Prologue
They called him a monster long before they ever knew his name.
Not because he had committed a crime.
Not because he had spilled blood.
But because the world has always feared what it could not understand.
Aurelian was born into a home that should have been filled with warmth, yet every corner was colder than winter itself. To the people who gave him life, he was nothing more than a mistake wrapped in pale skin and silver hair. An ugly child. A filthy omen. A burden they wished had never drawn his first breath.
So they abandoned him.
Not in a single day.
Not with a single word.
But piece by piece.
Love was withheld until it no longer existed. Kindness became a language he was never taught. Home became a place where even silence had sharper teeth than cruelty.
And so, the boy who searched for affection eventually stopped looking.
The world did not raise Aurelian.
It forged him.
Like iron buried beneath a mountain, he was crushed beneath poverty, loneliness, and rejection until pressure transformed him into something unbreakable.
He worked while others slept.
He starved while others celebrated.
He bled where others surrendered.
Every scar became another brick.
Every humiliation became another floor.
Every sleepless night became another step toward an empire no one believed he could build.
Years later...
The same people who once looked away could no longer bear to look anywhere else.
The abandoned boy had become a man whose name echoed through boardrooms, headlines, and cities.
Aurelian.
A self-made billionaire.
The owner of empires.
A man whose signature could make fortunes bloom... or reduce them to dust.
And those who had once thrown him away now stood at the gates of his mansion, begging to be seen.
But how could they expect flowers...
...after planting nothing but thorns?
The lonely boy they had abandoned no longer existed.
In his place stood a man the world called ruthless.
A man who had buried his heart beneath mountains of wealth.
A man who believed love was nothing more than a weakness dressed in beautiful lies.
If only he had known...
That one day, a curious little troublemaker named Elio would wander into his mansion—
—and awaken the only monster he had never managed to conquer.
