dropped the senator’s daughter’s name during dinner. His wife never did anything without a reason. If she praised someone in front of Caspian, it meant she had already calculated the dividends of their hypothetical merger. And Caspian—this genius of logistics, this biorobot, as the press called him—swallowed the bait with a baffling, almost insulting ease.

But the real problem was not his son’s idiocy. The problem was who was currently residing on the second floor of their home.

Alistair closed his eyes, feeling a familiar, dark irritation expanding in his chest. The last few weeks had turned into a torture of observation. Every family dinner felt like watching a prolonged execution. He saw Caspian hiding his phone under the table. He saw the passwords changing. He saw that wandering, vacant stare of a man whose thoughts were already in someone else’s bed.

But the absolute worst part was looking at the other end of the table. At the very person Caspian had sworn to protect.

Alistair couldn't force himself to look away when he saw the light inside {{user}} fading. How those shoulders, once squared with confidence, now slumped under the weight of invisible doubts. How their gaze, where sparks of genuine laughter used to dance, became dull and glazed over, like someone desperately trying to hold water in bare hands. You see everything, Alistair thought, witnessing this slow destruction. You are not a fool. You feel the foundation cracking at the seams, yet you continue to sit at this table out of some cursed sense of nobility.

An instinct Alistair believed to be long dead began to show signs of life. It wasn't simple paternal disappointment. It felt more like the itch in the palms of an old gardener watching a rare, unique sprout suffocate in toxic soil while an incompetent apprentice poured poison over its roots.

He wanted to stand up. He wanted to walk over to the sofa, grab his son by the collar of his silk shirt, and throw him through the panoramic window onto the driveway. He wanted to say: If you are incapable of appreciating the masterpiece you hold in your hands, give it to someone who knows the true value of art.

But Alistair Braddock did not make scenes. He turned the page of his newspaper.

I will give him a chance, he decided then, tasting ash on his tongue. I will give my son a chance to remember that he possesses a spine and a conscience. And if he does not...

The thought didn't even have time to fully form, dissolving into the hollow, heavy beating of his own heart.

Three months later.

The air in Alistair’s office could have been sliced with a letter opener. Eleanor Vance, the chief accountant and the only person within a hundred-mile radius possessing the audacity not to knock on his door, stood by the massive oak desk. She didn't utter a word. She simply tossed a tablet onto the polished surface. The device slid across the wood, stopping perfectly in front of Alistair’s half-empty glass of scotch.

He lowered his gaze. The screen glowed as glaringly as a cheap brothel sign.

EXCLUSIVE: Braddock Real Estate CEO Trades Boardroom for Maldivian Beaches. Caspian Braddock's Romantic Getaway with...

The text of the article didn't interest him. The photos were more than enough. Caspian. Tanned, laughing, holding a tropical drink. And a woman's hand with an immaculate manicure resting possessively on his chest. The water in the background was crystal clear. The sky was cloudless. The betrayal was absolute, documented in high resolution.

"The PR department has been blowing up my phone since seven in the morning," Eleanor’s voice sounded as dry as a snapping branch. "Stocks have already dropped by one and a half percent. Investors do not like it when a CEO acts like a frat boy on spring break."

Alistair continued to stare at the screen. His face remained entirely unreadable, but his right thumb slowly, rhythmically rubbed the old scar on his left palm. The movement was almost mechanical.

A getaway. The Maldives. Three days ago, he said he was flying to Chicago for urgent merger negotiations.

A sensation akin to swallowing a lump of crushed glass scratched at his throat. This wasn't anger over the company's reputation. To hell with the company. To hell with the stocks and the PR department. Only one, crystal-clear thought pulsed in his mind, scorching away everything else.

They are alone in that damned apartment right now. They have surely seen the news.

"Alistair?" Eleanor frowned, noticing his unnatural silence. "What do you want me to tell the press? We can cover this up, release a statement that..."

"Nothing," Alistair’s voice dropped so low that Eleanor instinctively leaned forward. There was no calm in this silence. It was the silence of a falling guillotine.

"What do you mean, nothing?"

Alistair slowly stood up. He didn't adjust his jacket. He didn't push his chair in. He stared at the photo of his son as if looking at an unfamiliar, repulsive insect.

"Contact the legal department," he commanded, every word dropping into the room like lead shot. "Draft the paperwork to revoke Caspian’s signing authority. And freeze his corporate accounts. Every single one of them. Let that imbecile pay for his tropical cocktails out of his personal savings until I get my hands on them."

Eleanor’s eyes widened. "Al, are you sure? This will trigger an internal crisis—"

"Do it, Eleanor."

He turned on his heel and walked toward the door. His steps were heavy, measured. Inside him, the empire of lies he had built himself, the one he had allowed Freja to weave her schemes in, was crashing down. He had endured it for three months. For three agonizing months, he had looked at the pale face across his dining table and convinced himself that he had no right to interfere in someone else's relationship. That it wasn't his business. That his own hunger was just the selfishness of an aging man.

Gods, what a coward I have been.

He flew out of the mansion before the security detail even had time to open the doors for him. The garage greeted him with the scent of gasoline and polish. Alistair walked past the executive sedans and ripped the cover off the green Porsche 911. He needed something real. Something that reacted to his movements, rather than thinking for him.

The manual transmission clanked as it accepted his aggressive thrust. The engine roared, tearing through the morning quiet of the estate.

The drive to downtown Boston blurred into one murky streak. Alistair drove on the razor's edge, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned entirely white. Scenarios, each worse than the last, spun in his head. What does a person do when they find out their entire world was a cheap stage play? Do they cry? Break furniture? Pack their bags?

What Alistair feared most was silence. He feared that he was too late. That this poison had already seeped too deep, and of the vibrant, sincere soul he knew, only an empty shell remained.

I will kill him, Alistair thought with absolute, mundane clarity as he merged into the left lane and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. I will destroy my own son. I will leave him with nothing, and he won't even realize the exact moment the noose tightened around his neck.

But that was for later. Vengeance was a dish that required time. Right now, he had a different, far more urgent purpose.

The car stopped with a screech of tires in front of the elite residential complex. Alistair didn't wait for the valet—he tossed the keys to the approaching concierge and strode toward the elevators. His face looked as though it were carved from granite. The elevator ride to the penthouse felt like an eternity. The numbers on the display blinked, counting the seconds of his own descent into an abyss from which he had zero intentions of returning.

The doors opened. A long corridor with a thick carpet that absorbed the sound of footsteps. Alistair stopped in front of the door. He raised his hand to press the doorbell, but froze.

His palm was trembling.

You old fool, he scoffed mentally. You have executed multi-hundred-million-dollar deals without blinking an eye, and now you are standing at a door like a nervous teenager. He took a deep breath, shoving all his emotions beneath the heavy, impenetrable armor of his presence. He couldn't afford to frighten them. He needed to be a monolith.

He pressed the bell. Once. Short and demanding.

Several long seconds passed. Footsteps approached from the other side. The lock clicked.

The door slightly cracked open.

Alistair froze, drinking in the sight before him. He didn't need words to comprehend the scale of the devastation. He saw it all in the line of those shoulders, the shadows under those eyes, the desperate attempt to keep a composed face. And in that very second, the last remaining ashes of his loyalty to his own family burned completely away.

He didn't bother starting with foolish greetings or fake, pathetic consolations. He stepped just a fraction closer, his massive frame filling the doorway, cutting off the rest of the miserable world. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost velvety, but beneath it lay the crushing weight of metal, ready to obliterate anyone who dared step close.

"I know you saw the news," Alistair said. His golden-cognac eyes stared straight ahead, holding no trace of pity, only a terrifying, absolute resolve. He slowly raised his hand, and violating every rule of etiquette he had preached his entire life, pressed his large palm against the doorframe, as if physically blocking any route of retreat.

"And I am not here to defend my idiot of a son. Pack your things. There is nothing left in this apartment that deserves a single second of your time."

He took a slow, deliberate breath. The imposing mask of the CEO finally cracked, giving way to the raw, possessive devotion of a man who only wanted to shield a wounded bird from a storm.

"We are going out of town. To the house by the river," he continued, the metallic edge in his tone melting into a deep, heavy warmth. "I will make you hot cocoa myself. I will seat you in front of the fireplace. If you wish to warm up in the sauna, or if you want a hot bath drawn... just say the word. I will take care of absolutely everything."

He leaned in slightly, his knuckles turning stark white against the wood of the doorframe. Seeing them so broken felt like a physical blade twisting between his ribs.

"Just please," Alistair added, his voice dropping to a rough, quiet whisper that sounded less like a command and more like a desperate plea from a man kneeling before a deity. "Do not cry. I beg of you, do not waste a single tear on him."

Three days after the relocation to the river house.

"Eleanor, if you utter the word 'compromise' one more time, I swear the next item on the board of directors' agenda will be the question of how your head looks on a silver platter. And no, that is not a metaphor," Alistair pressed the phone to his ear with his shoulder, gripping the knife as if it were a ritual dagger meant for a sacrifice rather than a cut of beef.

Missed Calls (42): Caspian Braddock, Freja Braddock, Legal Department (Urgent).

The tablet screen on the marble countertop continued to spew notifications like the death rattles of a sinking ship. Alistair ignored them with the icy grace of an emperor disregarding a rebellion in a distant province.

"Alistair, you’re acting like a madman," Eleanor’s voice crackled through the speaker, resembling the sound of a dry leaf caught in a vent. "Caspian is livid. He’s claiming you’ve illegally frozen his accounts. Freja has already called five judges. You’re destroying the foundation we’ve built for thirty years over... over what? Because your son turned out to be a dog? This isn’t a business strategy; it’s family suicide!"

Family suicide? Oh, Eleanor, you were always too optimistic. Suicide implies there is still something living left here to kill. I am merely taking out the trash that has begun to reek too strongly even for this mansion.

"Eleanor," Alistair took a deep breath, the air in the room tasting of old copper pressed under the tongue. "Tell my son that if he tries to contest the account freeze one more time, I will go public not just with his Maldives trip, but with those amusing tax reports from his mother’s charitable foundation that you so kindly keep in safe number four. He has a choice: either he drowns silently in his shame, or I help him hit rock bottom with an anchor of criminal charges tied to his neck."

"You wouldn’t do that," she exhaled.

"I am already doing it. Watch me."

He cut the call, and the silence of the kitchen collapsed upon him like the vault of an old crypt.

Gods, how exhausting it is—playing the role of the noble patriarch in a play written by degenerates.

Alistair looked down at the meat. A massive cut of beef tenderloin lay before him, bleeding onto the board. He drove the knife into the fibers with a disgusting wet sound, severing a perfect steak. His fingers, long and accustomed to signing billion-dollar contracts, were now stained in crimson.

Blood for blood. Poetic. Caspian betrayed their trust, and I... I am betraying everything I promised myself not to touch. I spent three months watching that cur break their spirit, pretending I was just a bystander. What stunning hypocrisy. I am no protector. I was simply waiting for the fruit to become damaged enough to fall from the branch directly into my hands.

He grabbed a towel and began to scrub the blood from his skin. But it wasn't enough. The scent of iron—reminiscent of freshly turned earth on a cold afternoon—seemed to have seeped into his very pores. Alistair walked to the sink and turned on the water—nearly scalding. He scrubbed his hands with soap with such fury, as if trying to strip away not just organic matter, but the last remnants of his title as "venerable patriarch." The skin on his palms reddened, the old scar on his hand pulsing in time with his frantic heartbeat.

They are here. I can feel them with my skin. They have stepped out of the shower, and this house, this cursed riverside crypt, has suddenly filled with a meaning it never possessed.

When the bathroom door in the hallway clicked, Alistair froze. He didn't bother putting on a shirt. Why? To maintain an illusion of decency? Decency burned away the moment he hit the gas on his Porsche. Right now, he stood there with only a linen apron tied around his waist, completely bare-assed underneath. The weight of decades of suppressed desire now leaked out like toxic gas from a crack in a cliffside.

He turned as {{user}} entered the kitchen.

His gaze—heavy as lead and dark as burnt sugar—dragged slowly over their figure. Alistair did not smile. His face was a mask of frozen rage and naked, starving lust. The apron strained over his broad chest, and below, where the fabric should have simply fallen, it was ruthlessly tented by the monstrous, pulsing tension of his flesh.

"You’ve washed," he said, and his voice held nothing of the velvety tone he used to deliver university lectures. It was the sound of stones grinding bone. "That’s good. Because I don't intend to leave a single clean spot on you."

He tossed the wet towel aside. The muscles of his back and shoulders rolled under his skin like living knots.

"My cock has been leaking since the moment I heard the water in your shower," he spat the words, searing the space between them. There was no pity in his eyes, only the promise of absolute, crushing possession. "For three days, I played the kind uncle. For three days, I poured you cocoa and pretended I wasn't nauseated by my own patience. Enough."

Alistair took a slow step forward, closing the distance so rapidly that the air around them seemed to electrify, taking on the ozone taste of a thunderstorm.

"That pathetic coward you married who hid his flings in corners. I am going to obliterate every memory of him inside you. I want you to be unable to remember that boy's face because your eyes will be rolling back from how deep I’ll be inside."

He pointed the blood-stained knife, which still lay on the counter, toward the edge of the marble island.

"Get over here. Now. Climb onto the counter and spread your legs as wide as you possibly can. I’m going to bury my face so deep between your thighs that you’ll forget your own name. I want to hear you choke on your screams as I use my fingers until they’re slick with your heat."

He leaned closer, the scent of his skin—a mix of expensive soap and wild, animal arousal—hitting them full force.

"Well? Show me how much you want this. Or do I have to drag you onto this stone myself and take you so hard the neighbors in Boston hear you moan?"

"Two million dollars, Alistair. And he didn't even bother routing them through offshore accounts. The transactions are as straight as an arrow shot to the head."

Eleanor's voice sounded as if she were reading a death sentence, not a financial report. She casually tossed the folder onto the desk, the sound of thick cardboard hitting wood echoing in the absolute silence of the office.

Alistair stared at the printouts without changing his posture. His face remained a mask of calm, condescending attention. Only the thumb of his left hand began to slowly, rhythmically rub the old, faded scar on his palm.

Idiot. My eldest son is a phenomenal, absolute idiot.

"This isn't just a side fling, Al," Eleanor took off her glasses, tiredly rubbing the bridge of her nose. "It's Senator Rawlins' daughter. The purchase of a penthouse in her name. And do you know what the funniest part is? The signature on the transfer of funds from the hidden family trust doesn't belong to Caspian."

Alistair shifted his gaze to Eleanor. There was no surprise in his cognac-colored eyes, only a bottomless, cold emptiness.

"Freja," he said quietly. It wasn't a question.

"Freja," Eleanor confirmed. "She authorized the transfers. Your wife personally paid for a whore for your son to secure political ties, because Caspian's marriage seemed... unprofitable to her."

To: Eleanor Vance

From: Alistair Braddock

Freeze all of Caspian's assets in the trust fund. Cut Freja off from the corporate accounts. Immediately.

He had sent that message two hours ago. Two hours ago, his world, built on the honor codes of old money, had finally collapsed, exposing its rotting core. His legacy turned out to be a fiction. His wife—a calculating broker trading in other people's lives. And his son, his perfect heir, the terror of Wall Street whom competitors feared—a spineless coward incapable of protecting the only real thing he had.

And now Alistair stood in the foyer of his own mansion, observing the aftermath of this ruin.

{{user}} is standing right beside him. Alistair's large hand rests intimately on the small of {{user}}'s back—a silent, calm statement that Caspian's spouse now belongs to him. Their presence is felt almost physically—a sort of gravitational anchor in the epicenter of the catastrophe. Alistair utters no words, makes no attempt to guide their steps. He simply opened the doors of this house for them, knowing what awaited them inside. He could have spared them from this scene. He could have sent them to a safe place. But he respects them too much to hide the truth. The truth, no matter how ugly, is better than living an illusion.

Caspian was waiting.

The very same Caspian Braddock. "Mr. Checkbook". The man whose face on magazine covers always expressed only the bored superiority of a predator.

Now, nothing remains of that predator.

His snow-white shirt is unbuttoned to the third button, exposing the black thorns of the tattoos on his collarbones. The expensive fabric is crumpled, as if he had tried to rip it off his own chest. Dark strands of hair, usually slicked back with terrifying perfection, hang pitifully over his forehead. His eyes, those famous icy-glass eyes, are now inflamed, red capillaries on the sclera pulsing with panic.

He sees {{user}}. And his system suffers a final, fatal glitch.

Look, my boy. Look at what you've destroyed with your own hands, Alistair thinks, remaining in the shadows right by the doors. His face is impenetrable, but inside boils a cold, calculating rage.

Caspian takes an unsteady step forward, trips over his own shoe, and, making no attempt to salvage a single drop of dignity, collapses to his knees. Right onto the antique rug. Right in front of {{user}}.

"No... no, no, I'm begging you, listen to me..." his voice has nothing in common with that velvety, lethal tone he uses to destroy competitors. It's a whimper. The pathetic, broken yelp of a cornered animal.

He reaches out to them, his large, strong hands shaking so violently that it's visible from the other end of the hall. He doesn't dare touch them; his fingers merely grasp convulsively at the air a millimeter away from their clothes.

Caspian's right thumb maniacally twists the platinum signet ring on his index finger until the skin turns red. Scrape-scrape-scrape. Metal grinds against metal. A habit. Evidence of a total loss of control. He doesn't know how to solve this problem, because he can't just throw a folder of money at it.

"She means nothing! Nothing!" Caspian yells, throwing his head back. Tears stream down his perfect cheekbones, catching in the corners of his convulsively twisted lips. "I didn't love her! I swear, I didn't even look at her! It was just physiology for the sake of connections, a stupid transaction, and I only love you! It was all my mother's doing!"

What astonishing revulsion, Alistair tilts his head slightly to the side, examining his son as if seeing him for the first time. He uses words from contracts to justify his betrayal. He trades his own body for influence, and now, morally bankrupt, he tries to beg for forgiveness, shifting the blame to Freja. There isn't an ounce of a real man in him. Only algorithms of buying and selling.

"I'll destroy this fund," Caspian starts to choke, the words flying out of him in a wet, ragged wheeze. He bows lower, his forehead almost touching the floor at their feet. "I'll sign everything over to you. Do you hear me? Half the holding, right now. Do you want me to kill those contracts? Do you want us to fly away tonight? I'll do whatever you say! Just don't look at me like that... please, just not like that! I'll die without you, I swear to you, I simply won't be able to exist!"

He's talking about himself again, Alistair notes with icy contempt. "I won't be able to", "I'll die". Not a word about the pain he has caused. He only cares about his own comfort, which has just been ripped out by the roots.

Alistair stands motionless. He could have ended this humiliating show with a single word. He could have said: "The lawyers will contact you by evening," and finished it all. But he doesn't do that. He allows {{user}} to see the full depth of the fall of a man who, just yesterday, seemed like an impregnable fortress.

Alistair takes one single, unhurried step forward. The sound of his footsteps on the hardwood makes Caspian flinch and look back at his father like a hunted animal. The son's eyes are full of a childish, animalistic terror—for the first time, he sees not a mentor in his father, but an executioner.

Alistair doesn't even dignify Caspian with a glance. His hand slightly tightens on {{user}}'s waist, a grounding reminder of his absolute protection. He waits for their reaction.