"Young Master, please.... Young Master!"
The nanny's voice echoed down the grand hallway as she hurried after the small boy darting ahead of her.
Chaos was only three, but he ran quick. His little legs carried him across the polished floor as fast as they could, his laughter ringing bright and careless through the halls.
"Young Master, I beg you," the nanny called again, breathless now, though there was still a faint note of playfulness in her exhausted voice.
Chaos only giggled louder.
He looked over his shoulder at her, his pale blue eyes sparkling with mischief, and ran faster. The large halls swallowed his laughter and threw it back, filling the cold mansion with the rare sound of a child's joy.
Then his foot caught.
His small body tipped forward before he could stop himself, and he stumbled flat onto the floor.
Right at Selene's feet.
The laughter died instantly.
Selene had just entered the hall.
She was returning from an event, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit dress that clung elegantly to her body. Her hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders, and in her hand, she held a small purse, her fingers clenched tightly around it.
She was beautiful and Cold.
Her gaze dropped slowly to the little boy sprawled near her feet. Chaos lifted his head.
For a brief moment, he simply stared up at her, too young to understand the danger in the silence.
The nanny stopped several steps away. Her breath caught. "Madam…"
Selene did not look at her immediately. Her eyes remained on the child.
"What is he doing here?" she asked.
The nanny swallowed hard. "Madam, we… I… the young master…" Her words scattered before they could become an excuse.
Everyone in the mansion knew Selene could not stand the sight of her son. She had made it clear from the moment he was born that Chaos was to be kept away from her. Out of her rooms. Out of her path. Out of her sight.
The nanny lowered her head, trembling.
Chaos, however, understood none of that. He pushed himself up from the floor, his small hands pressing against the polished tiles. His cheeks were flushed from running, and his eyes were still wet with the remains of laughter.
Then he walked toward Selene.
He reached for her the way a child reached for something familiar, something beautiful, something that should have been safe.
Selene recoiled. Her body moved back sharply, horror flashing across her face as though he had tried to burn her.
"Don't fucking touch me!" The words cracked through the hallway like a whip.
Chaos froze.
His little hand remained suspended in the air for a second before slowly falling back to his side. His face crumpled, confusion giving way to fear. Then the tears came. His mouth trembled first, then his eyes filled, and finally he burst into loud, frightened sobs that echoed painfully through the hall.
Selene stared at him, her expression twisting with disgust and the unbearable weight of being forced to look at the life she had never wanted.
She exhaled sharply and pressed a hand to her forehead. She was exhausted and his crying offended her.
His existence itself was a punishment she had not finished paying for. Then she turned her cold gaze on the nanny.
The woman stiffened immediately. Selene's face emptied of emotion.
"If you want your master to return home and find his son thrown out of a window," she said, her voice low and menacing, "then keep standing there."
The nanny went pale.
Selene's eyes shifted briefly to the crying child.
"Take this thing out of my sight."
The nanny rushed forward at once. She gathered Chaos into her arms, whispering soft, frantic apologies as the little boy cried against her shoulder.
She did not wait to be told twice.
With Chaos clinging to her and sobbing helplessly, the nanny hurried down the hall, desperate to put as much distance as possible between the child and his mother.
Selene watched them go.
Her grip tightened around her purse.
Then, without a word, she turned and continued down the hallway as though nothing had happened.
From the moment Selene gave birth to him, she could not bear the sight of her son.
It was not dislike.
It was something colder. Something sharper. Something that had rooted itself deep inside her the moment the doctor had placed the quiet, pale-eyed child in front of her and called him hers.
Chaos was to be kept away from her.
That order became law in the Riegrow mansion.
He was not to enter her room. He was not to cross her path. He was not to linger in any hallway she might pass through. The maids learned quickly. The nannies learned faster. A single mistake could earn them Selene's wrath, and no one in that house wanted to be responsible for putting the child before his mother's eyes.
The only exceptions were formal occasions.
Events and Family appearances.
Those rare, polished moments when Selene was expected to stand beside Caesar with Chaos between them like proof of a perfect household. Even then, Selene made sure of one thing.
The boy had to wear gloves.
Always.
Black leather gloves, fitted neatly over his small hands.
To others, they looked like some strange aristocratic habit. A Riegrow family peculiarity. A symbol, perhaps, of refinement.
But to Chaos, they became something else entirely.
A warning. An identity forced onto him before he was old enough to understand why.
From a very young age, Chaos learned a few things.
First, his mother wanted nothing to do with him. Second, he was not allowed to touch anyone. Third, his bare hands were something to be hidden.
Selene made certain he never forgot it.
"Touching things with your bare hands will bring ruin to them, Chaos," she would say, her voice calm in the cruelest way. "You and your father only bring destruction. That is what you are."
The little boy would stand before her, silent, his pale blue eyes lifted to her face.
Selene never softened. "You are a cursed flower," she would tell him. "Everything you touch withers. Everything you reach for breaks. The only way to contain the chaos inside you is to keep your gloves on at all times."
So he did. Chaos wore them when he ate. When he slept. When he played.
When he stood before guests who smiled at him and called him beautiful. He wore them until the leather became more familiar than his own skin.
No one touched him.
Not the maids.
Not the nannies.
Not the guards.
And certainly not his mother.
Physical affection became a language he never learned. There were people around him always, but none close enough to reach him. They dressed him, fed him, watched him, guarded him, yet even their care came with careful distance.
A hand never rested on his head.
No one held him when he cried.
No one pulled him close after a nightmare.
The gloves remained between him and the world, and Selene made sure everyone understood that was how it would remain.
Caesar, on the other hand, did not care enough to interfere.
He cared that he had a son. An heir and continuation of the Riegrow name and everything built beneath it.
Whatever Selene did to the boy's heart was, to him, insignificant. Feelings were soft things. Useless things. Caesar had no interest in raising a loved child.
He wanted to raise a successor.
So Chaos grew inside the mansion, surrounded by maids who spoke only when necessary and guards who treated him less like a child and more like a dangerous possession.
By the time he was four, he had learned to keep his distance.
He did not reach for people anymore. He did not ask to be carried. He did not cry in front of Selene.
But sometimes, the loneliness inside him turned violent.
Once in a while, Chaos would erupt.
He would throw fits, refusing to let anyone near him. He would scream until his throat went raw, shattering anything his small hands could reach, and then stand in the wreckage with tears in his eyes as though he did not understand how he had become the very thing his mother called him.
A monster.
Caesar saw those moments differently. To him, they were not warning signs.
They were potential.
He began bringing Chaos closer to his world, allowing the boy to watch from the shadows as he ruled the Riegrow mafia empire with brutality and precision. Chaos stood beside armed men, watched grown men kneel before his father, and listened to Caesar speak in a voice that could ruin lives without ever rising.
He saw fear before he understood mercy.
He learned power before he learned kindness.
And Caesar, pleased by the boy's silence, began shaping him in his own image.
The mansion eventually learned to fear the young master in a different way.
One afternoon, a maid made a mistake. She reached out too quickly while helping Chaos and her fingers brushed against his bare wrist where one glove had slipped slightly loose.
Chaos froze first.
The maid panicked, apologising again and again, but the sound seemed only to make him worse. Something in the boy snapped open, wild, terrified and furious all at once.
By the time the guards reached the room, a glass ornament had shattered on the floor.
Chaos had taken one broken piece in his gloved hand and dragged it across the maid's face.
The woman collapsed, crying and bleeding, one hand pressed to the wound.
Chaos stood there, his pale eyes fixed on the blood as if he had only just discovered what his hands could do.
The matter was reported to Selene first.
She listened without surprise. Then she laughed bitterly and said, "A monster. Just like his father."
When Caesar heard, he was equally unmoved.
He only gave orders for the woman to be replaced and paid a generous sum for the damages done to her face.
And that was the end of it.
In the Riegrow mansion, a maid's scar could be paid for. A child's cruelty could be excused.
And Chaos, still only four years old, learned another lesson.
If he destroyed something, someone else would clean it up.