Caleb laughed.
“You don’t get to give orders here,” he replied, taking a step closer, “this is my house.”
Victor rose slowly to his feet.
“No,” he said, his voice cold now, sharpened by clarity, “this is mine.”
The tension that followed felt electric, a moment stretched thin enough to snap, but Caleb merely scoffed, waving dismissively.
“She’s dramatic,” Caleb said, gesturing toward Elena as if she were a problem to be managed, “she needs structure, that’s all, something she clearly never learned growing up surrounded by money.”
Victor’s gaze dropped to Elena’s hands, raw and cracked, then to the faint bruising visible beneath her sleeve, fingerprints disguised as accidents, and the realization that formed in his mind was not immediate rage but something far worse, a cold comprehension that his gift had not protected his daughter but isolated her, creating a private stage upon which cruelty could thrive unnoticed.
He did not explode.
He did not threaten.
He stepped inside.
