The next few weeks turned the mansion into another kind of hell.
Every time Chaos went near Selene, she screamed.
At first, he tried softly.
He would enter her room with careful steps, keeping his hands visible, his voice low, his expression stripped of anything that might frighten her.
For one fragile second, he would hope.
Then her eyes would widen in horror.
"No…"
She would shrink away from him, clutching the silver horse to her chest as though it could protect her. "No, no, no."
"You're not him," Selene would whisper.
Then louder. "You're not him!"
Her body would begin to shake. Her hands would fly to her ears. She would scream until the maids rushed in, until the guards gathered at the door, until Chaos stood frozen in the centre of the room, unable to move closer and unable to leave.
"My son is dead!" she would cry. "My Chaos is dead!"
The words cut him every time.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"You are not him," she would sob, pointing at him with trembling fingers. "He was a fragile little thing. A pure boy. My son was pure."
Chaos would say nothing.
His face would remain blank, but beneath the stillness, something in him bled quietly.
Selene would look at him with terror, grief, and disgust all mixed together.
"You are not my son," she would say. "You are a killer. Just like him. Just like Caesar."
Then she would scream again.
Once Chaos left the room, she would calm.
That was the part that destroyed him most.
Chaos kept trying.
For days.
Then weeks. He tried speaking to her. Tried sitting across the room without coming close.
Tried calling her Mum in the voice she once knew.
Nothing worked.
To Selene, the child she had loved had died the day Caesar took him away.
And the one who returned was something else.
Something the Underworld had made.
Something she could not recognise.
Eventually, Chaos stopped going to her room because his presence was another punishment for her.
So he gave up and with that final surrender, Chaos submitted to the only path left before him.
Caesar's.
He took his place in the Riegrow empire.
He learned the business.
The legal one.
The illegal one. The blood beneath both.
He sat beside his father in meetings, watched men tremble under the Riegrow name, and began stepping into the shadow Caesar had built for him. The boy who once survived for his mother now ruled because there was nothing else to survive for.
He avoided Selene.
And after a while, he never saw her again.
Then one day, Caesar summoned him to his study.
Caesar sat behind his desk, a file open before him, his expression calm in the way Chaos had grown to hate.
"You will be attending school," Caesar said.
Chaos stared at him. For a moment, he thought he had heard wrong.
"School?"
"Yes."
"Why do I need that?"
Caesar looked up. "Because i want you to."
Chaos's mouth almost curved, but there was no humour in it. "I have survived the Underworld. I have taken lives. I sit in meetings with men twice my age who wet their throats before speaking to me. And you want me to sit in a classroom?"
"For one year," Caesar said. "Until I finalise arrangements for you to leave."
Chaos narrowed his eyes.
Caesar closed the file. The sound was soft, but final.
"You need to learn how to fit in among people your age."
Chaos let out a quiet laugh. It sounded almost empty.
"I am far from anything normal."
"Exactly," Caesar said. "Which is why you need this. Find common ground among your peers."
Chaos watched him silently.
Caesar leaned back in his chair. "You will not rule only men with blood on their hands, Adrian. Some of the most useful people in this world wear clean uniforms and smile like lambs."
Chaos sighed.
Alex had returned to his country after the final test in the Underworld. He had his own empire to prepare for, his own family name to carry, his own monsters waiting to see what kind of beast the Underworld had returned to them.
Before leaving, Alex had promised to visit whenever he was less busy.
Chaos had only nodded.
There was no escaping it. And perhaps that was fine.
It was only one year.
What harm could one year do?
The next morning, a black car stopped in front of one of the most elite schools in the country.
The gates were tall, polished, and guarded. The buildings beyond them looked too clean and untouched by the kind of world Chaos knew. Students moved through the courtyard in neat uniforms, laughing, gossiping, waving at one another as though life had never asked them to bleed for the right to keep breathing.
Chaos stepped out of the car.
His uniform fit him perfectly.
Of course it did.
Everything Caesar arranged was precise.
He stood beside the car for a moment, looking at the school building ahead of him. Around him, students stared. Some openly. Some behind their hands. Some with curiosity.
Chaos ignored them. He adjusted one black leather glove, then the other.
With a quiet sigh, he took a step toward the building. "One year," he muttered.