CHAPTER 10
Long before the silver gates of Carter Holdings opened at dawn each day, and long before the world called him the cold-faced billionaire of Crestview City, Leo Carter was forged in silence, expectation, and fire.
He did not grow up like other children—no carefree afternoons, no childish rebelllessness, no room to fail. His father, Richard Carter, believed responsibility was not taught in whispers but hammered into the bones of a boy until it became instinct. And so, from the time Leo could walk, he was trained not to stumble.
Richard—a man whose presence filled every room like a storm—ran his home with the same precision he used to build the Carter empire. He loved his sons in the only way he knew: through discipline. But Leo, the firstborn, bore the weight of that love more heavily than anyone else.
While other children were learning to pedal bicycles, Leo was learning contracts. While they played hide-and-seek under the sun, he memorized financial terms, negotiation tactics, and the invisible language of power. Richard believed Leo would one day run the empire he spent years building. And believing that meant Leo was never allowed to be ordinary.
By age ten, he was attending business dinners instead of birthday parties. At thirteen, his handwriting was neater than most executives'. By sixteen, he knew how to stare a grown man in the eye and make him blink first. He learned composure before he learned what freedom felt like, and he learned control before he knew what it meant to be truly young. But if Leo was trained in fire, his younger brother Trent grew up in the warmth.
Trent Carter, three years younger, arrived when Richard's empire had already stabilized. The pressure placed on Leo was never placed on him. Their mother, Amelia, doted on Trent, shielding him from firm expectations. Unlike Leo—whose childhood was carved into routines and responsibilities—Trent grew up tasting freedom Leo was never offered. And freedom, in Trent's hands, often turned reckless. Where Leo's eyes were steel, Trent's were sparks. Where Leo was silent strength, Trent was loud trouble. Where Leo obeyed, Trent rebelled. To Leo, Trent wasted the luxury he was born into. To Trent, Leo was the golden child he could never compete with. Hatred, they say, is only love that has lost its way. But between Leo and Trent, it wasn't love that was lost—it was patience.
Leo hated Trent's irresponsibility, his lack of direction, the way he treated life like it was an endless game while Leo clawed his way through the expectations piled on him from birth. He hated the arguments, the broken promises, the nights Trent would go missing only to return at dawn with bloodshot eyes.
Most of all, he hated that whenever Trent fell, Leo was the one expected to catch him.
"You are the eldest," Richard always said. "You lead. He follows."
But Trent never followed. He ran, rebelled, and tore apart the structure Leo held together with bruised hands. Every time Trent made a mistake, Richard turned to Leo—not Trent—to fix it. Trent lived without consequence, and Leo lived swimming in them.
The resentment took root like poison.
By his twenties, Leo's name was whispered with respect in business circles. The media called him the prodigy of Carter Holdings. The employees feared him. The stockholders trusted him. He had the sharp mind of a strategist, the calm presence of a king, and the temper of a sleeping lion.
But under his tailored suits and icy expression was a childhood stolen, a youth traded for discipline, and a heart that learned to love silently—because loud emotions were a weakness.
He grew up different from others because he had to, different because the empire demanded it.
Different because Richard Carter decided his eldest son would not merely exist—he would lead.
And Leo carried that duty like a chain he refused to break.
The night they stopped speaking started like every other argument—Trent had crashed one of the company's cars during a reckless midnight outing. Richard's rage shook the walls, but Trent only smirked, shoulders raised in careless defiance.
"Leo will fix it," Trent said. "He always does."
For the first time in his life, Leo snapped.
"No," he said, his voice like a blade. "I won't fix you anymore."
The house fell silent. Trent had pushed him before, but he had never broken Leo's restraint. And in that silence, something old and damaged inside Leo cracked.
"Maybe if someone let you face consequences, you wouldn't be such a disaster," he added.
Trent's smirk vanished.
And hatred found its voice between them.
Leo walked out that night with the realization that he no longer wanted to protect his brother—he wanted distance from him. Real, permanent distance.
Since then, Leo has buried himself in work, in silence, in the life he was groomed for. The press sees a billionaire. The board sees a leader. Strangers see a perfect man carved from marble.
But they don't see the rest—the resentment, the loneliness, the chains of expectation he still carries. They don't see the boy forced to grow up too quickly, too sharply. They don't see how every part of his past carved him into the man he is now.