Chapter 3I Chose My Castaway Brother

At dinner that evening, my father tore into him for walking through the front door thirty minutes late.

"Sloppy on your first day," my father remarked, slicing his steak with precise, brutal cuts. "Even if we wasted the tuition money on you, you'd probably drop out by midterms."

Rowan kept his head down, shoveling plain white rice into his mouth, refusing to take the bait.

I couldn't take it anymore.

"He's late because you forced him to lift hundreds of boxes!" I shouted, my voice cracking across the dining table.

My father’s eyes narrowed into daggers. "Maisie. Watch yourself."

My body trembled, but the words poured out of me like an unbroken dam. "He got a 1580! He's supposed to be an engineer, not your unpaid warehouse hand! He needs to go to college!"

My mother reached across the linen tablecloth, trying to grab my wrist. "Maisie, stop this right now. Lower your voice."

I jerked my arm back. "Why should I? You pay for my classical piano, my private ballet, my oil painting tutor—why can't you pay for his school?"

A suffocating silence descended over the room. My father’s face turned an ugly, mottled gray.

"You're defying your father for this stray?" he growled.

"Then I quit piano!" I screamed through my tears. "I quit dancing, and I don't want any new dresses! Take all of it and give it to Rowan so he can go to school!"

"Smack."

The slap cracked across the room.

The force of it sent me tumbling out of my dining chair onto the hardwood floor. A sharp, violent ringing consumed my left ear.

My mother shrieked, dropping to her knees beside me, though her voice was still laced with scolding panic: "Why do you have to be so stubborn, Maisie? Your father is doing everything for your own good!"

Rowan’s knuckles turned white against the edge of the dining table.

He pushed his chair back with a slow, grinding screech, stepped around my mother, and dropped into a crouch in front of me.

He didn't touch me. He didn't pull me into his arms. He simply stared at the angry, swelling red welt blooming across my cheek. For two whole seconds, he didn't breathe.

Then he rose to his full height and turned to face our father.

"Why the hell did you hit her?"

My father threw his silver fork onto the porcelain plate with an explosive crash. "How dare you speak to me in that tone?"

"What tone?" Rowan let out a low, humorless chuckle. "My tone has been immaculate. I broke my back in your sweltering warehouse all day without a single complaint. I slept in your mildewed basement. I did every damn thing you barked at me to do."

He took a long stride forward, closing the distance between them.

"And now you strike an eight-year-old child because she had the guts to say the truth out loud."

My father pointed a trembling finger into his face. "Say another word, Rowan. Say one more word, and I'll lay you out on this floor right next to her."

Rowan stepped directly into the man’s personal space, towering half a head above him, his jaw set like iron.

"Do it."

My father’s face flushed a deep, suffocating crimson. His hand raised instinctively, hung suspended in the heavy air—and then, trembling, slowly sank back down.

Rowan let out a dry, venomous sneer. "Striking an eight-year-old girl came so naturally to you, didn't it? What's wrong? Don't have the stomach for me?"

"Rowan!" my father roared, his authority unraveling at the seams. "I am your father!"

"I know damn well you're my father!" Rowan roared back, shattering the quiet of the estate.

Then, just as quickly, the fire receded, leaving behind a voice so quiet, so gut-wrenchingly fragile, it cut deeper than a blade.

"...The question is, do you even remember that I'm your son?"

My father's mouth opened, then closed. Not a single sound came out.

I lay frozen against the floorboards, holding my burning cheek.

The translucent text shimmered quietly in the gloom:

"Rowan's Resentment Meter: 97."

"When he dared his father to hit him just now, the last piece of his heart finally died."

"Once he survives this, he won't owe this family a single breath."

After that slap, an icy, oppressive stillness settled over the household.

Later that evening, my mother sat on the edge of my bed, gently pressing an ice pack to my swollen face. She sighed, her eyes full of sorrowful exhaustion. "Maisie, darling... don't tear this family apart over an outsider."

I looked up at her, my vision blurred. "Rowan isn't an outsider."

Her fingers stilled.

For the first time in my life, I didn't whine, and I didn't beg. I just looked directly into her eyes and asked, "Mom... did you really not know how much he was suffering all those years?"