Chapter 215: The Cost Of Mercy

Ivy's POV:

I told myself each time would be the last. That this was too risky. That I was being stupid. That I didn’t owe anyone anything.

Then I would remember the way my father looked when he felt victorious.

And I would carry the food downstairs again.

Sometimes the boy was sitting.

Sometimes he was lying on the floor, breathing shallow, eyes open but unfocused.

Sometimes there were new bruises.

I never asked his name. I never told him mine. I didn’t want him connected to me. Not because I didn’t care, but because care was dangerous.

A connection gave my father something to cut.

Elio started noticing my pattern within days.

He never confronted me. He didn’t need to. He would appear at the end of a hallway at odd times, leaning against the wall like he’d been there the whole time.

“You’re going downstairs a lot,” he said one afternoon, casual, voice light.

I kept my face blank. “I can’t sleep.”

He smiled as if that amused him. “Neither can he.”

I didn’t answer.

Elio’s eyes tracked me for a second longer than necessary. Then he walked away, humming under his breath like nothing mattered.

That was Elio’s gift.

He made cruelty look like ease.

He began spending more time with our father after that. He followed him into rooms I wasn’t allowed to enter. He listened when my father talked about loyalty and weakness and how fear kept a system clean.

He watched punishments without flinching.

And every time he walked past me after, his gaze held something sharper, like he’d learned a new idea and couldn’t wait to use it.

Meanwhile, the boy below didn’t change.

Not in the way my father wanted.

He didn’t beg.

He didn’t bargain.

He didn’t break.

My father escalated when that happened.

There were nights I opened the door and smelled blood before I saw him. There were nights he couldn’t sit up, so I left the food and forced myself to walk away because staying would get me caught.

I hated leaving him like that.

But I hated the idea of my father catching me more, because I knew what my father would do with that knowledge.

He’d punish me. Then he’d punish the boy more. And he’d enjoy both.

One night, after weeks that blurred together, the boy spoke.

Just one question.

“How long?” he asked, voice rough, barely audible.

I stared at him. He was asking how long he’d been here. How long this had been happening. How long he could endure.

“I don’t know,” I said.

It was the truth.

Time moved strangely in that house. Days were counted by my father’s moods, not calendars.

He nodded once, accepting it. Then he asked something else, quieter.

“Why?”

That question had weight. I could have said because I’m kind. I could have said because I pity you. I could have said because I’m sorry.

All of those would have been lies.

So I gave him the only answer that didn’t make me feel sick.

“Because you’re still alive,” I said. “And he hates that.”

The boy’s mouth tightened, not a smile, not relief, but something like understanding.

He didn’t speak again.

The fire came later.

Not suddenly. Not like a movie. It started with noise in the distance, shouting, boots, gunfire that echoed through the foundation. The house reacted like a body hit with adrenaline.

Men ran.

Doors slammed.

Someone yelled my father’s name.

I was in the corridor above the storage wing when the first wave of smoke hit.

I knew instantly this wasn’t an accident.

My father had enemies. He had always had enemies. He built his life around that fact.

But the sound downstairs wasn’t a raid.

It was chaos.

And chaos was opportunity.

I didn’t think.

I moved.

Down the stairs, through the corridor, past guards who weren’t guarding anymore because they were fighting or running or dying. The lock door was already open. Someone had broken it.

The storage room light flickered.

The boy was on his feet, swaying, one hand braced against the wall.

He looked at me like he’d been waiting. He didn’t ask for help. He didn’t ask who I was.

He just stepped toward the exit, and I understood something in that single movement.

He was leaving. With or without me. I should have gone with him.

That was the obvious choice.

Run. Disappear. Become nothing to my father and my brother and the legacy that wanted to swallow me whole.

But I saw Elio at the end of the corridor, half-lit by flames, watching the chaos like it was an amusement.

I saw the way his eyes tracked the boy.

Not with surprise.

With calculation.

And in that moment, I knew something else too.

If I stayed in this house after tonight, my father or Elio would use me to reach him again.

They would keep him longer. They would drag him back. They would break him the way they couldn’t break him before.

Not by hurting him.

By using me.

I looked at the boy.

He moved toward the exit, quick despite everything, driven by something that refused to die.

He glanced back once, eyes catching mine. And I made my choice.

I stepped away.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I did.

Because if I stayed, he would die.

Not tonight. But later. Slower.

I turned and ran the other way, deeper into the smoke, toward a service stairwell I’d mapped years ago. My lungs burned. My eyes watered. My heartbeat was so loud it drowned out everything else.

Behind me, the boy kept going.

Good. He had to. I didn’t look back.I didn’t allow myself to.

Because I knew if I saw him again, I might follow him. And if I followed him, they would use me, and he would die.

In the present, years later, I sit at Moretti Towers with clean hands and a controlled face, and the memory still sits under my skin like a bruise that never fully faded.

Matteo thinks he survived because he burned everything down.

Maybe he did. But I know the smaller truth. He survived because someone fed him.

Not enough to save him.

Just enough to keep him alive until he could save himself. And I hate myself for the part that comes after that.

Because when I ran, I didn’t just leave my father’s house.

I left Matteo there long enough for him to become what he had to become to escape.

That’s why I feel guilty.

Not because I helped him. Because I helped him and still ran. Because I wanted him to live.

But I wanted myself to live more.

And now the past is back in our faces, and the boy who survived is a man who doesn’t forgive threats.

And my brother, my father’s best student, has finally come to collect what he thinks belongs to him.

And I already know what I knew then:

If I stay in the wrong place too long, Matteo will die.

Not because he’s weak.

Because someone will learn how to use me against him. And this time, there won’t be another chance.