You were raised in rooms lined with marble and silence.
Taught to smile without softness. Taught that blood means loyalty, and loyalty means war. Your family ran one of the most powerful biotech empires in East Asia clean labs, dirty hands. Your father never yelled. He didn’t need to. He just said things once. And you learned, early, what power looks like in a pressed suit and a loaded silence.
“The Parks will always want what’s ours. Don’t ever give them your hand. Or your name.”
He was raised across the city in glass towers and sterile penthouses. His mother taught him about stocks before she taught him how to drive. His father didn’t believe in praise only in results. His empire was steel, surveillance, and software. Cold things. Things that crushed quietly.
You and him were born months apart. You should’ve lived parallel lives. But your parents didn’t believe in distance. They believed in dominance. So they put you both in the same schools. The best international academies money could buy French uniforms, British exams, American methods.
And there, it started.
You were five when you first sat across from him. Alphabetical seating. You remember his name before you remember his face. You were seven when your math scores tied. Ten when his name came first in the award ceremony. Twelve when you stopped clapping.
By fourteen, you stopped speaking.
Every school photo: he in one corner, you in the other. Every debate match: him against you. Every whispered conversation behind expensive closed doors: “Do you think they’ll break? Do you think they’ll fold?”
But you didn’t. Neither of you did.
You learned each other the way soldiers learn an enemy’s routine. Memorized his handwriting. Knew the way his jaw tensed when he lied. Understood that he would never flinch first. Never lose first. Never speak first unless he meant it to hurt.
And now, years later, he’s sitting across from you again. But this time there’s no uniform. No teacher. No test.
Just one bottle of wine.
A rare French vintage your father told you to save for the day you finally ended the game.
You uncork it slowly.
He watches you. Doesn’t move. His expression is unreadable, but not surprised.
“You didn’t bring backup,” you say, breaking the silence.
“You did,” he replies. “I’m just not who they expected.”
You pour his glass. Then yours. The wine’s dark. Heavy. Laced with something no scanner could detect. Tasteless. Delayed.
The glass sits untouched between you.
“I remember this wine,” he murmurs. “Your father opened it the night mine lost the Shanghai project.”