And between them, Gideon.
Seven years old and already learning to survive.
His expression carved from stone. No tears. No defiance. Just careful, practiced emptiness. The same look I'd seen tonight when he'd walked away from the dining table—control so absolute it stopped resembling humanity.
This is the first time I've ever seen him look afraid.
Not crying. Not broken.
Just… braced.
Waiting for the hit that must have come often enough to live in his bones.
Something ugly twisted in my throat. Pity I didn't want. Understanding I couldn't afford.
I shoved the frame back where I'd found it, dust clouding the glass.
My hands shook.
Monsters aren't born. They're made.
I backed away from the shelf, pulse hammering, desperate suddenly to unsee what I'd just learned.
But the image stayed.
That small boy. That careful blankness.
The man upstairs who'd perfected it.
The air shifted.
Warmth bloomed behind me—the kind that came with mass, with presence, with a body close enough to feel even without contact. My spine locked. Every muscle went rigid, like freezing could make me invisible.
I didn't turn.
Couldn't breathe.
"Enjoying yourself?"
The voice slid low and precise through the silence, cutting clean through the hammering of my pulse. Not loud. Not raised. Just there, unavoidable as gravity.
My blood turned to ice.
How long has he been watching?
I forced myself to turn slowly, hands still trembling, the photo frame's ghost weight burning against my palms even though I'd already shoved it back into hiding.
Gideon stood in the doorway.
Casual clothes—soft shirt, loose sweats. Bare feet on polished wood. Hands tucked into his pockets like this was nothing. Like he'd wandered in by accident and found me rifling through his past.
But his eyes.
God, his eyes.
Furious.
Not the hot, explosive kind that screamed and threw things. The cold kind. Controlled. The kind that came from being understood when he'd never intended to be seen.
