The agonizing cries of a woman echoed through the quiet halls of an old but dignified mansion. The once-proud Cole estate, with its marble columns and polished chandeliers, felt heavy that night—like it was mourning even as new life entered it.
Clara Cole gripped the sheets so tightly her knuckles turned white. Sweat drenched her pale skin, her auburn hair plastered to her face. She had always been the jewel of her family—educated, graceful, admired by men who measured her worth not by her mind but by the weight of her father's fortune.
But fortune had teeth, and Clara had learned that too late.
Her son's first cries split the night, strong and fierce. Clara's tired eyes filled with tears as she pulled the tiny boy to her chest. His fists were clenched, his cry more like a roar than a wail.
"A fighter," the midwife murmured. "He'll be a fighter."
Clara smiled weakly, then her face crumpled. Because she knew. She knew what blood ran in her son's veins.
Not the blood of her first love. Not the blood of the kind young man her family had promised her to.
No. Her son carried the blood of Edward Sterling, heir to the powerful Sterling dynasty—a man who had taken her in the dark of a gala night when her own father, weak and terrified of the Sterlings' influence, could do nothing.
The scandal was buried under carpets of money and threats. Clara's engagement shattered. Her family's allies turned their backs.Richard happed to witness by chance and tried to speak up because of his love for Clara but Maggie and her husband Edmund refused. "You are our heir and we can't lose you, saying what you witnessed is like signing your death warrant." Maggie implored. "But mother I can't just watch her suffer like this, it's not fair" Richard insists but it didn't help because by three days, the Morgans moved to another city for fear of what might hapoen and so Investments bled away but Richard swore to build and get justice for the woman he loves. Overnight, the Coles—once proud, once powerful—were cast out into obscurity.
And Clara, once the golden daughter, was left with nothing but shame… and the small boy now cradled in her arms.
She whispered his name with trembling lips.
"Adrian."
---
Years rolled by, and the grand mansion became a memory. Clara and her family lived in a modest house at the edge of Belmont City. She worked odd jobs—scrubbing, teaching, mending clothes—anything to keep food on the table.
Adrian grew tall, dark-haired like his mother, with storm-grey eyes that seemed too serious for his age. Even as a boy, he noticed how men looked at his mother with contempt, how women whispered behind her back. He noticed how she stiffened whenever the news mentioned the Sterling family.
One afternoon, as a gang of boys mocked him for not having a father, Adrian's fist connected with the biggest one's nose. The crack echoed, blood gushed, and Adrian stood over him breathing hard, daring anyone else to speak.
When he got home, Clara scolded him half-heartedly, pressing a cloth to his bruised knuckles. "You'll get yourself killed one day with that temper."
Adrian smirked, his lip split. "Then I'll take them with me."
Clara almost laughed but bit it back. He reminded her too much of the man she hated.
And yet, as she looked at her son's burning eyes, she saw something else—resolve.
"Promise me something, Adrian," she whispered.
"What?"
"That you'll never let anyone use you the way they used me."
Adrian's jaw tightened. "I won't. I'll make them all regret it. Every last one who looked down on us."
He said it with the certainty of a vow, his voice too deep for a boy.
---
By the time Adrian was sixteen, he worked two jobs and studied late into the night, every page of his books burning like fuel. He didn't have polish, but he had hunger. He fixed bikes, carried bricks at construction sites, delivered newspapers—anything to scrape together coins.
Yiy
One evening, his mother walked into the kitchen to find him asleep at the table, a finance book open beneath his cheek. His pencil had rolled to the floor, and he was still in his work boots.
Clara sighed, covering him with a blanket. "You'll burn yourself out."
But when he stirred, mumbling, "I'll be powerful… no one will touch you again," her chest ached with both pride and sorrow.
She stroked his hair and whispered, "Oh Adrian… just don't lose yourself while you fight the world."
---
Humor still found its way into their modest lives.
Like the time Clara's washing line snapped and sent all their clothes tumbling into the neighbor's yard. Adrian, barely twelve, scrambled to gather them while the neighbor's dog—a massive, drooling mastiff—decided Adrian was the best new chew toy.
He returned with muddy trousers, one missing shoe, and his mother's undergarments draped over his head like a crown. Clara had laughed so hard she cried, while Adrian grumbled, "Royalty looks good on me, doesn't it?"
And she had ruffled his hair and said, "One day, maybe it really will."
Adrian had tucked those words into his heart like a prophecy.
---
But behind the laughter, behind the small joys, Clara never forgot the dark shadows that had stolen her life. The Sterlings. Edward Sterling.
And Adrian, though she tried to shield him from it, learned enough.
He promised himself: one day, he would rise so high that not even the Sterlings could touch him.
And when that day came, he would make them bow, so he built and built until he became the most sort after man in the city. He struggled and saved but he had also gotten a push from the shadows. He will repair this kindness when the time comes because he is not one to owe.
Adrian has turned to the man everyone wants to invite to their party, with hopes of gaining favour, even with all his mistery and that is the same invite that brought him and Melissa together.