Ava's pov-
The glass of Château Lafite trembled in Ava Carter's hand, though her grip was as poised as ever. She stood at the edge of her penthouse balcony, staring out over a city that glittered like secrets buried in diamonds.
Behind her, the house was quiet.
Adrien's laughter still echoed faintly from his room upstairs — carefree, untouched, unaware.
But Ava wasn't upstairs. Ava was here.
And Ava had just seen a ghost.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
> You didn't respond, Ava.
It's rude to ignore family.
I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to see what you've built.
—Alex.
She stared at the screen. No breath. No blink. Just the sudden feeling that every wall around her — glass, steel, façade — had cracked at once.
Alex.
She hadn't heard that name in sixteen years.
Not since the night she walked barefoot across the marble floor of a courthouse, child in arms, blood in her mouth, freedom just out of reach.
She thought he was gone.
And now he wanted to see?
See what?
Her success? Her empire? Her son?
No. No. No.
For a moment, all she could hear was her heartbeat.
And then—
CRACK.
The sound of glass shattering. She didn't realize she had dropped it.
Her breath caught in her throat. That old, rusted fear — the kind she'd buried under years of diamonds and dominance — it crept back in like a shadow under the door.
She leaned against the counter, gripping it like the world might slip beneath her feet.
He found her. After all these years.
---
She was sixteen when she gave birth to Adrien.
The pain wasn't what she remembered most.
It was the silence.
The sterile hospital room, too cold for comfort, too quiet for the chaos inside her chest. She was sixteen. Sixteen, in a paper-thin gown, wrists bruised from being grabbed too hard, back still sore from the last time Alex "lost control."
They said labor would be the worst part.
They lied.
"Push," the nurse said gently. Ava pushed, but her eyes were fixed on the door. He wasn't here. Again. He had promised, but she knew better. Even back then, she knew.
She delivered her son alone. No father in sight. Just her blood, her tears, her breath shaking as the world changed.
When they placed Adrien in her arms, something inside her snapped into place.
He had Alex's jaw. Her eyes. A cry that cracked the ceiling.
But the fear didn't go away.
The next time she saw Alex, hours later, he reeked of whiskey and perfume.
"You missed it," she whispered. Her voice barely held together.
"I didn't miss anything," he said with a lazy grin, leaning against the door like he hadn't destroyed her hours before. "He's just a baby. He won't remember."
"But I will."
He rolled his eyes. "You're so dramatic, Ava. You always make it about you."
She held Adrien closer.
Alex didn't hold his son. He didn't even ask to.
A child having a child.
Alex hadn't even looked at the baby that day.
She remembered lying in that hospital bed, soaked in sweat and blood, clutching this tiny, fragile life in her arms… while Alex stood by the window, texting another girl. Smirking.
"Congrats," he'd said flatly. "Guess your life's over now."
---
But it had started before that.
The first time he hit her, she'd been fifteen.
Because she wore red lipstick.
"You tryna be a slut?" he'd growled, shoving her so hard she slammed into the wall and knocked over a lamp.
She remembered thinking, I must've done something wrong. I made him mad.
The second time was for smiling at a boy.
The third was for crying too loudly.
He broke her favorite mirror once — the one her mother gave her — then grabbed her by the hair and screamed, "Now you don't have to look at yourself. Ever think about what you make me do?"
Ava had bruises no one saw.
Welts on her back, split lips hidden behind designer gloss.
She still remembers bleeding through her dress the night of his prom, and pretending it was just a scrape.
But the worst was the silence.
How he'd go cold. Lock her out of his room. Vanish for days.
She once waited outside his house in the rain, seven months pregnant, because he said he'd "think about coming back" if she begged hard enough.
She begged.
She still hates herself for that.
Adrien's POV
---
Adrien could tell something was wrong the second he stepped into the house.
It wasn't the silence — their house was always quiet. It was the kind of quiet.
The kind that came with tension, not peace.
The kitchen was spotless, like always. His smoothie was on the marble island, already stirred the way he liked it. The music was low. Her heels were kicked off by the door. Everything looked normal.
But his mom wasn't humming.
She always hummed. Ava Carter had a song in her head at all times — even when she was annoyed, even when she was yelling at the espresso machine.
Today, silence.
"Mom?" he called.
"In here," came her voice — too calm, too light.
He followed it to the sunroom.
She sat curled on the white leather couch, robe tied too tight around her waist, fingers absently twisting the hem. She was staring out the window, but not looking at anything. Just… staring.
"You okay?"
She looked up too quickly. "Of course. Why?"
"You're… just sitting there. Not on your phone. Not working. Not folding laundry like a lunatic. It's weird."
She laughed, but it was hollow. "I'm allowed to sit, aren't I?"
Adrien didn't respond. His eyes dropped to the thin red mark on her wrist.
It looked like a scratch. Maybe from cleaning. Maybe from nothing. But something about it—
He sat across from her.
"You know you can talk to me, right?"
Ava tilted her head. "About what?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Whatever's making you pretend you're fine when you're obviously not."
Ava froze. Just for a breath.
"You're imagining things," she said, too sweet. Too careful.
Adrien leaned back, studying her like he was seeing her for the first time. "You always say that when you're hiding something."
"I'm your mother. I'm supposed to hide things."
"Yeah, well, you suck at it."
Her smile trembled — not a lot, just enough.
"I'm fine," she whispered. "Really."
Adrien didn't push.
But he noticed.
He noticed how she flinched when a car engine revved outside. How her shoulders tightened when her phone buzzed. How she picked up the mug with her left hand instead of her dominant right — the one with the mark.
Something was coming.
And he didn't like the way it made her look… small.
That night, long after Ava went to bed with her silk mask and lavender diffuser misting the room like perfume, Adrien crept down the hallway barefoot.
He wasn't going to sleep. Not until he got answers.
She was lying to him. That much was obvious. And it wasn't the usual lies — not the white ones she told to protect him from the press or the fake friends or the world outside their gates.
This was something else.
Something older. Darker.
He headed to the back wing of the house. Past the wine cellar. Past the gallery room with the untouchable art.
To the servant's quarters.
He found her exactly where he thought she'd be — curled in her old rocking chair with a shawl over her shoulders, glasses perched low on her nose, reading some dusty crime novel that had probably seen three generations of the Carter family.
"Maria," he said softly.
The maid looked up. Her face was warm, but her eyes were sharp. Still sharp after all these years.
"Adrien." Her voice was papery, careful. "It's late."
"I need to ask you something. About… before. About my father."
She didn't flinch. But her eyes dimmed.
"I wasn't supposed to see anything," she said. "But I did."
Adrien sat across from her, knees bouncing. "He hurt her, didn't he?"
Maria sighed, folding her book with a slow, final sound. "He didn't just hurt her, mijo. He broke her."
Adrien's jaw clenched.
"She was just a girl when she had you. Sixteen, fresh-faced, too soft for the world she was marrying into. And he—he was a boy who thought power made him a man."
"What did he do?"
Maria looked out the window, remembering things she wished she could forget.
"There were bruises. Screaming. Nights she'd hide in your nursery just so he wouldn't touch her again. He cheated. Lied. Pushed her. I saw her bleed once — said she fell down the stairs. But I knew better."
Adrien's hands curled into fists.
"She stayed for you," Maria said. "Even when she was terrified. Even when her own parents disowned her for getting pregnant so young. She built this empire with shaking hands."
Adrien swallowed hard. "Why didn't anyone stop him?"
"Because men like Alex Carter don't get stopped easily. Not until your mother made him."
"What did she do?"
Maria smiled, just faintly. "One night, she stopped crying. That was the night he left. Never came back."