I was still very young when my father died.
We rushed him to the hospital that night sirens wailing, tires screeching against the pavement, my tiny hands clutching my mother's as she cried and screamed in the backseat. But it was already too late. The fluorescent hallway lights burned above us, too bright and too still, and the doctor's voice came like a hammer: Time of death: 11:27 PM.
Just like that, he was gone.
I didn't understand the finality of death then. I only understood the way my mother collapsed to the floor. The sound of her sobs. The cold linoleum tiles under my feet. I clung to her dress like it was the only solid thing in a world suddenly spinning out of control. I was scared, confused, and too young to grasp what was lost only that something terrible had happened.
Ten years later, she remarried.
A German businessman. A man she barely knew. And just like that, she left. Left the country. Left me.
"It's better this way," she said as if I were a burden she could wrap in tissue paper and hand off to someone else.
And she did.
She handed me off to him the boy I grew up with.
My best friend. My brother in every way but blood. My protector.
His name was Win.
He was two years older than me. The golden heir of Zeiwin Corp, a billion-dollar empire built on real estate, tech, and private defense contracts. His world was one of power behind glass walls, whispered names in boardrooms, and decisions that shaped cities.
And me? I was the quiet boy next door with nothing but grief in my pockets and a suitcase that felt too light.
When I moved into their mansion, I didn't know what to expect. I'd lost a father, then a mother. What I gained was silence, luxury, and eyes always watching.
Win promised I'd be safe.
And I believed him.
His mother accepted me like charity. My mother had once co-founded a luxury fashion brand with Win's mom two ambitious widows turning loss into legacy. But when my mother met her new husband, she walked away from it all. From the business. From her son.
So I became his.
Win chose my clothes. Choose my words. Chose who I could talk to, and who I shouldn't look at twice.
In high school, he was a god. Everything tilted toward him people, attention, rooms. And I stayed in orbit, smiling like I was grateful just to exist in his shadow.
I didn't know it back then.
What I called love.
Was control.
Everything changed in my second year of university.
It was late close to midnight. My dorm room was dimly lit, the soft hum of the AC the only sound. I was lying on my bed, scrolling through my phone. My other hand moved beneath the sheets, slow and desperate.
I was touching myself. Thinking about him.
The photo on my screen had been taken weeks ago. Win asleep on the living room couch, one arm slung over his eyes, his shirt undone, the softness of his expression something the world never got to see.
His lips slightly parted. His chest rose slowly. He looked peaceful. Human.
I shouldn't have kept that photo.
But I couldn't delete it.
And just as I was lost in that forbidden fantasy.
The door opened.
I froze. My blood turned to ice.
Win stepped in like he always did. Without knocking. Like he still owned the air in my lungs.
In one heartbeat, everything shattered.
His eyes landed on me on the motion under the sheets. On the glowing screen.
And the unmistakable image of a man.
I dropped the phone like it burned. Sat up too fast.
But it was too late.
He didn't recognize the man in the photo was him.
He didn't speak, didn't blink, didn't ask questions.
He stared, not angry, not confused. Just blank and Processing.
Then he turned and walked out. Closed the door gently behind him.
That was the night he found out I was gay.
That was the night everything changed.
After that, he started watching me.
Not openly Win was smarter than that. But my phone would reset. Messages disappeared.
I'd catch him outside my lectures, hovering.
He knew every name in my contact list. And if it belonged to a guy, they were gone within days.
I confronted one of them someone I thought was a real friend and he looked at me with haunted eyes.
"I'm not getting in the middle of that," he said. "Your brother's terrifying."
That's when I understood.
Win wasn't protecting me.
He was eliminating every man from my life.
Except himself.
He let one person stay in Charlotte.
Bright, sharp-tongued, unafraid. The only one who could still reach me.
And Win made it clear why.
She's safe, he told me once, his tone flat and final.
She's not like the others. She won't try to use you.
But I understood what he meant.
She was the only one I'd never get hard for.
And he was right.
I didn't want her. I didn't want girls.
I didn't want anyone else.
I only wanted him.
That's when the doctors came.
He took me from clinic to clinic. Fancy, pristine offices with gentle-voiced therapists and white coats that smiled too much.
They'll help you, he said, gripping my hand too tightly.
Help me with what? I asked. I already knew.
With your condition.
He said I was sick.
But that it was okay. He'd fix me.
Sick.
That word echoed through me like a curse.
He said no man was born to love another man.
He said men like me were damaged.
He said love like mine was a malfunction.
A virus. A defect in my wiring.
But he didn't know that the sickness didn't begin with the desire.
It didn't begin with the picture.
It didn't begin with any other man.
It began with him.
With his eyes when he was angry.
His voice when he said trust me.
The quiet cruelty of his protection was like chains wrapped in velvet.
I loved a man who thought I was broken.
And I stayed.
I let him drag me from therapist to therapist.
I smiled, I nodded and I lied.
I played the part of the good boy.
The one who wanted to be cured.
But every night, I stared at that photo on my phone.
And I ached.
Because I was rich, educated, and polite.
Everything he wanted me to be.
Everything except "normal."
He was everything.
And I?
I was just the boy he tried to fix.