The journal

(Leon’s POV)

The house is silent now. Too silent.

I heard her tears tonight. The walls of Mercer House don’t lie. They carry the sound of weakness the way fire carries smoke. She thought herself alone, but solitude is a luxury she can’t afford. Not here. Not with me.

I left her to eat alone. Isolation sharpens edges. Some break beneath it, others adapt. She did both. The crying told me one truth.

She has more fight in her than I expected. That will make her useful. Or dangerous. Perhaps both.

She doesn’t yet understand what she has walked into. To her, this is a cage. To me, it is a board. Every marriage is a contract, every contract a transaction, every transaction a move. And she is my most visible piece.

A man with no sight is underestimated, pitied, dismissed. That is power in its purest form — to see while unseen. They watch my cane and feel superior; they see the sunglasses and sigh in a way that loosens tongues. They speak into the void and give themselves away. So I let them. I let them see what I want them to. I let them think they know the shape of me.

Still, I watched her tonight in the study. Her defiance was… inconvenient. Necessary, but inconvenient. She doesn’t bow. That is not weakness. That is a problem. Problems must be handled.

 I saw in her face a hunger I recognize—less the appetite of a spoiled socialite and more like a person who’s been forced to survive. That startled me. Opportunity usually arrives wrapped in fear or flattery. Her work arrived wrapped in defiance.

Defiance is combustible. Useful when directed. Dangerous when left to smolder.

There is a list. Names, small at first and then grown heavy with consequence. The list has been my map for years; each name a necessary ruin, each ruin purposed. Some fell quickly—swift avalanches of ruined reputations, closed accounts, quiet resignations. Others take times, slow corrosion, erosion of alliances until the structure collapses by its own rot. I am patient. Patience is an art.

She does not need to know the names. Knowledge gives people what I cannot allow: leverage. It is tempting, sometimes, watching her hunger for it. But she must be fed slowly. Let her gnaw at bones while I retain the marrow.

She believes the noise of the gates, the shouting cameras, the cloying press—is the greatest threat. They are not. The threats that matter are polite, late dinners, and handshakes with a smile that conceals teeth. Those are the cuts that bleed richest.

Control begins at the table. Public postures, private clauses, whispered assurances that sound like comfort but smell like chains. I placed the clause where only a desperate heart would sign without reading the fine print. Survival tastes like iron on the tongue; it forces decisions people regret in the quiet hours. She chose. She signed. The ink is not dry enough for regret to be useful. Regret softens men and women who should remain useful.

There will be tests. Small at first—devices to prove where her loyalties truly sit. And larger ones, when the campaign must turn, when a name needs to fall, and she must be the face that stays unscarred while the rest burn.

She will learn, in time, that I guard what I covet and ruin what I do not. That is not cruelty. It is an economy.

When she finally understands, it will be too late to step away. By then, the board will have a story, the press an image, and the contracts will have teeth. That is the point when the game ends for everyone but me.

L.M.