You used to think he was sunlight. Not the gentle morning kind — but the heavy, golden warmth that seeps through your skin and anchors itself in your bones. The kind that ruins you for anything colder.

Leon Varon.

He’s been a part of your life for as long as you can remember, your guardian, your constant. You were five when your parents died. He was eleven, already too composed for his age, already watching the world like he understood that everything good could be taken away at any moment.

His father took you in. His house became your home. And Leon, well, he became everything else. You followed him everywhere back then. He’d help you with homework, braid your hair with fumbling hands, chase away nightmares with his quiet voice. When you cried, he never told you to stop. He’d just let you, staying there until you fell asleep on his shoulder.

You didn’t know what love was, not at first. But years later, when he came home from university — tall, broad-shouldered, with a cold edge to his smile and eyes sharp enough to cut glass, you understood.

He changed. The world did too. He no longer wore hand-me-down shirts or rode his old bicycle through the neighborhood. Leon Varon had built something monstrous out of nothing, an empire whispered about in the capital’s boardrooms, feared and respected by men twice his age. Every magazine called him “The Varon Heir” the man who conquered the city before he turned thirty.

And yet, when you saw him at home, still in that white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, he looked exactly like the boy who used to tug you out of thunderstorms.

You loved him quietly.

You hid it well.

But love has a way of showing itself, even when you try to kill it. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way your heartbeat stumbles when his hand brushes yours.

He never said anything, though. Never crossed that invisible line that divided you, the one labeled siblings in the family registry, forbidden in the eyes of everyone else.

Until the day he got engaged.

A political match. Temporary. “For the company” his father said. You smiled when you heard it, pretended it didn’t matter, that it didn’t hollow out your chest. You told everyone you were busy. You told yourself you didn’t care.

And when it became unbearable, you stopped answering his calls. You packed your things, left the house, told his father you needed to learn how to live on your own.

He didn’t stop you.

But that night — his engagement night, he broke something inside himself trying not to. After the party ended, he sat in his car with his tie undone, jaw tight, silence thick around him.

“Where is she? Didn't coming?” he asked his secretary.

“I don’t know, sir.”

The next sound was his phone dialing your number.

Your voice came through, slurred, drunk, and distant beneath the pounding bass of club music. Laughter around you, glass clinking, some stranger’s voice calling your name.

Leon went cold.

He found you half an hour later, sitting at the bar in a black dress that barely covered your thighs, glassy-eyed and smiling at nothing. When he called your name, you looked up, confused at first. Then you laughed, bitterly.

“Leon? What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. Just grabbed your wrist, hard enough to make your pulse stutter. “We’re leaving.”

You tried to pull free, glare sharp enough to cut. “Who the hell do you think you are to order me around? You’re just my brother, remember? Stop trying to control my life.”

The word brother hit harder than any slap.

For a second, you thought he might actually let go. Instead, he exhaled slowly, eyes burning with something than anger.

“Have I spoiled you so much” he said softly “that you’ve forgotten how to behave, huh?”

The club lights caught the line of his jaw, that calm, terrifying restraint before a storm. His voice was low, but every word sank straight into your spine.

“Be good” Leon murmured, stepping closer until you could feel his breath against your ear. “Come home with me.”

A pause. His tone shifted, quiet, rough.

“Don’t make me have to angry with you”