(Adrian's POV)
The estate loomed against the night sky as I drove through the gates. Tall iron bars closed behind me with their usual mechanical groan, sealing me back into the world I'd been born into.
Home.
If I could even call it that.
The empire my family built stood proud and unshaken — endless wings of polished stone, marble floors that gleamed under chandeliers, portraits of ancestors staring down from gilded frames as if daring me to be more than I already was. To outsiders, this was power. Wealth. Security. To me, it was a cage I'd been trained never to rattle.
And yet tonight, my mind wasn't on the empire. It wasn't on the board meetings waiting for me, the endless lectures from my father, the polished venom in my mother's voice.
It was on her.
On the girl I'd pulled off the streets, the one who called herself Lia.
I set the keys on the table in the grand hall and moved through the familiar rooms, but every step felt restless. I couldn't shake the image of her standing stiffly in that oversized coat, eyes wide at the market, trying so hard to look ordinary when nothing about her was.
Who was she, really?
There was something in her silence, something in the way her gaze sharpened when she thought no one was watching. Most people I helped never lasted this long — they were either too broken to fight or too proud to accept it. But Lia… she was neither. She was hiding. From what, I didn't know.
I should've kept my distance. That had always been the rule. Train them, get them steady, send them on their way. No attachments. No questions.
But the more time I spent with her, the more she unsettled me. She carried her pain like a second skin, stitched into every movement, every breath. And when she laughed — that small, surprised sound that slipped out in the market — it had punched straight through the walls I'd built around myself.
I poured myself a drink in my father's study, the amber liquid catching the dim light. It burned on the way down, but not enough to drown the thoughts circling my head.
Why did I care?
Why couldn't I stop thinking about her?
I leaned back in the leather chair, running a hand through my hair. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the way she gripped the gun like she wanted to master it faster than I could teach her. Or maybe it was the way her eyes sometimes looked — dark, haunted, too old for someone her age.
Too old, and yet… not honest.
She was lying to me. I knew it. Not directly, not in words, but in the careful way she dodged questions. The false ease she forced into her voice. She had told me her name was Lia, but it didn't fit. It felt borrowed, like a costume she hadn't had time to tailor.
And still, despite the lies, I found myself… protective of her.
Dangerous.
That word echoed in my mind.
The glass of whiskey burned on its way down, but it did little to quiet my mind.
No matter how I tried, my thoughts circled back to her. To Lia.
Her name lingered like a puzzle on my tongue, one I wasn't entirely convinced belonged to her. She carried herself with a shadow that didn't fit the story she told me — an orphan with nowhere else to go. The way her hands trembled when I first handed her a gun, only for that tremor to vanish the moment she pulled the trigger. The way her eyes darkened whenever violence came up, as if she wasn't just familiar with it… but shaped by it.
Seventeen, she'd said. Alone, she'd said. But there were too many cracks in her words, and I found myself staring into them, searching for the truth she clearly didn't want me to know.
I leaned back in the leather chair, running a hand through my hair. Damn it. I had brought her in out of curiosity — a girl lost and broken on the street. I told myself it was pity, maybe even a sense of responsibility. But it wasn't that simple anymore.
There was something magnetic about her silence. Something sharp in the way she watched the world, like she was always calculating. And in her eyes, I saw a story I hadn't earned the right to read.
I hated how much I wanted to.
"Adrian."
The voice snapped me from my thoughts. My father stood in the doorway, his presence filling the study like a stormcloud. Dressed sharp as always, not a strand of silver hair out of place, his eyes cut through me the way they always had.
"You've been gone longer than expected," he said, his tone clipped. "I trust your… extracurricular projects haven't interfered with your duties?"
I set the glass down, forcing my face into neutrality. "Of course not."
He studied me, searching for cracks. My father never asked questions he didn't already know the answer to. That was the danger of this house — secrets didn't stay buried for long.
Then his tone shifted, lower, colder.
"You recall Nathaniel Kors?"
I nodded faintly. Kors — one of my father's so-called allies, a man with wealth and reach of his own.
"He's finished," my father said flatly. "Weeks ago, the Veynar syndicate moved against him. Tore his empire apart piece by piece. You didn't hear of it because I had no interest in dragging you into the details, but let it serve as a warning. Even the powerful fall when they grow careless."
The words sank in, sharp as glass. I knew the Veynar name — everyone in our world did. Ruthless, efficient, merciless.
"They burned everything he built," my father added, his expression unreadable. "His family's assets stripped, his name erased. That is the price of weakness. Remember that."
He turned toward the door but paused just long enough to deliver the final blow.
"You remember where your loyalties lie."
And then he was gone, his footsteps fading into the cavernous hall.
I sat frozen, glass still in my hand.
Kors, gone. His family scattered. Destroyed not by incompetence, but by a predator no one could stop.
And for some reason, it wasn't Kors's ruined empire I kept picturing.
It was Lia.
Her hollow eyes. The grief stitched into every breath she took. The way she clutched a gun as though vengeance itself kept her alive.
Was it possible she'd been a victim of the same merciless hand?
I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees, unable to shake the thought. Maybe her lies weren't just about survival.
Maybe they were about revenge.
And against all reason, I wanted to know.