At a concert, I went wild, shouting at the top idol on stage, “Tony Townsend, spray on my face!”

That night, my brother had me pinned against the ancestral altar, a ruler pressing down on the back of my neck.

“Lift your head. Tell me, what did you want that idol to do to you?”

Later, he shoved me down onto the mattress, his fingertips grinding against my swollen lips.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

The lights were blinding, and the screams were deafening at Tony’s concert. My childhood friend was up on stage, holding a giant water gun, laughing like a maniac as he sprayed the crowd.

On impulse, I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Tony, spray me! Spray my face!”

The moment the words left my mouth, the arena fell into a weird silence. Even the music seemed to glitch for half a beat.

I was feeling proud of how bold I sounded, until the back of my neck prickled, like I’d been targeted by some predator.

Slowly, I turned my head and met a pair of chilling eyes.

Leon?

What was my brother doing here?

He was sitting one row behind me, looking sharp in a tailored suit. His face was set in stone, eyes dark and cold.

My heart lurched, and the fan sign I’d been holding slipped from my hand and hit the ground with a sharp smack.

He lifted his gaze slightly, his voice low. “Half an hour. Get home.”

Though the concert wasn’t even over, I slipped out.

My chest was tight, and my mind was racing, already trying to come up with some excuse to feed him later.

However, I didn’t even get the chance. My phone went off like crazy, notification after notification popping up.

[Maxwell Corporation’s second heir, Harry Maxwell, openly flirts with male idol at concert, begging to get sprayed in the face!]

[Maxwell Corporation stock price drops 2.7% after scandal involving the second heir!]

My hand shook so hard that I almost dropped my phone.

Damn clickbait. Who the heck came up with these headlines?

I sat in the car, staring out at the city lights streaking by, Adam’s apple bobbing.

Leon and I’s relationship was complicated. On paper, it was a perfect adopted golden child versus the playboy heir.

I was the real playboy, while he was the fake saint.

Dad had been completely taken in by him. On his deathbed, he handed over the Maxwell Corporation and me, twelve years old at the time, into Leon’s care.

Everyone said my brother was the perfect heir. However, I knew better. Behind that polite, gentlemanly mask was a ruthless lone wolf.

I stood outside Leon’s study, my hand hovering over the door handle, hesitating to push it.

Finally, I sucked in a breath and twisted the knob. The familiar scent of cedarwood hit me immediately.

The air felt chill and restrained, just like him.

“Huh? He’s not here?”

Seriously?

He told me to come back, and then he wasn’t even home.

I flopped down onto his leather couch, pulled out my phone, and glared at the trending topics still dragging my name through the mud.

I raked a hand through my hair, and out of nowhere, Tony’s smug face flashed in my head.

Backstage today, he had leaned in with that irritating grin, saying, “Harry, ever thought about whether your parents’ car crash was really an accident?

“Leon’s just an adopted son. Why would he inherit the Maxwell fortune?”

The word “accident” stabbed into my skull, making my temples pound.

Could my parents’ crash have been planned?

No. Leon told me himself it was an accident.

I shot to my feet and stalked over to Leon’s bookshelf, running my fingers across the rows of thick binders until I stopped at one labeled: October 21, 2016.

The date of my parents’ crash.

“Don’t you want to know the truth?” Tony’s words rang in my ears again.

As I pulled the file free, a bundle of photographs slipped out, scattering across the floor.

I froze.

They were all… pictures of me.

In one, a teenager in a blue-and-white school uniform grinned proudly from a podium. That was me at fifteen, when I’d won the math competition.

I thought the photo had gone missing, but it turned out Leon had kept it here.

Another showed me at seven, riding on Leon’s shoulders to pick persimmons. There was one of me at twelve, when he had carried me home from the hospital after an IV drip.

He even kept the embarrassing shots of me passed out drunk on my eighteenth birthday.

I crouched down and picked up one photo of Leon himself, back when he was still an orphan.

In that moment, I was back to when he was thirteen. A pale, porcelain-faced boy sat quietly under the sycamore tree at the orphanage, lashes lowered, still as a painting.

He was wearing a washed-out T-shirt, yet he looked more like a storybook prince than any of the rich kids at my school in their polished clothes.

That day, Mom had ruffled my hair and asked, “Harry, which one do you want to choose as your brother?”

The day before, I had begged her nonstop to give me a big brother. So, the next day, she took me to the orphanage to pick one.

Later on, the boy under the tree became my brother.

I gave him his name, just as carefully as I used to name my teddy bear and toy soldiers.

When I tore up my homework, he rewrote it for me. After I broke the neighbor’s antique vase, the punishment landed on his palms instead of mine.

Leon became my shadow. Wherever I went, he followed.

Until the day I caused real trouble.

I had smashed some punk’s head into the ICU after he had harassed a girl outside school.

However, the revenge didn’t come for me, but for Leon.

When I found him, he was lying in a deserted alley, blood pooling into a winding stream beneath him.

It was my mess. So why was he the one paying the price?

I had clutched him and bawled, swearing I would study hard and that I’d never cause him trouble again.

Then, our parents died in the crash.

Before the funeral was even over, Mom and Dad’s former business partners were already ready to tear the company apart.

I still remember that night at the memorial. Rain mixed with tears, soaking Leon’s black suit.

He wrapped me in his jacket at twenty-one, holding me close. Instead of crying, I clung to him until his clothes were stained.

Without realizing it, I had bitten my lips raw.

Leon had pried open my mouth with steady fingers, dabbing the wounds with a cotton swab patiently.

Back then, he would pat my back and say, “Every year from now on, I will be here with you.”

However, somewhere along the way, we’d turned into two people who could barely stand each other.

The sound of an engine cutting off outside jolted me out of my memories. Panicked, I scrambled to gather the scattered photos and shoved them back into place.

The lock clicked.

“Harry, what are you looking through?” Leon’s voice came from behind me.

I spun around, slamming against the desk, my heart hammering in my chest.

He stood in the doorway, shadowed, his suit jacket slung casually over one arm. His gaze dropped to the bookshelf behind me, his eyes dark as pitch.

My whole body tensed. Sweat slid down my spine, soaking my shirt.

“Leon, why did you call me back?”

He didn’t answer. Step by step, he walked closer, each thud of his shoes against the carpet pounding against my nerves.

I swallowed hard, darting a glance at the folder I had just shoved back.

He couldn’t have noticed, right?

Leon stopped just half a step away from me. He raised his hand, his fingertips brushing my ear before pulling a business magazine from the shelf.

“Whew…” I let out a shaky breath, hearing the faint tremor in my chest.

“Bored enough to dig through files from seven years ago?” His voice was calm, but it made the back of my neck go cold.

My heart sank straight to the floor.

Suddenly, he bent down.

“Thud!” A thick file folder slammed onto the desk in front of me.

“Take it. Look through it.”

He unbuttoned his cuff, his tone leaving no room for argument. “But first, you owe me an explanation for tonight at the concert.”

I grabbed the file and stared right into Leon’s fathomless eyes. “It’s late, Leon. How about we talk tomorrow?”

His fingers slid across my ear again, then suddenly clamped around my chin, forcing my head up. “If you dare hang around that Tony kid again, I’ll break your legs.”

My heartbeat stalled.

So fierce.

Could Tony have been right?

I stared at Leon’s face close to mine, and a chilling image flashed through my mind.

An evil adopted son killing his foster parents, seizing their fortune, and locking up his younger brother in some twisted obsession.

Crap! How horrifying!

I could almost see Leon at Mom and Dad’s crash site, coldly wiping his fingerprints from the steering wheel.

Then, striding toward me with a ruler in hand, his lips curled, whispering, “Harry… you can’t escape…”

“Harry.”

His icy voice dragged me back to reality.

I blinked hard. At some point, Leon was already holding a dark wooden ruler in his hand.

“Get to the ancestral hall,” he said coldly.

My knees almost buckled.

The ancestral hall was the Maxwells’ most forbidden place. No one went there except during worship.

Confused and uneasy, I pushed open the old hardwood doors and stepped inside.

The hall was dim, lit only by a few flickering candles on the altar table.

“Kneel,” Leon’s voice came from behind me.

“Huh?”

Before I could react, he kicked the back of my leg, and I collapsed onto the prayer cushion.

“Crack!”

The ruler lashed across my backside without mercy.

“Ah!” Pain shot through me like electricity, making me suck in a sharp breath.

“Leon, are you crazy?!” I twisted around to glare at him through clenched teeth, anger flaring in my chest.

“Hm.” Leon loomed over me, eyes as sharp as knives.

His low and magnetic voice pressed down with crushing authority. “Tell me, Harry. What did you mean when you shouted at Tony to spray your face?”

I stiffened, jaw tight, refusing to answer.

The ruler cracked down again, the sting searing through me. Humiliation mixed with the pain.

He bent close. His long fingers dug into my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes.

At once, his presence crashed over me. It was cold and suffocating, like pine trees on a snow-capped mountain, sharp enough to make my back go rigid.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but his hand at my waist seemed to squeeze deliberately.

“Not talking?”

Pinned against the altar, his voice was low and oppressive. “So you do know what shame is.”

I looked up at him to find anger and disgust in his eyes.

I expected it. He always thought I was useless.

“You’re the one who doesn’t care about me! So what gives you the right to treat me like this?!” I shouted back, defiant.

“What gives you the right to hit me?!”

His grip loosened slightly, but his voice stayed cold. “Dad told me before he died to discipline you well.

“If you keep acting this recklessly, how are you supposed to inherit the Maxwells’ legacy?”

His words had barely fallen when the ruler landed again, cold as a winter wind.

The sting didn’t break me, though. Instead, it ignited the worst kind of rebellion in me.

I shoved Leon back, then yanked open the waistband of my pants.

The fabric slid down, exposing the sharp lines of my waist. My abs caught the candlelight, the V-line tapering into the dark edge of my underwear.

Leon’s breath hitched.

I saw his Adam’s apple bob hard, his pupils contract behind his glasses. His grip on the ruler tightened so much that the veins bulged in his hand.

“Leon.” I lifted my chin deliberately to taunt him. “If I strip down, you can hit me harder. Might even enjoy it more.”

I locked eyes with him. The air around us froze, pressing in from all sides until it felt like I couldn’t breathe.