The seconds that passed between Leo's entrance and his spotting Kian holding the sketchbook stretched into an eternity. Kian stood frozen, but inside, he was coiled tight, ready to spring. He was prepared for the explosion, for the anger, for the inevitable confrontation that would finally restore order to this chaotic universe. He had his logic primed, his arguments set, ready to unleash a barrage of irrefutable accusations.
But Leo's reaction was nothing he could have ever computed.
Leo looked at Kian, then at the sketchbook in his hand, then back at Kian. Then, instead of anything rational, his mouth fell open in a fabricated gasp, the back of his hand flying to his forehead in a move of pure, overwrought melodrama.
"Oh my God!" he shrieked, his voice carrying the dramatic weight of a stage actor in his final scene. "A thief! A handsome thief has broken into my room!"
Kian felt his brain stutter, a critical system error flashing behind his eyes. He was prepared for screaming, for accusations, even for tears. He was not prepared for this... this performance. "What? Keep your voice down! What the hell are you talking about?"
Leo ignored him completely, placing a hand over his heart as his eyes swept the room as if assessing the damage. "I can't believe it! In broad daylight! And here I thought this was a safe neighborhood. What a world we live in." He continued his play, circling Kian with slow, deliberate steps, looking him up and down with a critical eye. "I must admit, you have excellent taste in victims. And even better taste in clothes." He gestured to Kian's crisp, formal shirt. "Are you some kind of aristocratic cat burglar? A specialized jewel thief?"
"Leo, stop this madness, right now," Kian said, his voice firm as he tried to wrestle back some semblance of control, but a frantic edge was creeping into his tone.
"Shhh!" Leo whispered, pressing a finger to his lips as he moved dangerously close. "Don't tell me your real name; it ruins the mystery. Let me guess." He began to stalk around him like a predator toying with its prey. "You're 'The Night Phantom,' aren't you? Stealer of hearts and rare artifacts. I've heard stories about you in the city's dark alleyways."
Kian was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown. This person wasn't playing his game; he was playing in a parallel universe with an entirely different set of physics. There was no logic to counter. In a move of pure desperation, driven by the primal need to make it all stop, Kian shoved the sketchbook forward as if it were a cross against a vampire.
"Leo! This!" he hissed, jabbing a finger at the faded letters, 'K + L.' "I know everything! The game is over!"
And for a single, fleeting moment, Leo stopped moving. He froze, his gaze dropping to the book, then lifting to meet Kian's. The theatrics fell away from his face. A flicker of something real, something vulnerable, something that looked an awful lot like the little boy who'd made those drawings, surfaced in his eyes. It was the moment Kian had been waiting for—the moment of truth and clarity.
But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, as if it had never been there at all.
The bright, infuriating smile snapped back into place. He tilted his head to the side, his tone dripping with an innocence so fake it was insulting.
"You know? That I have a prodigious talent for drawing that I discovered in my childhood?" he asked. "I'm so glad you noticed. Would you like an autograph? It might be valuable someday."
Kian stared, his mouth slightly agape.
He had confronted him with irrefutable proof, with their shared past, with the very foundation of this entire charade. And his response was to offer him an autograph?
That was the moment something inside Kian broke. Not his heart, not his pride, but the core processing unit of his brain. He surrendered. You couldn't win a game you didn't understand, especially when your opponent kept rewriting the rules every thirty seconds.
Without another word, Kian slowly lowered his hand. He turned his back on Leo—who was still beaming victoriously—and walked out of the room with the mechanical steps of an automaton. He strode down the hall, past the living room, and opened the door to his office—his sanctuary, his fortress. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, the soft click of the lock a one-sided declaration of a ceasefire.
He sat down in his leather chair, in the dark, staring at the three black monitors that reflected his own pale image.
He didn't feel weak. He felt... astounded.
He had spent his entire life building walls of logic and order to protect himself from the world's chaos. And now, Chaos hadn't just breached his fortress; it wore thigh-high socks, smelled faintly of vanilla, and wielded sarcasm as a weapon of mass destruction.
The possessive lust he felt for Leo was still there, but it was now agonizingly complex. It was tangled with a bitter admiration for his chaotic genius and a white-hot anger at his ability to dismantle him piece by piece with nothing but a smile.
A terrifying reality dawned on Kian.
He hadn't hired Leo for a year. Leo had just staged a hostile takeover of his entire existence. The game wasn't over; it had just begun. And he had no fucking clue how to play.