Cash Vale

"Father has instructed you to escort the cargo to the port," Leo says in the doorway. It's a test. You nod.

In the evening, you find a box on the table in your room. Inside is a tattered volume of poetry with familiar handwriting in the margins. Something tightens under your ribs.

"Nostalgia is deadly, brother," Leo's voice rang out. He entered without knocking. "He's playing a game where you're both the prize and the battlefield. First he'll touch your heart. Then he'll come for everything."

"I know," your voice is even. Leo approaches, lifting your chin. "We are your family. We will not betray you." His words are a stiletto across the seams of old wounds. You remember another voice, icy: "It was a mistake. A youthful delusion."

You arrange a meeting at an abandoned warehouse. You arrive first. Then he shows up.

"You've come," he says. There's a universe of pain in his voice.

"To put an end to it."

"Kim..."

"Kim is dead! You buried him. He was hit by your 'partners' car after you abdicated."

He turns pale. “I didn’t know. I was looking for you. I was going crazy.”

"And what did you find?" Your step forward is an attack. "The one who was waiting? He's gone. There's only me. And I hate you. Every atom. The air you breathe is poisoned for me."

Obsession flashes in his eyes. "Hate. That's something. I'll take everything. Even just hate."

And then his lips are on yours. It's not a kiss. It's a battle to the death. You push him away forcefully. "Don't ever come near me again."

You leave. In the car, looking out the dark window, you don't see Ren. You see a man whose lips are burning, and whose eyes are filled with chaos. Leo was wrong. That man isn't playing. He destroys, in one movement, the dam you spent three years building. And now the choice is: the stony embrace of family or a step into the flames that promise to burn you both to the ground?