Richard Bellamy stood at the tall windows of his estate study, a glass of scotch in hand. The gardens stretched below, symmetrical and immaculate, but he saw none of it. His reflection in the glass stared back at him—older, silver creeping into his hair, eyes sharper than he wanted them to be.
His daughter didn't understand him. Perhaps she never would. Claire thought he lived for empire, for control, for the endless expansion of the Bellamy fortune. She thought he was stone because she had only ever seen him behind walls.
She never saw the nights he sat by Eleanor's bed, watching the woman he loved dissolve piece by piece.
Eleanor Bellamy. The name itself was still a wound. She had been all grace and laughter, with a voice that could soften Richard's hardest moods. Cancer had taken her slow, cruelly, stripping away years in months. Richard had built the walls higher after that, because the world had proved it could not be trusted. Wealth became shield, empire became fortress.
Claire was twelve. Old enough to remember, young enough to believe he had abandoned her to grief. He hadn't known how to speak to her then. He still didn't. She carried her mother's strength, but none of Eleanor's warmth. That warmth had been buried with her.
Richard sipped the scotch, the burn in his throat reminding him he was still alive.
Arthur Caldwell had once told him: "If you let grief harden you, you'll bury yourself before the ground does."
Richard smirked faintly. Arthur had been right, of course. He usually was. Arthur had been mentor, critic, even father when Richard's own had been absent. He had taught him to think beyond profit, to see people as more than pawns. Richard had tried. God, he had tried. But the world rewarded ruthlessness, not sentiment. And so, he became what the world demanded.
Now Arthur had sent him another boy.
Michael Rivers. Pale, haunted eyes, but burning with something Richard recognized instantly—the hunger. The same restless, unrelenting fire Richard once carried. But this one was different. This one didn't build walls. He burned without restraint.
Richard set the glass down, his jaw tightening.
"Another dreamer, Arthur," he murmured. "And you ask me to risk my kingdom on him."
But he couldn't dismiss it, not completely. The prototype Claire described had been real. Fragile, unstable, but real. And that meant Michael wasn't just another dreamer scribbling castles in the sky. He was a man clawing at the gates of heaven with bloody hands.
Richard turned from the window, his silhouette sharp against the firelight.
Perhaps this boy would destroy himself. Perhaps he would burn everyone near him. But there was also the smallest chance—just enough to matter—that he might succeed. And if he did…
For the first time in years, Richard Bellamy felt the old stirring in his chest. The dangerous mix of fear and awe he had felt as a young man, sitting at Arthur's table, hearing impossible ideas spoken like prophecy.
Arthur had been right about him once. Maybe, just maybe, he was right again.
Richard lifted his glass, staring into the amber glow. For a moment, he saw Eleanor's face reflected there—the woman he had loved, the woman Claire barely remembered, the wound that had never healed.
"To Eleanor. To Arthur. To fire."
He drank, the burn cutting deep, and when he lowered the glass his voice was softer, almost reverent.
"Sophocles said it best—Σοφός ὁ παθών. Wisdom comes through suffering."
Richard's eyes lingered on the dying fire in the hearth, the shadows it cast against the walls.
"God help the boy," he whispered, "if that is true."