The atmosphere surrounding the Rothenberg villa turned volatile. Outside the massive stone walls, the sky shifted into a bruised, lightless expanse. Thick clouds gathered in heavy layers, completely obscuring the moonlight. The garden below was swallowed by a vacuum of total darkness.
Bai Mingzhu stepped out of Armin's room. She paused in the hallway, her silk dress rustling against the carpet. She wore a sweet, controlled smile. She did not look back as she walked toward the stairs.
Inside the bedroom, the air was static. Lorien stood near the foot of the bed. He was looking down at his shoes, his hands hanging limp at his sides. He looked like a puppet with cut strings.
A massive bolt of lightning fractured the sky outside the window. The thunder followed instantly, a violent, bone-shaking roar that vibrated the glass panes.
Lorien gasped. His eyes gotten wide in shock, He clutched his chest with both hands. His knees buckled, and he dropped to the rug in a cramped, defensive crouch.
Armin reacted immediately. He strode forward, his footsteps heavy on the hardwood. He reached down to grab the boy's shoulders. "Are you alright? look at me."
Florian's POV:
Everything was spinning. The floor felt like it was tilting at a forty-five-degree angle. My head throbbed with a sharp, rhythmic pressure. I looked down at the patterns on the rug. They were unfamiliar.
Where am I? The last thing I remembered was the cold. The inability to draw air into my chest. I remembered the darkness of the hospital room.
"Are you alright?"
The voice was deep. It was commanding. It was a voice I had heard every day of my adult life. I flinched. The sound sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through my nervous system. I knew that voice.
I slowly lifted my head. My neck felt stiff, like the muscles had not been used in years. I looked up.
I saw him. I saw the sharp jawline. I saw the ice-blue eyes that used to watch me from across a mahogany desk. It was my boss. It was Armin Volker von,Rothenberg.
My vision blurred. I felt a surge of terror. I began to crawl backward on my hands and knees. I didn't stop until my back hit the cold surface of the wall.
Armin watched the boy's reaction with mounting confusion. The boy wasn't just startled; he was terrified.
"What happened?" Armin asked. He stayed in a crouch, keeping his distance so he wouldn't provoke him further. "Why are you scaring away? I'm not going to hurt you."
The boy's olive eyes were wide and swimming with tears. His lower lip was trembling so hard he could barely keep his mouth closed.
"This... this cannot be," the boy whispered. The voice was barely audible over the wind hitting the window. "How come I am alive?"
Armin leaned forward. He didn't hear the whisper clearly. "Are you hurt? Did you hit your self when you fell?"
Armin noticed the change in the boy's expression. The confusion was being replaced by a frantic, desperate recognition. This was not the shy, quiet boy Mingzhu had brought into the room. This was something else.
Florian looked around the room. This was not an office. This was not the small, sterile apartment in Germany where he used to spend his nights alone with his only twin.
He looked back at Armin. He noticed the way Armin was looking at him. It was a look of genuine concern. Armin had never looked at him that way when he was alive. To Armin, he had been a tool. A shadow. A subordinate.
"Tell me if you are hurt," Armin said again. His voice was softer now.
Florian tried to smile, but it turned into a sob. He stopped crawling away. He lunged forward, crawling toward Armin on the floor.
Armin was startled by the sudden movement. He fell backward, his hands hitting the rug as he tried to maintain his balance. He ended up sitting on the floor as the boy collapsed into his personal space.
Florian fell into Armin's arms. He gripped Armin's shirt with a strength that didn't belong to a stranger. He buried his face in the crook of Armin's neck.
"Why am I alive, sir?" Florian asked.
Armin's entire body went rigid. His eyes grew wide. He felt the heat of the boy's breath against his skin. "What are you talking about? Who are you calling 'sir'?"
Florian pulled back just enough to look Armin in the eyes. He reached out with a trembling hand and touched the back of Armin's knuckles.
"The last time I touched you was the day of my funeral," Florian said.
Armin stopped breathing. The blood drained from his face, leaving him a ghostly pale. "How do you know about that? Who told you about the funeral?"
Florian didn't answer with words. He leaned his head against Armin's chest. His ear pressed against the fabric of Armin's shirt. He felt a hard, cold object beneath the cloth.
Florian reached up. He circled his fingers over the spot where the metal was hidden. He felt the familiar shape of the gold locket.
"It is the locket," Florian whispered. Fresh tears slid down his cheeks. "You still have it."
Armin grabbed the boy's wrists. He pushed him back slightly so he could see his face. His ice-blue eyes were searching the olive depths of the boy's gaze. He was looking for a lie. He was looking for a trick.
"How?" Armin asked. "How on earth you know all about this?"
"I am not Lorien, sir," the boy said. His voice was steady now, filled with a heartbreaking weight. "I am Florian."
Armin's grip on the boy's wrists tightened. He let out a sharp, choked breath. "How is that possible? Florian is dead. I buried him."
"I still remember that locket," Florian said. He looked at the center of Armin's chest. "It was the reason I died. You throw it into the courtyard. You were so angry. I went out to find, because it was a gift from you."
Florian's voice drifted, as if he were back in that night. "The air was too cold. My lungs... they were never strong enough for that kind of weather. I found the locket in the snow. But I couldn't get back to the door. I failed you, didn't I?"
Armin's expression shattered. The mask of the cold, untouchable Rothenberg son fell away. He saw the truth in the way the boy tilted his head. He saw the truth in the specific way he called him "sir."
It was not lorien.
It was the boy who had died in the snow.
Armin pulled Florian into a crushing embrace. He wrapped his arms around the boy's back and held him so tight the boy gasped for air.
"You didn't fail," Armin whispered into the boy's hair. His voice was thick with a decade of repressed grief. "I was the one who failed. I let you go out there. I let you die for a piece of gold."
Outside, another bolt of lightning illuminated the room in a harsh, white flash. For a second, the two figures on the floor looked like a single shadow against the wall.
Meanwhile, Bai qi obsidian sedan drifted across the yellow line. Bai Qi did not notice. His grip on the leather steering wheel was loose. His mind was back in the sterile hallway of the ICU, hearing the click of the door that locked him out.
He was a pariah. A murderer in a bespoke suit.
A sudden, violent thud jolted the chassis. The car jerked. Bai Qi slammed on the brakes. His seatbelt locked against his chest, knocking the air from his lungs.
Outside, a man was shouting. The driver of the delivery truck he had clipped was standing in the rain, waving his arms and cursing.
Bai Qi didn't roll down the window. He didn't look at the damage. He stared at the rain-streaked windshield. In the distortion of the water and the streetlights, he saw a face.
It was Shu Yao.
The image was bittersweet. It was the Shu Yao of three hours ago—the boy who had looked at the cup of hot chocolate with wide, trusting eyes. Bai Qi had leaned over him.
He had forced that cup into his hands. He had used his authority to command the boy to drink a lethal dose of Belladonna.
A sob broke from Bai Qi's throat. It was a jagged, ugly sound. He put the car in gear and pulled away from the shouting man, leaving the scene of the minor accident behind. He didn't care about the insurance. He didn't care about the law.
As he drove toward the villa, a memory surfaced. It was a dream he had years ago, on the night before he was the upcoming CEO of the Rothenberg Empire. At that time, he thought it was stress. But Now, he knew it was a warning.
In the dream, the world was a void of monochrome. Everything was grey. The sky, the ground, the air itself.
Bai Qi was walking through a labyrinth of tall, grey walls. He was calling out a name.
"Qing Yue!"
He was looking for Qing yue. He was looking for the ghost he had spent his life wasting. He turned a corner, expecting to see the pale, elegant form of shu Yao.
He didn't find Qing Yue.
He found Shu Yao.
The boy was sitting on the ground in the center of a vast, open space. A single, harsh spotlight shone down on him from an invisible ceiling. Everything around him was grey, except for the floor.
Shu Yao was sitting in a wide, spreading pool of deep crimson blood.
Bai Qi's eyes went wide in the dream. He ran forward. He skidded on the wet floor, his shoes soaking in the gore. He reached out and grabbed Shu Yao by the shoulders, spinning him around.
"Shu Yao? What happened?"
Shu Yao looked up. His face was calm. He didn't look like he was in pain. But there was blood seeping from the corners of his mouth. There was a jagged, hollow hole in the center of his chest.
Shu Yao was holding something in his hands.
It was a heart. It was a raw, wet organ, still pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat. It was Shu Yao's own heart.
The boy held it out. His hands were coated in red. He offered the beating muscle to Bai Qi with a terrifying willingness.
"Take it," Shu Yao whispered in the dream.
Bai Qi stepped back. The horror was too much. He looked at the hole in the boy's chest, then at the gift in his hands. He felt a visceral surge of fear. He shook his head, his breath coming in short gasps.
"No," Bai Qi said. "I don't want it."
"It belongs to you," Shu Yao replied.
The heart slipped from Shu Yao's fingers. It hit the pool of blood with a wet splash. As soon as the contact was made, the light in Shu Yao's eyes went out. He slumped forward, his body falling face-first into the crimson lake.
Bai Qi had woken up in a cold sweat that night. He had dismissed it as a nightmare about the burdens of nothing.
Now, the dream had become the truth.
Shu Yao had given him everything. He had given him his years of silence. He had given him his health. And tonight, at the gala, he had literally taken the poison meant for Bai Qi. He had offered his life as a shield.
"I forced him," Bai Qi whispered to the empty car. "I made the dream happen."
The Belladonna was liquefying Shu Yao's internal organs. The boy was a hollowed-out vessel, just like in the dream, hooked to a machine that hissed like a mocking snake.
Bai Qi turned the car into the long, winding driveway of the villa. The gates opened automatically. The house looked like a tomb. It was dark, cold, and filled with the ghosts of people he had failed.
He didn't go inside. He stopped the car at the front steps. He sat there, his forehead resting against the steering wheel.
"I will pray," he said.
Bai Qi was a man of logic. He was a man of balance sheets and cold acquisitions. He did not believe in the divine. He believed in power. But tonight, power was a useless currency. He could not buy Shu Yao's kidneys. He could not sue the poison out of his blood.
He closed his eyes.
"I will pray," he repeated. His voice was a ragged thread of sound. "I don't care about the company. I don't care about the name.
He gripped the steering wheel so hard his joints began to ache.
"Just don't let him leave me," he sobbed. "Do not let me be alone with what I have done. I am the worst. I am a monster. Punish me, but let him breathe."
He looked out at the dark clouds covering the moon. He felt the weight of his sins like a physical mountain pressing down on his shoulders. He thought of Han Ruyan's face. He thought of George's disgust.
He was the King of the Rothenbergs, but as he sat in his idling car, he felt like a beggar.
"Please," he whispered into the darkness. "Just this once. Hear me."
The wind howled against the car, shaking the frame. Bai Qi remained in his crouched position, a broken monarch in a kingdom of shadows, waiting for a miracle he didn't deserve.