The words echoed in the small room, a primal, possessive declaration that silenced everyone.
In the ringing silence that followed, Leo took a step forward.
He looked up at the giant who was his father, his small body trembling, but his voice was clear and steady, filled with a devastating, five-year-old's logic.
"We're not yours," he said. "We're Mom's."
He then turned, took his sister's hand, and led her out of the room, leaving the adults and the broken fragments of a fledgling connection behind.
The slamming of the children's bedroom door was a gunshot in the heavy silence. It severed the last, frayed thread of civility.
Lysander stood rigid, his jaw a hard line of stone. He looked from the empty space where his children had vanished to Evie's tear-streaked, furious face.
He had seen complex equations simplify before, but never with such brutal, final clarity. He had been reduced to a variable in an instant, and the answer was not in his favor.
"You see?" Evie whispered, the words raw and scraped out. "You see what you've done?"
Maya found her voice, moving to stand beside Evie like a shield. "I think you should leave."
Sebastian, who had observed the entire exchange with the detached focus of a strategist, shifted his weight slightly by the door, his gaze fixed on his employer, awaiting the command.
Lysander didn't look at Maya. His eyes were locked on Evie. The confusion and the brief, shining wonder were gone, burned away by a cold, familiar fury. But this time, it wasn't directed at her.
It was turned inward, a corrosive anger at his own miscalculation. He had approached this like a hostile takeover, and he had lost the vote.
"The threat from the press is real," he said, his voice dangerously low, an attempt to reassert logic into the emotional wreckage.
"I don't care!" Evie shot back, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Let them come! They can take pictures of the hydrangeas! We are not leaving our home because you're afraid of a bad headline."
"It's not about headlines!" The control in his voice finally cracked, a fissure of pure, unvarnished frustration.
"It's about a photographer shoving a lens in Luna's face! It's about a reporter cornering Leo on his way to the damn park! You think this is a game? You have no idea what's coming."
"And you do?" she challenged, stepping closer, her small frame vibrating with defiance.
"You think locking us away in a fortress is the answer? That's your answer to everything, isn't it? Higher walls.
Tighter controls. Well, you can't control this, Lysander. You can't put my children in a vault!"
He stared at her, at the fierce, maternal fire in her eyes, and for a split second, he saw the ghost of the art student who had dared to challenge him on that rooftop.
The one who hadn't been afraid of him. The one he had lost.
The memory disarmed him. The fury bled out of him, leaving behind a hollow, weary shell. He had handled this wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
He could see that now. He had seen the way Leo looked at the block bridge with pride, with ownership.
He had seen the way Luna touched his watch with curiosity, not avarice. This wasn't a balance sheet. This was an ecosystem, delicate and already in turmoil from his arrival.
He took a step back, the fight draining from his posture. He ran a hand over his face, the stubble rough against his palm.
"Fine," he said, the word a surrender that cost him dearly.
Evie blinked, thrown by the sudden shift. "What?"
"You will not be moved." He looked toward the hallway where the children had disappeared, his expression unreadable. "But the security stays."
"Lysander…"
"That is not negotiable," he interrupted, his voice regaining a sliver of its steel. "You can hate me. You can bar me from this house. But you will allow the men outside to do their job.
They are the only thing that will stand between this… this life you've built, and the chaos I have inadvertently brought to your door." He met her gaze, and the intensity there was not a command, but a plea. "Grant me this, Evelyn.
So I can sleep at night knowing they are safe, even if I am the monster under the bed."
The raw honesty in his words, the admission of his own monstrous role, left her speechless.
The anger was still there, a hot coal in her chest, but his capitulation had doused some of the flames. He was giving in on the thing he wanted most control over their environment to protect the thing she held most dear their sense of home.
She gave a single, tight nod. "The security can stay. For now."
It was a fragile truce, built on a foundation of mutual dread.
He gave another curt nod, then turned and walked out the door without another word. Sebastian followed, pulling the door shut softly behind them, leaving Evie and Maya standing alone in the wreckage of the living room.
The moment the door closed, Evie's knees buckled. She sank onto the sofa, burying her face in her hands, the sobs she had been holding back finally breaking free. Maya sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"It's okay, Evie. It's okay. You stood up to him. You won."
"Did I?" Evie choked out, lifting her head. Her gaze fell on Leo's block bridge, still standing proudly on the coffee table.
Beside it, abandoned, was Lysander's platinum watch, left behind by a little girl who had been offered a shiny object but had chosen her mother's side instead.
"It doesn't feel like winning. It feels like I just declared war on the only man who can protect them from the storm that's coming."
Outside, through the window, she saw Lysander standing by the black car, his head bowed, his hands braced on the roof. He wasn't the invincible billionaire anymore.
He was just a man, silhouetted against the gathering twilight, exiled from the family he had just found.
And in the quiet of the children's room, Leo held a crying Luna, his own small heart a confused tumult of fear, betrayal, and the lingering, terrifying image of the tall man with his own eyes, who had looked at his bridge as if it were the most important thing in the world.