Chapter 161: One Tries To Fly Away, And The Other…

When Orion finds him— and Orion will definitely find him— there will be no mercy. It won’t just be a quick bullet through the chest.

If Orion is feeling merciful, it will be a slow, agonizing process of being skinned alive. Orion will strip the flesh from his bones for daring to put a hand on Adrien.

Leon’s breath hitches sharply, cold sweat drenching his shirt. He cuts the spiral off, forcing himself to stop thinking about blood and serrated knives before he throws up on his mother’s pristine rug.

He cannot wrap his head around any of it. He doesn’t know what to think anymore. It feels like he has stumbled into a murky, filthy pool of blood and secrets that he was never supposed to touch.

What is happening right now makes the power plays he thought he was running look like children playing with matches.

He wonders when his life will stop feeling like a ping-pong ball being slammed back and forth between far more powerful people.

He wonders if this is how Adrien felt seven years ago, trapped in a nightmare where every choice led to another cage.

Honestly, at this point, Leon wants to run away too. He wants to tear off his expensive suit, leave his name behind, and vanish from this city forever.

Dimitra leans back in her chair, her sharp eyes locking onto his pale, sweat-slicked face. "What do you think should be done now, Leon?"

He knows she isn’t asking because she values his strategic mind. She doesn’t need his advice to move forward. She just wants to watch him struggle. She wants to see what pathetic answer he pulls out of his head while he sits there shivering in front of her.

Looking at her, a strange, hollow numbness washes over Leon, smothering the sheer terror for a brief, fragile second.

Everything about this woman has always been a test. She is always testing him, always prodding at his raw wounds, always wearing that quiet look of pure disappointment whenever he inevitably falls short.

She compares him to Orion constantly, never out loud, but through every dismissive gesture, every cold silence, and every sharp glance.

Is it any wonder he spent his entire life trying to one-up his lunatic cousin? Is it any wonder he agreed to execute that insane kidnapping in the first place?

He was so desperate to prove he could move pieces on the board, so desperate to—

Forget it.

And look where that useless, pathetic ambition has brought him. He executed a kidnapping that spiraled entirely out of his control, and now he is standing on the trapdoor with the noose around his neck.

What is he actually doing with his life? Is he not just existing, waiting for someone to put a bullet in his head?

Someone is eventually going to kill him either for what he did to Adrien or what he knows now, and he finds himself genuinely wondering who will push the trigger first— Louise, his mother, Orion...or Niko.

His mind drifts back to Adrien once more. He wonders if Adrien felt this exact same crushing, suffocating weight before he bolted seven years ago.

He wonders how Adrien feels right now, knowing he is legally bound to a monster like Orion. Even before the marriage papers were filed, there was never any real escape for Adrien. Orion was always going to consume him entirely.

It is a tragedy, really. But Leon is in no position to play the hero. Even if he wanted to reach out and try to save Adrien now, just like he tried to play savior years ago, Adrien would never believe a single word coming out of his mouth.

Adrien would look at him with pure hatred— and he would be right to do so.

Leon looks straight into his mother’s cold eyes, his expression flattening into a distant, emotionless mask.

"Whatever needs to be done is something only you and Orion can come to terms with," Leon says, his voice icy and detached. "This is not something I can interfere with."

He speaks with quiet finality, because he is done. He is finished playing her subtle mind games. He is done taking her tests. It has gotten him absolutely nowhere in life except to the brink of his own execution.

He was pushed into an engagement with Louis Dubois, a woman who looked at him like he was scum, a woman who didn’t even want him in the same room.

Thankfully, he had the sense to never step out of bounds with her.

Everything feels wrong. Everything in his life is spiraling out of control, collapsing into dust around his ears, and he is just sitting here waiting for the roof to cave in.

Then, something entirely unexpected happens.

A tiny flicker of genuine acknowledgement passes through his mother’s sharp eyes.

Leon blinks, entirely confused by the sudden change in her rigid posture.

"That was a good response, Leon," Dimitra says softly, her voice flat and bland. "A man should know when to pull back and when to charge forward. Keep that mindset up."

She immediately lowers her head, returning to her documents as if she hadn’t just spoken.

Leon sits frozen in his chair, a heavy, disorienting confusion settling over him like a thick fog. Was that praise? Was that the lifelong acknowledgement he had spent his entire pathetic existence begging for?

Was this what he lost Niko’s attention for?

It felt like nothing. Her tone was so empty, so bland, that the words carried zero weight at all. A few cheap, offhand words that did nothing to fix the wreckage of his life.

It just confused him even more, hollow and bitter in his mouth.

As Leon stares at the top of Dimitra Vassilis’s head, a faint, hot spark of rage begins to coil deep within his chest.

The spark grows into a steady, burning resentment. He realizes, with sudden clarity, that he really does not want to have anything to do with this woman ever again.

She has done more than enough to ruin his life. Every goal he ever chased, every ambition he held, was born out of her cold expectations.

He can never touch the things he truly wanted because he was too busy trying to prove he wasn’t a failure to a woman who never cared in the first place.

He makes up his mind right then and there. He will go to Orion himself. He will lay everything out on the table— the kidnapping and every other thing he knows— and put an end to the lies.

If Orion is going to skin him alive, then so be it. He just wants this endless, suffocating torture to stop.

Before he can gather the strength to push himself out of the armchair, the heavy wooden door to the study swings open without a knock.

A man steps smoothly into the room.

Leon’s eyes lock onto the intruder instantly, every nerve in his body screaming in alarm. The first thing he notices is the man’s height. He is tall— not overwhelmingly tall, but impressive nonetheless.

He is almost as tall as Orion himself. His sharp, defined features clearly reflect his Asian heritage, carried with an easy, relaxed grace that feels deeply out of place in this tense room.

Then, Leon catches his eyes.

They are brown. Deep, striking brown. The closest comparison Leon can draw is Nico’s eyes, but Nico’s eyes are a bright amber that glows like liquid gold under sharp light.

This man’s eyes are completely different. They are the rich, warm shade of liquid honey, looking as though someone dropped two pristine drops of honey into his irises and left them to shine under the ambient chandelier light.

The third thing Leon notices is a small, thin scar running near the left corner of the man’s mouth. It doesn’t disfigure him— instead, it adds a sharp, intriguing definition to his handsome face.

Finally, Leon notices the small, placid smile resting on the man’s lips. It is the smile of someone who knew Leon would take his time to stare at him, someone who is quietly amused that Leon played right into his expectations.

The placid smile widens just a fraction as Lady Dimitra looks up from her desk, her voice showing no surprise.

"Hello," Dimitra says smoothly, her tone devoid of its usual sharp edge. "You are quite late."

The man turns his eyes to her, his smile remaining effortlessly calm. "Hello."

The simple, quiet way he utters the greeting scratches violently at something deep inside Leon’s brain. An uneasy, wrong feeling takes root in his chest, his breath catching in his throat.

Instead of answering Dimitra further, the man turns his body completely toward Leon. His honey-brown eyes lock onto Leon’s pale, terrified face.

"I do believe we have something to speak about, don’t we, Leon?" the man asks softly.

The voice echoes in the quiet study, and the realization hits Leon like a physical strike to the head. The fog in his mind clears instantly, tearing away the veil and revealing the identity of the man standing before him.

Oh shit, Leon thinks, his heart dropping straight into his stomach as a cold terror paralyzes his limbs. You have got to be kidding me.

*****

Lemme see those giftsssss.

— TheLovePoet