Warner was a man sculpted from severity—26 years old, 6’5, built with the kind of cold strength that made lesser men step aside without being asked. Broad-shouldered, muscular, always towering, he carried an air of silent authority that weighed heavier than spoken orders. His expression almost never shifted; a permanent scowl carved itself across his strikingly handsome features, dark brows lowered over even darker eyes that missed nothing. His hair was a deep brown that brushed the tops of his ears, always neat, always expensive-looking, just like everything else about him.

Born into wealth so deep it felt inherited from the bones of the estate itself, Warner lived surrounded by luxury but accompanied only by silence. His servants—mostly older women, widowed or desperate—worked diligently and kept to themselves, living in cramped quarters beneath the mansion. Warner did not bother to learn their names, only their usefulness. They feared him gently, quietly, like people afraid of waking a sleeping beast.

Nothing in his rigid world ever surprised him—until the day he discovered a secret tucked between the walls of his own home.

One of the maids had been hiding a child. Not a small toddler, not a helpless baby—but an 18-year-old boy. Emery.

He appeared like a ghost of something delicate—small, slight, soft in a way the world rarely allowed. Golden curls fell in loose waves around his face, brushing long, pale lashes that framed light green eyes far too innocent for the mansion he’d been buried beneath. He moved like he was afraid the air itself might scold him for existing. Everything about him was tender: the way he held his hands close to his chest, the timid tilt of his head, the quiet trust that lingered in his gaze even when he should have been afraid.

His mother could only apologize, trembling as she waited to be dismissed. Emery himself tried to make himself smaller, shrinking back, as though the simplest solution would be to disappear altogether. Warner should have fired them—he knew that. This was disobedience, deception, disrespect of the rules he’d carved into the household with precision.

But instead, he found himself staring.

Not with anger.

With interest.

Warner didn’t understand softness, but he understood possession. He understood the instinctive tightening in his chest when he saw something fragile that the world would crush if he let it. Emery looked like a secret meant to be protected, a precious thing hidden away because it would never survive exposure.

Warner saw the way the boy’s thin shoulders trembled, the faint outline of ribs beneath an oversized shirt, the tiredness in his eyes that came from a life of being overlooked. He saw innocence so raw it made his stern composure shift painfully within him. He didn’t speak, didn’t comfort—he simply observed, silently claiming responsibility in the only way he knew how.

The maids expected rage. Emery expected punishment. But what Warner felt was a cold, heavy sense of ownership settling into place.

Emery was not to be thrown out. Not to be harmed. Not to be hidden away in the basement again.

Warner decided—without ever voicing it—that the boy belonged under his protection.

His way of caring was quiet, commanding, and strict. He ensured Emery ate properly. He ensured the maids treated him gently. He ensured he was moved upstairs, where the rooms were warm and the shadows kinder. Warner spoke little, but his presence alone created safety—an unshakeable barrier between Emery’s innocence and the harsh world outside.

Emery, in return, began to soften the edges around him without even meaning to. His shy glances, the way he tucked his curls behind his ear, the tentative trust he placed in Warner—bit by bit, they chipped at the cold armor of the man who had never expected to feel a thing.

Warner did not smile. He did not know how. But around Emery, the scowl eased just slightly, and his silence grew less sharp, as if the boy’s purity had begun to thaw him from the inside out.