There were days—though Adrian would never admit it aloud—when he walked through his own mansion and felt like a trespasser in the museum of someone else's life.
He didn't touch the grand piano in the west hall anymore.He hadn't touched it since before.Before the kidnapping.Before the death.Before the world ripped his identity clean from his bones and left him with only discipline and terror for warmth.
He used to play it late at night whenever he couldn't sleep—the clumsy notes of a spoiled heir who never practiced enough, laughing whenever he made mistakes, rolling his eyes when tutors sighed in despair. He used to complain about how hard it was to reach the upper octaves with his pudgy hands. He used to snack between pieces, crumbs sometimes falling between the keys until Lysandra scolded him, feigning horror.
But now?
He passed the piano like it was a tombstone.
His fingers never once reached for the keys.
His shadow never lingered by the glossy black lid.
Music was a luxury.Music belonged to someone who had the right to breathe without remembering screams.
That person was dead.
He hadn't touched his favorite jackets either—the ones custom-made from exotic materials, tailored to drape over his once-massive shoulders. They hung in the walk-in closet like relics of a former era, mocking him silently.
They didn't fit anymore, even if he wanted them to.
He had shed the weight of his former life the way a person tears off burning clothes—frantic, desperate, needing to escape the skin he once lived in.
Now, his wardrobe consisted of severe, monochrome pieces: tailored shirts, slim suits, crisp black or iron-grey coats. Everything structured. Everything controlled. Everything meant to restrain him, to keep him upright, to keep him from collapsing under memories too heavy to hold.
His old clothes gathered dust.
He tried not to look at them.
They were a reminder of a boy trapped in a gilded cage of laziness, privilege, and obliviousness—a boy who hadn't deserved the parents who loved him,a boy corrupted by excess,a boy whose foolishness contributed to their deaths.
He refused to return to that boy.He refused to touch anything that boy had touched.
Not the games in his old entertainment room.Not the designer watches he once collected obsessively.Not the foreign wines he used to brag about.Not the expensive perfumes he sprayed just for the sake of appearing attractive to Seraphina.
He hadn't sprayed cologne in nearly eight months.
The scent clung only to memories.
He didn't want to smell like the man he used to be.
His old friends from Harvard sent messages sometimes—out of habit, or greed, or both.
He did not open them.
They, too, belonged to the old him.
Friends who encouraged him to party, to waste money, to drown in indulgence. Friends who laughed at his weight, then laughed harder when he pretended not to care. Friends who only sought him when they needed invitations to exclusive events or access to his father's empire.
He cut them all off.
Cleanly.
Without guilt.
He had no time for friends.He had no right to leisure.He had no permission to relax.
His life belonged to the conglomerate.
To his parents' legacy.
To penance.
Every morning, before the sun rose, Adrian walked into the executive elevator of Harrington Group headquarters—not with the arrogance of his former self, but with cold purpose. His steps were measured, unhurried, precise. His suit was immaculate, his expression unreadable, his posture impeccable.
He had become the kind of man the world feared.
Not because he sought fear.
But because fear was the only armor that kept people from getting close.
And closeness was danger.
Closeness was vulnerability.
Closeness was what allowed the kidnappers to get to him in the first place.
He would not permit proximity again.
He ruled the conglomerate from the top floor, commanding the empire his father built with cold clarity that bordered on perfection. He fired executives who hesitated even once. He promoted talent without blinking. He reorganized entire departments overnight. He rewrote the international strategy of the corporation with ruthless ease.
He didn't make mistakes.
He didn't allow mistakes.
He didn't tolerate excuses.
Directors whispered that the old chairman, Atlas Harrington—the man known for being the most fearsome businessman in the world—would have recoiled from how unflinchingly brutal his son had become.
But Adrian didn't care.
Atlas was gone.And Adrian had failed him.And now the only way he could live with himself was to ensure that Harrington Group rose high enough that even ghosts could rest.
He did not go to parties.He did not attend galas.He did not entertain clients with wine or charm.He did not socialize.He did not smile unless it was required.
His office desk was clean—immaculately so.
He didn't allow himself snacks.He didn't keep a single personal item on his workspace.No photo frames.No souvenirs.Nothing frivolous.Nothing emotional.
He had become a creature defined by purpose alone.
A man who lived for work.
A man who breathed for work.
A man who existed only to build, to repair, to repay.
He never returned to the garden either—not even once.
He used to sit there lazily on summer afternoons, sipping iced teas, calling Seraphina repeatedly until she blocked him for the day. He used to fall asleep on the garden bench, sunlight warm on his cheeks, servants panicking every time he dozed long enough for bees to land on him.
He used to laugh there.Really laugh.Big, loud, unrestrained belly-laughs.
That garden was dead to him now.
His mother planted those flowers.His father built that pond.
He couldn't bear to look at any of it without feeling the ghosts of their hands at his back, gentle, urging him to be better.
And he had not been better.
He had been a disappointment until the very end.
He no longer entered that part of the estate.
The servants cleaned it, maintained it, watered it, but Adrian acted like it had been sealed off with walls of glass. He could not touch it. He did not deserve to.
He no longer rode his cars—not the Bugatti, not the golden-wrapped Ferrari, not the Rolls Royce he used to parade through city streets with a girl on each side.
He took the black armored SUV everywhere.He sat in the same seat every day.He never rolled the window down.He kept his gaze straight ahead.
His drivers said he looked like a statue.
They were right.
Because statues had no indulgences.Statues had no desires.Statues didn't crave food or affection or pleasure or noise or friends.
Statues were incapable of failing the people they loved.
Statues didn't break.
He was trying—every day—to become as close to stone as a human man could.
He didn't touch alcohol.
He didn't touch desserts.
He didn't touch the pool.
He didn't touch the private cinema.
He didn't touch the balcony where he used to watch fireworks.
He didn't touch the cigar humidor he once bragged about to impress foreign heirs.
He didn't touch anything that reminded him of who he used to be.
Because everything that made him "him"—the boy craving attention,the heir addicted to pleasure,the spoiled prince who chased Seraphina like oxygen—
that boy died the day his parents did.
And the man who survived was something else, something forged from fear and grief and necessity.
Someone who existed only to uphold their legacy.
Someone who existed only to keep people alive—even when they didn't want to be.
Someone who could not afford to slip.
Someone who could not afford to remember.
Someone who could not afford to touch anything warm.
Everything that once made him human was now locked away like dangerous contraband.
Because Adrian Vale Harrington had learned one truth:
Pleasures weaken. Memories destroy. And love kills.
So he abandoned all three.
And threw himself into the only thing that kept him breathing—the conglomerate.The empire.The burden that chained him to life.
The burden that prevented him from following his parents into the quiet of death.
And every day he worked, without rest, without pleasure—because he could not be allowed to touch the things that once made him him.
Not anymore.Not ever again.