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The next few chapters are going to be about Levi's past. New characters (Some will not be mentioned again after this few chapters) are going to be involved.
🛑Content Warning: Some scenes could have triggering effects on some readers. You are free to skip as it only shows a character past.
Although note that it adds information about the character.
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"Пока они спали — я истекал кровью. Пока они смеялись — я горел. Каждый шрам стал писанием, каждый синяк — клятвой. Я тренировался не ради выживания. Я тренировался, чтобы уничтожать богов" _/@#()#
Vadim Gazdanov didn't have a family.
He had heirs.
Planned with his medical group. Timing made right. Three boys, bred from three different women, each chosen with one goal in mind: legacy through blood, loyalty through abandonment.
He never loved any of the mothers. He didn't need to. Love was for fools. Vadim was building an empire, not a home.
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Mikhail – The First Son
He met Elizabeth in a strip club off the edge of Moscow's red-light district — a place dripping in cheap perfume and desperation. She danced under flickering red lights with dead eyes and a slim body. He liked her silence. He liked her detachment.
After a night of pleasure bought in rubles, he left her with a promise:
"You keep the child. I'll fund it. You'll live better than this."
She didn't argue. Months later, she birthed a boy.
Mikhail.
But Elizabeth was never a mother. She went back to the pole within a year. Mikhail was raised by silence and shadows. A nanny here. An empty fridge there. He grew up angry. Quiet. Cold. Resentful. His auburn hair, green eyes, and pale freckles were Elizabeth's marks — soft features warped by abandonment.
At sixteen, he was already ruthless. At seventeen, he'd cracked a man's jaw during a sparring session and didn't blink.
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Levi – The Second Son
Two years after Mikhail's birth, Vadim found himself walking through the lower floors of a luxury hotel he owned in New York — inspecting, hunting. That's where he met Anya.
She was cleaning room 212, hair tied back, dark blonde strands falling out of her bun. Thick glasses hanging on her nose. Her eyes were large and warm. Too warm.
He saw desperation in her.
"How much do you need?" he asked.
She flinched. "Sir?"
"For your mother's treatment."
She gasped. How did he—
"I make it my business to know my employees."
He offered her money, and his terms:
Sleep with him. Raise the child. He wouldn't be involved until the boy turned fifteen.
She hesitated. She wept. Then she agreed.
Months later, she gave birth to Levi.
She called him Atlas.
He became her whole world.
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Marc – The Last Born
Olivia was a beautiful wreck.
Vadim found her slumped against a brothel wall, mascara running like blood, slurring nonsense in broken English. He didn't even ask her name.
She didn't ask his either.
The morning after, he left a wad of cash on the bed and one condition:
Keep the child. He'd check in when the boy was fifteen.
Olivia only ever cared about three things: her next high, the men who came through the brothel, and the latest shade of lipstick. The boy she birthed was named Marc, and he was raised by chaos.
Marc hated weakness.
Especially Levi's.
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The Training Grounds
Levi woke each day to bruises.
Marc's fist. Mikhail's blade.
Verbal jabs. Snide remarks. Cruel laughter.
He was the soft one.
The "maid's son."
The weakest link.
Mikhail ignored him, cold and silent like a ghost of war. Marc, however, enjoyed the torment. His mockery was venomous.
"Your mommy's dead, Atlas. Who will sing you to sleep now?"
But Levi didn't break.
He burned.
When they rested, he trained.
When they laughed, he bled.
He would become stronger. Faster. Smarter.
Not for Vadim. Not to prove himself.
But for Anya.
For her blood. For her death.
He remembered her soft features — her button nose, those brown eyes that lived in his reflection. He remembered how she held his face when he cried as a child.
They took her.
So he would take everything.
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A Beast in the Making
The estate was cold — carved marble, endless halls, echoing chambers where screams never reached outside. Levi learned Russian with bleeding lips. He sparred until his muscles tore. He studied strategy under candlelight, his fists still trembling from beatings.
The trainers said he was average.
But Vadim saw something different.
"He learns not with instinct," the man said once, watching Levi get knocked down by Mikhail, "but with vengeance. That makes him dangerous."
Levi was 17 when he finally knocked Marc to the ground in training.
He didn't gloat.
He didn't smile.
He just walked away — leaving Marc gasping on the floor, blood trickling from his nose.
The beast was waking.
And he was wearing the name of a motherless boy.
Atlas.