Westbridge was louder than Ashford. Not in the obvious way of honking cars or bustling streets, but in the way noise settles into your bones. In Ashford, silence had been a shadow in every room. In Westbridge, it came dressed in elegance. Crystal glasses clinking, leather shoes clicking against marble, people speaking in tones that sounded kind but meant nothing.
When Silas left Ashford at eighteen, it was not an escape. It was a surrender. Quiet, measured, and hollow. There had been no dramatic goodbyes. Just packed bags, a closed door, and a promise to never look back.
His mother had remarried that summer. The man she chose was older, sharp around the edges, and immaculately put together. The kind of man who walked into a room and changed its atmosphere without raising his voice. He wore power like it was tailored. He shook Silas's hand like a stranger might, with the cool assurance of a man who made decisions for others, not with them.
He brought them to Westbridge and gave them comfort. Not love. Not warmth. Comfort. A penthouse with glass walls that offered a perfect view of the city and none of the people in it. Silas had a room with clean linen, a wardrobe full of pressed clothes, and space that echoed if you spoke too loudly. They went to dinners where the wine was older than the guests, and the laughter never reached anyone's eyes.
Silas played along.
There was nothing left for him in Ashford anyway. Only the ghosts of a house too big for two people and the echo of his father's anger, sharp and sour like spoiled fruit. His memories of Ashford were stitched together with tension, the kind that tightened your jaw and made you forget how to breathe.
Westbridge gave him something else. Not freedom, but structure. His stepfather enrolled him in one of the best universities in the city. He was introduced to the sons and daughters of men who shaped economies. People who wore designer apathy and passed down ambition like heirlooms. They spoke in strategies. They smiled in negotiations. Silas learned their language quickly.
He always learned quickly. Especially when there was no alternative.
He did well. Of course he did. He joined student councils, spoke eloquently in seminars, and dressed in grey and navy because those were safe, intelligent colors. He became the kind of young man people trusted in public but never truly knew. Polished. Collected. Remote.
But beneath the clean cuffs and measured voice, Silas carried the same weight he had always known. It lived in the quiet hours after midnight, in the way he never truly slept deeply, in the way he looked through people as much as he looked at them.
He did not forget where he came from. He just never spoke of it. The silence had shaped him more than any city ever could. It taught him how to listen for what people did not say. How to read between glances. How to guard softness like it was weakness.
He became difficult to read. Not because he was hiding. But because he had grown used to not being seen.
Acting was never the plan.
It found him during a literature elective, when a professor forced him into a stage role for a student play. Silas had said no, of course. Repeatedly. Until he finally agreed, just to get it over with. The performance was minor, the role forgettable.
But in the audience, someone noticed. A casting agent approached him after the show and said, "You've got a face the camera will follow."
Silas did not know whether it was a compliment or a warning. But it didn't matter.
He leaned in.
It started with commercials at twenty-two. Product shoots that felt like hollow choreography. Smiles on cue. Words that meant nothing. But it paid well, and more importantly, it felt like control. He did not have to be himself. He could choose who to become.
The first real script came at twenty-four. A brooding character with few lines and a lot of screen time. Silas played him without effort. Still, watchful, unreadable. Critics said his eyes held tension like a secret waiting to be confessed.
He wasn't acting. He was remembering.
By twenty-six, he was in demand. Interviews. Film festivals. Red carpets lined with people desperate to know him, while he gave them only what they could consume.
They called him magnetic. A mystery. A man who made silence feel like a monologue.
What they didn't know was that Silas was not performing. Not really. He simply learned early that the best way to protect yourself was to give people just enough to keep them guessing, and nothing more.
They said he had a strange kind of presence. That he could stand in a room and command it without lifting a finger. That when he looked at you, it felt like he could see everything you tried to hide.
Silas let them believe it.Because it was true.