18.
I returned to the country in the early hours of the morning without informing anyone.
The main house was as silent as a tomb, lit with cold, white lights, and the air felt stagnant. The butler whispered that my father was in the music room. I didn't ask any further, simply pushed the door open and entered.
He was sitting in front of the grand piano, his back to the door, fingers suspended above the keys, unmoving. The black piano looked like a silent beast lurking in the dark.
"What a surprise, back so soon." He didn't turn around. His tone was calm, as if saying, "You went to buy water—what took so long?"
"Did you enjoy Singapore?"
I didn't respond. I stood at the doorway, eyes fixed on his fingers. Those were hands I knew all too well—bony, powerful, used to wielding control for years. But now, they looked like they were covered in tiny, fragmented cuts.
There were smudges of blood along the edge of the piano keys—still wet, it seemed—seeping from the palms of his hands.
"Where is my brother?" My voice was low, simmering with rage.
He finally turned around. Under the light, his face looked pale and worn. His suit was as sharp as ever, but fine lines had crept into the corners of his eyes. "So now you've learned to question me?"
"The Zhao family project collapsed," he said, "Your brother was reckless. At the final stage, just one step away, and he went and smashed a glass ashtray over Mr. Zhao's head. He's still in emergency care. All for you—such loyalty."
"He's just a Beta," I gritted through clenched teeth, "not some sacrificial offering you can trade at will."
"He agreed to it." My father's voice remained flat. "I didn't force him."
My fists clenched audibly. "He agreed?"
"He's always been obedient," my father said as if recalling something trivial. "Never made a fuss. Not even when we sent him to the sanatorium. You know why he turned out this way? Because he understood his place as a Beta—he knew how to survive."
"So that gives you the right to send him to the Zhao family?" My voice was on the brink of collapse. "Like livestock?"
My father stood up and walked toward me, step by step. His expression was so calm it chilled the blood. "You don't understand. In this world, not everyone gets to choose their path. Some are born to rule. Others, to be used. You're an Alpha—you were never the same."
"And besides, he's always known how to survive."
A stack of photos fluttered to the ground like a fan. My brother, covered in marks, pinned to a bed by an unfamiliar Alpha. No—not unfamiliar. I'd seen him before, in a photo from my brother's room. He'd said…
"The head of the sanatorium," my father said casually, grinding his leather shoe over my brother's face in the photo. "You think he was forced? He learned how to trade his body for food a long time ago."
The taste of rust filled my throat. I crushed the photos in my hand. "Where is he now?"
My father calmly closed the piano lid. "He ran. Know why? Because he couldn't face you." He suddenly grabbed the back of my neck. "You think I don't know what kind of filthy thoughts you have about your brother? You want to own him? What a joke. He belongs to the Pei family. He's public property."
I wrenched free from his grip, tasting the blood in my own scent. "You're lying."
He took a phone from his jacket and played a security recording. In it, my brother staggered over the garden fence, his white shirt soaked in blood at the back.
"He'd rather live on the streets than face you. Don't you get it yet?"
I turned to leave, but the bodyguards blocked the doorway. My father's voice rang out behind me:
"Go on, find him. See if he's willing to come back with you."
19.
I searched for him for a long time.
My brother was extremely careful—no international travel, no credit cards, no visits to places requiring ID. A Beta without scent could vanish into a crowd effortlessly.
In the end, it was a contact from my mother who told me where to look.
I found him in a run-down apartment in the south of the city. The first torrential rain of the season was pounding against the windows. The door wasn't locked. I pushed it open and saw him curled up in a corner, the hem of his shirt soaked in mud, head down as he wrapped gauze around an arm wound.
"This is what you meant by 'I'll handle it'?" I slammed the door behind me. Rain dripped from my hair onto the floor, leaving a trail of wet spots.
He looked up abruptly, startled. The gauze slipped from his hand.
Those wounds looked worse than in the photos—stretching from his collarbone down to his waist. I moved to touch him, and he flinched away.
"…Chengyao, I…"
"Was it all true?" I cut him off. "That year, when you were eighteen, in the sanatorium…"
He suddenly laughed. It was like shattered glass, stabbing straight into my eyes.
"Yeah."
"It's true."
"The first time was for dinner. The second for medicine. The third…" He rubbed an old scar on his arm unconsciously. "For a phone call. I called home and begged the Pei family to take me back."
What had he been through in that place?
Rain trailed down the window like tears. I looked at his trembling lashes and thought of that rainy night when I was nineteen, watching him drink at a party. I thought it was desire. Now I knew—it was despair.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?" He looked up, moonlight casting a bruise over the corner of his mouth. "That someone used me? Or that…" His voice choked. "That I tried… I tried to believe in you…"
I knelt down and pulled him into my arms. He shook like a dying bird. My cedarwood pheromone spilled out uncontrollably, and he suddenly pushed against me, struggling violently.
"Don't comfort me with pheromones… I'm not an Omega… I can't smell it…"
That truth was crueler than any humiliation.
I cupped his face but didn't know how to show I wanted more than submission. I could only press my forehead to his and whisper: "Come home with me."
"Which home?" His pupils widened slightly, voice trembling. "The one that treated me like a toy?"
I kissed the mole at the corner of his eye and tasted blood. "Our home."
Thunder cracked outside as his icy fingers finally gripped the hem of my shirt—
Just like that night when I was nineteen, when he leaned against the car window and I stupidly thought it was just the alcohol.
20.
I took him away from the Pei family.
We rented a rundown apartment in the old part of town, far from the city center. The streets were narrow, tangled with wires, flooded in the rain, frosted in the winter. Locals spoke with thick dialects.
For the first time, he could sleep through the night.
He quit the sleeping pills. I didn't ask how long he'd been taking them—I just gathered the empty bottles each night and stashed them away.
He cooked for me. It wasn't great, but I always finished it. He woke early and grew mint and tomatoes on the windowsill. His life was like a shattered porcelain cup, glued back together, still fragile—but he held on tightly.
I began digging into the past.
The sanatorium. The Zhao family. The so-called "charity donations" my father used to cover things up. The company shares siphoned off under my name. I investigated it all.
When I called my mother, she was silent for a long time before saying, "You finally found out."
"Why didn't you stop him?"
"He threatened me. Said he'd do worse to Che Ran."
"So you gave in?"
"I tried to save him. I tried to stop your father. He went after the Lin family…" Her voice was barely audible. "I wanted to save him… but I failed."
I hung up without replying. I didn't want to forgive anyone.
My brother asked, "Why are you digging all this up? We already escaped."
I didn't answer.
Because I knew—we didn't escape.
That prison had already seeped into our bones.
Even if we ran to the ends of the earth, it would still be there.
Unless I tore it down with my own hands.