Years had passed, but Sinclair could still recall that night, the screams, the silence that followed, the way his mother told him never to speak of it again. He had assumed the boy was gone. Dead, perhaps. Forgotten.

And yet, there he was.

The boy was peeking from behind the tree, his gaze fixed not on Sinclair, but on someone else.

Sinclair turned his head slightly, following his brother’s line of sight. In the nearby courtyard, a family was having tea. The Azaleans, old allies of the Kornblume family.

And with them, a girl.

She was laughing softly, her pale dress fluttering in the breeze as she poured tea for her parents. Sinclair recognized her vaguely. She had introduced herself earlier that morning, Persephone Azalean, if he remembered correctly.

She had been polite, graceful, and overly eager to talk to him. Sinclair had smiled, answered curtly, and walked away. He didn’t care who she was. He didn’t care for anyone, really.

But now, his brother’s eyes were fixed on her with quiet wonder.

Sinclair set his brush down and rose from his seat. His footsteps were soundless on the marble as he crossed the garden toward the tree.

His brother startled when he saw him approach, retreating half a step, his deformed cheek turning away from the light.

“Do you like her?” Sinclair asked, his tone flat, almost curious.

The boy froze. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

Sinclair tilted his head, studying him the way one might examine a curious insect. “You were staring at her. Do you like her?”

His brother’s hands trembled as he took another step back, pressing himself against the bark.

Sinclair’s expression remained perfectly still. His teal eyes, clear and sharp as glass, betrayed nothing.

“She seems to like me,” he said quietly, his gaze flicking back toward the girl in the courtyard. “I could see it in her eyes when she tried to talk to me earlier.”

The boy’s shoulders tensed. He glanced at Sinclair’s face... half of it, anyway.

Sinclair continued, voice barely above a murmur. “Maybe she’d like you, too. Half of you looks like me, after all.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The only sounds were the distant chatter of the Azalean and Kornblume families and the gentle rustle of leaves overhead.

Then, slowly, his brother turned his face away, the twisted half hidden behind his hair. His eyes dropped to the ground. He said nothing.

Sinclair watched him with quiet detachment. Once, as a child, he might have felt pity. But now, he felt nothing. Pity was weakness. Beauty was strength. His family had taught him that lesson well.

Suddenly, a voice cut through the still air.

“Sinclair!”

He turned slightly. The Azalean girl was running toward him, a bright smile on her face, ribbons bouncing in her hair. She looked like a doll, perfect, polished, practiced.

Sinclair didn’t move.

Behind him, his brother flinched and darted away, vanishing into the dense foliage like a frightened animal. Sinclair’s gaze followed him for a moment, expression unreadable.

“Sinclair!” the girl called again, a little breathless now. She stopped in front of him, clasping her hands. “I’ve been looking for you! You didn’t answer me earlier—”

He didn’t look at her. His attention was still fixed on the spot where his brother had disappeared.

The girl’s smile faltered. “Were you… talking to someone?”

“No,” Sinclair said simply, walking back to his easel. He picked up his brush once more and turned his back to her, resuming his work on the peony, each stroke deliberate, precise, and controlled.

She hesitated before following him, her footsteps light against the marble. Confusion and frustration flickered across her delicate features as she watched him paint, his silence heavier than any insult.

“You know…” she murmured, almost to herself, “one day, you’ll have to look at me. You’ll have to. Because one day, Sinclair, you’ll be mine—my future husband.”

Sinclair heard her.

He didn’t react. Didn’t even lift his gaze.

The brush continued to move in slow, graceful arcs, tracing the curve of a petal that looked almost too perfect to be real.

He didn’t bother to respond.

Because at that moment, the only image lingering in his mind wasn’t the peony, or the Albrecht girl’s smile.

It was the fleeting, broken face of his brother; half beauty, half horror, vanishing into the shadows where ugliness belonged.

Like always, after that fleeting encounter, Sinclair never saw his nameless brother again.

Years passed. Now in his mid-twenties, Sinclair had grown into a man of striking perfection, cold, detached, and obedient. He moved like a puppet, his strings pulled by his father, the great patriarch of the Kornblume family. Every decision of his life had been made for him: what to study, whom to marry, how to act, how to live. His father wanted him to be the perfect heir, a living embodiment of the family’s ideals.

Sinclair’s only act of rebellion, the only thing truly his, was art. He painted, sculpted, and sketched endlessly, searching for something elusive: perfection. A perfect muse. A perfect creation that could fill the void that had grown in him since childhood.

But no one ever seemed enough.

Until one night.

He attended a private auction, intending only to acquire another painting for his collection. Yet there, among priceless art and glittering jewels, stood her.

A woman in a flowing white dress, delicate as porcelain, radiant as moonlight... Mayumi.

The room seemed to hold its breath when she appeared. Every gaze turned toward her, every heart caught by her beauty. But before anyone else could speak, Sinclair raised his voice, steady and commanding, offering ten billion.

Gasps filled the room. Ten billion, his own entire fortune. Yet he didn’t hesitate.

Because for the first time in years, Sinclair felt alive. He had found his muse.

He brought Mayumi to the Kornblume estate, keeping her hidden in an elegant room behind his study. There, surrounded by velvet drapes and soft candlelight, he painted her almost every day. Her beauty consumed him. She was the color his life had lacked, the brushstroke that gave meaning to his hollow existence.

Mayumi obeyed his every request, always gentle, always smiling. But Sinclair wasn’t blind, he could sense the calculation behind her eyes. She was using him. Yet even knowing that, he didn’t care. As long as she stayed, as long as she looked at him that way, he could endure anything.

One night, as Sinclair added the final touches to yet another portrait, he heard her call from the bathroom, her voice trembling with distress.

“Sinclair!”

He rushed in, only to find her laughing softly, soaking in the bath, her voice smooth and teasing. “You should’ve seen your face,” she said. “I only wanted to see if you’d come.”

Sinclair sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You shouldn’t play games like that.”

Mayumi rose from the water, droplets tracing down her perfect form as she approached him. “You look tired,” she whispered, her tone softer now. “Join me. Just for a while.”

He wanted to refuse, but he couldn’t.

Her hand cupped his cheek, and something inside him cracked. All the exhaustion, all the resentment, all the years of suffocating under his father’s control, he let it spill out through her. Their lips met, desperate and hungry, and Mayumi welcomed him as if she had been waiting all along.

They stumbled into the tub together, water spilling onto the marble floor, his soaked clothes clinging to her skin. The world outside ceased to exist.

Until Sinclair caught something in the corner of his eye.

A shadow.

Someone standing just beyond the door.

His breath faltered.

There, half-hidden in the dim light, was his nameless brother, the forgotten twin, watching in silence.

Sinclair leaned back in the tub, still breathless, the candlelight flickering across his sharp features. Then, perhaps out of amusement, or cruelty, he tilted his head toward the doorway and spoke clearly enough for the shadow to hear.

“Would you like to join us?” he said flatly, a ghost of a smirk touching his lips.

The figure froze. Then, as quietly as he had appeared, Sinclair’s nameless brother turned and disappeared down the hall, his retreat so silent it was almost as if he had never been there at all.

Mayumi frowned. “Who are you talking to?”

Sinclair’s expression didn’t waver. “My imaginary friend,” he replied, his voice almost too calm. “Met him when I was eight. Half his face looks like mine, the other half doesn’t.”

Mayumi’s brows knit, confusion flickering briefly across her perfect face, but before she could question further, Sinclair kissed her again. The conversation dissolved into heavy breaths and quiet sighs as the night swallowed them whole.

Months later, the world around Sinclair changed, though he remained the same, detached, obedient, silent. His father announced his engagement to the daughter of the Azalean family, though Sinclair couldn’t even recall her name. Persephone, perhaps. It didn’t matter.

At the engagement banquet, he stood among nobles and heirs, his teal eyes empty. His father’s voice boomed with pride, praising the union as if it were a victory. Inside, Sinclair felt nothing but quiet disappointment—an emptiness so vast that even art couldn’t fill it.

He didn’t know whether to rebel or simply disappear. But Mayumi, ever composed, had whispered to him softly, her words like poison wrapped in silk:

“Marry her. Please your father. Gain the power you deserve. Once you’re free of his shadow… then the world is your oyster.”

Sinclair, who trusted her more than he trusted himself, obeyed.

He married Persephone Azalean.

When his father demanded an heir, Sinclair complied. It was mechanical, devoid of affection, purpose, or joy. He did it because he must. Because Mayumi told him to.

And while Persephone slept in her gilded chambers, Mayumi remained hidden in that elegant room behind his study, his real home. Every night, he returned to her, her body and presence the only warmth he knew.

Months later, Persephone gave birth to twins, two beautiful boys. The Kornblume family rejoiced. The children inherited their mother’s mauve hair and purple eyes, none of Sinclair’s golden or teal hues. The patriarch didn’t mind. They were perfect enough.

Unbeknownst to them all, Mayumi too was carrying Sinclair’s child.

But when Persephone discovered her hidden rival, and the swelling of her stomach, Mayumi was cast out of the estate with nothing but the clothes on her back.

When Sinclair learned what had happened, the fury that erupted within him was unlike anything he had ever felt. It was not loud, not violent, but cold, suffocating, and final. From that day forward, Persephone became little more than a stranger. Even his twin sons, the so-called heirs of the Kornblume line, received little of his attention.

All that mattered now was Mayumi.

He searched for her relentlessly, abandoning his father’s demands and the estate’s politics.

And when he finally found her, in a decrepit apartment on the edge of the city, he saw her cradling a small boy. The child’s eyes were unmistakable: teal, shimmering like the ocean under sunlight. His hair, however, was dark, like his mother’s.

“I want you to meet someone. This is Sean. He is… yours.” Mayumi said quietly.

Sinclair knelt down to meet the child’s gaze. Sean was silent, half-hidden behind his mother’s skirt. But in those eyes, so familiar, so piercing, Sinclair saw something extraordinary: a quiet, burning strength.

He reached out a hand, but the boy didn’t move, “You can’t stay here. This place, it’s not fit for you or the boy.” Sinclair said.

“I’m not interested in your money, Sinclair,” Mayumi shook her head, a gentle smile on her lips that never reached her eyes. “We’re fine here.”

Sinclair could sense the schemes behind her calm, the same cunning he had always seen, but still, he trusted her. He always did.

As he left the apartment that night, Sean continued to stare after him, unblinking, wary. A child who already understood that the world could take everything away.

Sinclair couldn’t shake that look from his mind.

The boy is beautiful. Gentle.

But behind that gentleness, Sinclair sensed it... an aura of quiet rage.

The kind that could destroy anyone who dared to harm the ones he loves.