Chapter 160: A Twitch In Disappointment

Leon Vassilis sits in the plush armchair of his mother’s study, staring at his hands, and wonders for the hundredth time if he is losing his damn mind.

He watches Lady Dimitra Vassilis handle a thick stack of legal documents with the calm, methodical precision of a surgeon operating on an open heart.

The realization hits him with the weight of a physical blow— he does not understand his mother. No, it is far more accurate to say that his mother is the one person in this world he will never understand.

He knows the way she moves around his cousin. He will not call it pandering, because a woman like Dimitra Vassilis does not pander to anyone, but there is a certain difference in her demeanor without ever looking deferential.

She gives Orion everything he wants, and whatever she hesitates to hand over, Orion simply reaches out and takes.

It is a symbiotic relationship between a devil and a cold, calculating woman.

Leon rubs his aching temples, letting out a heavy, shuddering breath. He does not even know what he is thinking anymore.

His mind feels completely scrambled, his thoughts scattering like dry leaves in a storm. He is sitting here in the quiet warmth of his mother’s study, his pulse hammering against his ribs, watching her glance occasionally at the wall-mounted television screen.

The red numbers flashing across the news ticker tell a dismal story. Their family’s stock prices are plunging, plummeting steadily by the hour.

The global market is reacting to Adrien’s scandal tape.

Honestly, Leon never knew what Adrien had to do to survive after he ran away seven years ago. He never would have guessed that Adrien had resorted to prostitution.

Yet, as he sits here thinking about it, the dirty pieces of the puzzle fit together far too easily. Adrien’s family never supported him. After he ran away, obviously no one was going to step up to help a disgraced, penniless runaway.

In fact, it would have been much easier for his family to quietly take his life while he was struggling on the streets than to ever offer a helping hand.

Leon stares balefully at the screen, a subtle, unwanted sliver of guilt crawling into his chest and coiling around his lungs.

He might not like Adrien, and Adrien might not know— or perhaps Adrien simply pretends not to know— everything that went down during that time. But Leon knows the truth. He knows he was one of the primary factors that pushed the boy off the edge, driving him to run away seven years ago.

He wonders how Adrien felt back then. He remembers that seventeen-year-old boy with wild, stubborn fire in his eyes.

Even back then, when Leon spoke to him, he had felt a strange, subtle hint of captivation. How did a person like that feel, giving up his body again and again just to buy a meal and survive another day?

The broadcast loops on the television screen for what feels like the thousandth time since Leon first saw it, and he continues to stare at it with deep, heavy irritation.

He is not angry at Adrien.

He is irritated by the entire ridiculous situation. A desperate teenager did what he had to do to survive, so what? Why can’t people just look at it and turn their heads away?

Obviously, he knows why. This isn’t just gossip news. It is a calculated, targeted attack designed to tear Adrien down.

He wonders what in the world Louise is thinking, pulling a move like this. More than that, he wonders what Orion is thinking.

There is no way in hell Orion does not know that Louise is behind the leak, yet his cousin has done nothing about it. He hasn’t erased the media. He hasn’t made Louis disappear.

He has just stayed unnervingly silent. And somehow, his silence is fucking scarier.

"What do you think about it?"

Lady Dimitra’s flat voice cuts through the quiet room out of nowhere, shattering Leon’s spiral.

Leon pauses, his entire frame going rigid. Speaking with his mother is always an unpredictable minefield. If he says one thing, he ends up looking like the pathetic child she has zero expectations for.

If he says another thing, he comes off looking like a total fool. Every single time he tries to speak with her, he finds himself thinking that Orion would have said something better.

Orion would have offered some brilliant, cold insight that made her eyes light up with understanding.

That is how conversations always go with her. But what can he do? He is a disappointment, and they both know it.

Settling on the safest path, Leon offers the most neutral answer he can muster. "I think it is disgraceful."

Lady Dimitra doesn’t even look up from her papers, but her pen stops moving against the page. "No. That is not what I am asking you, Leon." She finally raises her gaze, her expression unreadable and terrifyingly blank.

"It is already disgraceful. What I want to know is what you think we should do about it."

Leon shifts uncomfortably in his chair, his palms slick with cold sweat. "Orion needs to release an official statement of some sort. Our stock prices are dropping, and it is because of him and his choices."

For the first time in many years, something shifts in his mother’s eyes. A faint flash of understanding passes over her sharp features. She gives him a small, precise nod.

"Exactly," Dimitra says softly. "Orion needs to handle it, because he chose a whore as a companion."

Leon blinks, caught completely off guard by the sharp, ugly word falling so casually from his mother’s lips.

"He is ruining the name we have spent generations building as the Vassilis family," Dimitra continues, her voice dropping into a cool, dangerous tone. "This scandal is bad for our stocks, yes, but the market will recover. It always does. The world cannot survive without our family’s money. But this footage... it is an insult. A direct slap to our faces."

She turns her head slightly, looking back at the television screen, letting out a slow, quiet sigh. Even the way she sighs sounds remarkably dignified, controlled, and stately.

Leon watches her in silence. She is not a conventionally beautiful woman, but her presence is massive.

She is sturdy, like a pillar standing in the center of a collapsing building. Yet, she is a pillar he would hesitate with all his strength to ever lean against.

If he leaned on her, she would give him that look— that flat yet heavy look that tells him she expected nothing from him, that he was weak. He hates that look more than anything in the world.

Leon clears his throat, his vocal cords tight. "If Orion needs to fix this for the family... why haven’t you called him here? Why isn’t he standing in this room?"

The moment the words leave his mouth, the tiny flicker of approval in his mother’s eyes vanishes instantly. A subtle twitch in her left eyebrow tells him everything he needs to know.

He has disappointed her again.

"Do you truly believe I have not called him?" Lady Dimitra asks calmly, setting her pen down with a quiet click. "Orion has ignored every single one of my calls today. And worse still, I received official confirmation an hour ago that he has legally married Adrien."

Leon chokes on his own breath, coughing violently as his throat seizes up. He hacks into his fist, his chest heaving as he tries desperately to pull air back into his lungs.

"He... what?" Leon manages to gasp out, his eyes wide with horror.

As he tries to compose himself, he’s hit with an epiphany. Of course Orion married him. Obviously Orion was going to lock Adrien down the moment he caught him again.

But why do it right now, in the middle of a massive public scandal? And did Adrien actually agree to it? After everything that has happened between them, did Adrien really sign those papers?

Leon looks up at his mother, his voice raspy and broken. "They got married?"

"Legally married," Lady Dimitra confirms smoothly. "I have a copy of the registry filing sitting on my tablet right now, because Orion had his secretary deliver it to my personal email."

Leon lets out a hollow breath, muttering under his breath, "Yeah. That sounds like something that lunatic would do." 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

Still, confusion gnaws violently at his guts. If Orion wanted to tie Adrien to him forever, he would have hosted the largest, most extravagant ceremony in the city.

He would have dragged every billionaire, politician, and socialite into a massive hall just to show Adrien off. He wouldn’t have quietly signed papers quietly.

Then, the memory hits Leon like a sledgehammer, sending a wave of sheer terror crashing over him.

The kidnapping.

A cold, paralyzing spike of panic shoots straight down his spine, making his knees tremble beneath the desk. God, the kidnapping. He was the one who had planned it.

Leon had handled the entire operation from the ground up. He had arranged the unmarked vehicles, the blind spots in the city’s surveillance network, and the initial safe house.

He had personally chosen the people driving the transport. And then, everything had gone horribly, catastrophically wrong.

The operation was hijacked.