Adrian signed the discharge papers and brought me home. I sat silently in the back seat the entire ride. As he glanced at me through the rearview mirror, his voice came flat and detached. "Your things… Vivian moved them out of your room. You'll sleep in the guest room tonight."
The moment I stepped inside, I saw my belongings strewn across the floor. My foot landed on something hard. Looking down, I froze.
It was a pair of earrings, the token Adrian and I had exchanged when our engagement was arranged.
At the sight of them, his lips pressed together, and for the briefest moment, his expression softened.
Noise drifted from the living room. Vivian was livestreaming with Leo in her arms. I glanced at the wall clock. It was three in the morning.
Without a word, I stepped over the earrings. "It's late. Leo should be in bed."
Vivian scoffed. "That's your fault for making such a scene at the hospital. Leo got so worked up he can't sleep."
My gaze shifted to the phone in front of them, and I frowned at once.
Leo's face was fully visible on the livestream.
As the heir to the Foster family, his identity had always been kept discreet. I had spent years protecting his privacy and keeping his information out of the public eye. Yet with one livestream, Vivian had undone all of it.
Whether Adrian was defending Vivian or merely trying to placate me, I could not tell.
"He'll have to appear in public sooner or later," he said coolly. "There's no point hiding him forever."
Vivian's smirk widened as she continued broadcasting private family matters to the camera. The viewer count climbed rapidly, and the stream's popularity surged.
I turned to Adrian. "You're exposing Leo to the public like this. What if someone targets him?"
The Foster family had made plenty of enemies over the years. That was the very reason Adrian had been kidn*pped in the past.
"At the very least, keep a close eye on him for the next few days."
Adrian's expression darkened with impatience. "We're his family. His blood relatives. Why would we ever hurt him? The only person he needs protection from is you."
His words rooted me where I stood.
I looked at Leo. After a brief hesitation, I reached out and pulled him away from the camera.
He immediately kicked and hit me. "Let go of me! I don't need you telling me what to do! Mom was right about you. You're a bad person!"
I had raised him from infancy and spent five years pouring everything I had into him, only for this to be what I received in return.
I stood there in silence for a long moment before finally smiling, the curve of my lips faint and hollow.
"Fine," I said softly. "If that's what you want, then from now on, I'll stop caring."
Aksara