Chapter 6

Jason's eyes burned from the cigarettes he had chain-smoked after the drive back. The smoke did nothing as his chest still throbbed with last night’s burn—the way Adler had looked at him. No, not Adler. His stepdad. Christ.

He dragged a hand over his face, but the burn in his gut only sharpened. It was one thing to catch himself staring. Another to let the truth slip through, even in his own head. That it wasn’t just Adler, the man, the highly respected politician. It was his stepfather—the man his mother married.

The wrongness made it worse

He lay there staring at the ceiling, stale smoke clinging to his shirt, his body aching for another cigarette but his stomach already sour. The house was still, or maybe he just couldn’t hear it yet through the fog in his head.

A minute later, a light knock came, exactly how his mum would knock when she was not sure of how he would take the intrusion. “Jason,” Judy called softly, voice thin through the wood. “Don’t stay in bed too long. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

He made a sound, half a groan, hoping it counted as an answer. Her footsteps faded shortly.

A lot to do today. The words snagged somewhere in his mind, but he did not follow them. Not immediately. He pressed his palms over his face, rubbed hard, willing the image of Adler’s gaze to vanish but it did not.

It was the noise that pulled him out—the heavy thud of something dropped downstairs, the scuff of shoes, strange voices echoing through the halls. He sat up, frowning. This was not staff, there were too many feet, too much bustle.

Jason shoved himself out of bed and yanked on yesterday’s hoodie. As he padded down the stairs, the air itself felt emptier somehow.

The passage was lined with cardboard boxes. The console table where Judy kept framed photos of Dad—gone. Even the rug was rolled up, propped against the wall like trash. A man in coveralls walked by with one of the dining room chairs on his back. Another stranger taped up a box labeled “Kitchen.”

Jason froze on the steps. His throat went dry. “Mum…what's going on?”

Judy appeared at the bottom of the stairs, hair pinned neatly, a calm smile that wavered at the edges. She held her hands out as if soothing a skittish animal. “Jason, don’t panic. It’s the movers. Adler thought—well, we thought—it was time to transition. The penthouse will be better and it's safer too. Especially since the—.”

“Transition?” Jason barked, disbelief sharp in his voice. “You’re…what, moving us out? Just like that? I mean it's too soon, I—”

Her smile faltered. “We can't be having this conversation again Jason, we talked about this..”

“No, you talked,” Jason shot back, heat rising under his skin. “I didn’t agree to shit.”

The movers shuffled past, ignoring the exchange. Strangers carrying pieces of his life, dismantling the last scraps of his father’s house. His chest tightened so hard it hurt.

Judy stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Jason, this is a good thing. The penthouse puts us right where Adler needs to be for the campaign. And it’s… it’s secure. You’ll have space, privacy. No journalists sneaking around that easily… Adler is only thinking of us.”

Jason laughed under his breath, a bitter sound. “Yeah. Thinking of us. That’s rich.”

“Don’t do this,” she pleaded, her hand brushing his arm. “It doesn’t have to feel like a loss. It’s just a new chapter.”

But Jason could not hear her. All he saw were the empty shelves, the missing photos, the erasure of his —

“Wait.” His voice came out sharper than he meant.

The guy stopped, confused, as Jason reached in and pulled out a photo wrapped in newspaper.

The frame was cheap, the glass chipped at one corner, but the image froze him—his dad in uniform, one arm slung casually around Jason’s shoulders.

He was grinning wide in the picture with a birthday balloon half-cropped at the edge.

He brushed his thumb across the glass, half expecting to feel the solid weight of that arm again. His throat cinched until it hurt to swallow.

The mover shifted awkwardly. “Uh… should I—?”

“I’ve got it,” Jason muttered, tucking the photo under his arm.

This did not feel like a new chapter. It was Adler’s world swallowing theirs whole.

Through the open doorway, the ‘devil’ stood half in shadow, phone pressed to his ear, gesturing with one hand at the movers.

He didn’t look Jason’s way once. Not even for a second. Jason’s chest hollowed. After last night,after that look how could Adler act like nothing. He had expected… something. A glance from him or even a smirk. Anything. Instead, he was just another box in transit.

He stood rooted on the stairs, fury and doubt crashing inside him. Had he imagined it all? The heat in Adler’s gaze, the tension humming between them in the car? Had he wanted it so badly he had invented it?

He turned away quickly before mom would catch him staring at her ‘husband’.

He went back to his room, packed half-heartedly, throwing clothes into a duffel with lazy, careless movements. The sound of tape guns and footsteps echoed through the house, erasing his memories one box at a time.

****

The drive to Bourdillon was silent except for his mom’s occasional comments about the neighborhood. Jason sat in the backseat again, pretending to scroll through his phone while the city outside grew shinier, cleaner, richer. The streets widened, lined with trees trimmed within an inch of their lives.

Wow, no speck of trash, not a single cracked sidewalk.

Bourdillon was not just money. It was power. You could feel it in the gates taller than most houses, in the security cameras perched like hawks, in the silence that wasn’t silence at all but the hum of engines too expensive to hear.

The gates swallowed the car whole.

The lobby hit him like a slap. It was a white marble stretching forever underfoot, chandeliers dripping shards of crystal that caught the light and scattered it across the walls.Even the air smelled expensive.

Behind the desk, the receptionist’s smile never wavered. Her eyes tracked them without blinking and that made him feel unsettled.

Jason shoved his hands into his pockets and kept close to his mom, with his eyes wandering around the most beautiful house he'd ever stepped on.

Upstairs, the elevator doors opened into their new life.