His business partner, Carter Hayes, wore polished smiles that never reached his eyes—smiles Adrien had once trusted.
The numbers didn’t add up.
Contracts felt wrong.
Betrayal closed in.
Still, Adrien was too exhausted to fight, too defeated to care.
While Leo fought every day to survive on the streets with an open heart, Adrien fought to survive himself, his heart barricaded by pain.
Two lives running in parallel.
One hardened by loss, the other softened by it.
Both moving toward a collision.
That afternoon, as the city pulsed with its usual chaos, fate finally brought their worlds together.
Carter’s careless distraction caused Adrien’s wheelchair to tip forward.
The small front wheel caught on a cracked edge of pavement.
Metal slammed against the ground.
Adrien fell hard.
His head struck the curb with a sickening thud, warm blood spilling down his temple.
His breath caught—not from pain, but from terror he hadn’t felt since the night he lost everything.
People stared.
Some grimaced.
Others circled him as if misfortune were contagious.
Carter froze, panic overtaking him, then ran into the crowd shouting for help—abandoning Adrien like overturned luggage.
“Please… someone…” Adrien rasped.
The city swallowed his voice.
Then a small shadow rushed forward.
Leo.
He had just helped an elderly woman carry groceries when he noticed the growing circle around the fallen man.
Without hesitation, he dropped his worn backpack and knelt beside Adrien.
“Sir, can you hear me?” Leo asked, breathless, eyes wide with concern.
Adrien’s first instinct was disgust.
“Don’t touch me,” he snapped.
But Leo didn’t move.
“You’re bleeding. I have to help.”
He pulled off his thin, tattered shirt, ribs visible beneath his skin, and pressed it gently against Adrien’s wound with hands steadier than most adults’.
“Stay still,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
The words echoed ones his mother used to say when fear overwhelmed him.
A strange warmth spread beneath Leo’s palms—soft but unmistakable, like light pushing through shattered glass.
The bleeding slowed… then stopped.
Adrien’s breath trembled.
The world blurred.
Something impossible had just happened.
Not medicine.
Not logic.
Just a child who refused to walk past someone in pain.
That night, long after the mansion fell silent, Adrien lay awake staring at the ceiling.
He touched the place where blood had flowed hours earlier.
Smooth.
Unbroken.
No pain at all.