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Valentino had always been beautiful.
Even now, especially now, when the city murmured behind glass and the mansion pulsed with the heat and hush.
He sat curled in the window seat in his silk white nightgown that clung to the soft curve of his shoulders. And a doll, Baby Bambi, rested in his lap with its golden-glass eyes catching the watery dawn.
He was humming a lullaby.
And to Adin, Valentino's husband, it wasn’t the song that broke him.
It was the way Valentino hummed it off-key.
As if he no longer remembered the tune. As if memory had rusted in his throat.
Adin stood by the door for a long time, watching Valentino quietly, something he did every morning.
He wakes before Valentino stirs in their bed, brewed tea he knew wouldn’t be touched, and straightened the curtains even though they didn’t wrinkle.
He moved like clockwork.
The therapist said it was important to preserve routine. So he went on with the day following it religiously.
By 7:00 A.M., the media vans would gather at the gates again.
By 7:10 A.M., the rumors would begin on WCNet.
And by 7:30 A.M., Adin Van Rensselaer, the man who once built half the skyline by the time he was thirty, would be feeding soft pear slices to his beloved omega husband and whisper.
"Just one more bite, sweetheart."
And fortunately, it seems today is a good day as Valentino spoke.
“Baby says she’s tired.”
His voice was airlight and sharp at the edges.
Adin hummed in agreement, and he (while holding the plate of sliced pears, approached the seated male.
“She had a long night.”
“She cried.”
“I know.”
“She wanted you.”
Adin placed the plate on a nearby table before kneeling. He never sat around Valentino anymore nor did he stood above him. He always knelt and lowered himself, because he didn't want Valentino to react negatively to him again.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he said softly.
Valentino tilted his head, his eyes staring blankly at the grey haired man as his fingers combed the doll’s curls in distracted loops.
“You’re never there when she cries.”
'I was there the night she died,' Adin thought but didn’t say.
Instead, he reached into the pocket of his robe and when his hand reemerged, a new doll was in his grasp. He held it out with the same reverence he once held Valentino’s positive pregnancy test from a year ago.
“Do you want to meet her little sister?”
Valentino stared again, this time his eyes on the doll. Adin noticed that his lashes were wet when he gingerly took the doll, pressed its cold face to his cheek, and began to cry softly.
The sight brought back the memory from that day.
It all started with the fall.
That’s what the tabloids had said.
Tragedy in the Van Rensselaer Empire:
Omega Socialite Loses Child in Freak Accident!
The photo of Valentino in a white hospital gown with his face pale and vacant went viral. Adin was beside him, his tie undone and the rim of his eyes red. He remembered the way his hands trembled.
The CEO who hadn’t cried in public even when he buried his mother, had fired board members for sneezing too loudly, and had once made an oil tycoon cry in front of twelve nations.
That was Adin Van Rensselaer.
The man no one touched and no one said no to.
And the man who now spoon-fed his omega husband sliced pears and whispered stories into the quiet of the room.
Everyone said he was losing his mind too.
Because he wouldn’t leave.
Because he wouldn’t run away.
Because he still loved him.
Three months before the fall, Valentino had smiled like spring. He decorated the nursery himself with forest green walls, a hand-painted deer, and a tiny golden stars speckling the ceiling. Adin had offered a designer, but Valentino waved him off.
“Our baby needs to see me in this room,” he said, and Adin loved him so much in that moment he wanted to cry. He didn’t, of course, because Alphas didn’t cry.
Not even ones who built empires.
Seven months in, they were unstoppable. Valentino’s stomach grew more round and adored, his laugh echoed like bells through the mansion's halls.
Adin kissed his mark every night, pressed his hand over their baby’s first kicks, and bought him a new perfume line to hide his heat-scent even though Adin had memorized it like it was scriptures.
Because to him, Valentino was sacred.
To him, Valentino was his.
Until the day he wasn’t.
Valentino never talked about what happened that day directly.
But Adin did.
In the dark, when he thought Valentino was asleep, he would whisper it aloud like confession.
“You came home early. I didn’t know, I didn’t even hear the door.”
Sometimes it would be desperation.
“I swear I didn’t kiss him back. I swear, Val. I didn’t—”
And other nights, it would be his own nightmares.
“You screamed. And then you were gone when I tried to catch you.”
And finally, in a grieving voice filled with guilt and self-hatred, he would whisper.
“You were seven months pregnant. And I killed you both.”
His quiet sobs would fill the void left in the room.
He still remembers the Valentino woke up two days later after the fall with his stomach flat.
They told him gently, the doctors, the nurses, and even Adin. But when Valentino didn’t scream, didn’t cry, nor did he speak as he stared at the hospital window like it was a gate to somewhere better, Adin knew.
He knew that something in him had broke.
The doctors used words like psychosis, trauma-induced regression, and prenatal grief disorder.
Adin just called it his fault.
He finished building the nursery and painted the stars himself.
Even though he knew that Valentino would never walk into that room again.
Even though the therapist said that it was a “unhealthy attachment.”
And even though his father screamed at him over the phone, “That kid's dead, Adin. She was never real, move the fuck on.”
But Adin had held her for six minutes in his hands. He buried her with a name and a white ribbon beside her. And every month, he buys a new doll for his beloved.
“Hello, little Bambi,” he whispers, even though it’s not the same one Valentino loved yesterday. “Be good to your mama, okay?”
Then he hands it over and watches Valentino light up like a boy on Christmas morning and comb the hair and whisper secrets to her like its real.
And for a moment, Valentino looks alive again.
For a moment, it was all worth it.
Sometimes, Adin dreams of the stairs.
Not the fall, not even the scream, just the sound, the thump, and the silence afterward.
He dreams of Redika’s lipstick that smudged on his collar. The way it stained, no matter how many times he washed that shirt. The way it never happened again because Redika was fired the next day and shipped to a remote branch in another country with no severance.
He had never touched him back.
But Valentino never believed him.
And now, he’s not sure he deserves to be believed.
Because that was the day he lost everything.
Not just their baby, but him.
Valentino.
His moonlight, his softest morning.
The only thing that ever made this world worth living.
Adin turns away from the window and Behind him, Valentino hums to the doll again. It’s off-key still, but it’s the only song he still remembers.
Adin still wears his wedding ring, because Valentino still wears his.
On good days, remembers that he is married and to whom.
On bad days, he throws it out the window and screams that Adin is a liar.
On worse days, he clutches it to his chest like it’s the only thing that could stop him from drowning.
Today is something in between.
Adin watches from the doorway as Valentino drags a blanket across the living room carpet. He’s barefoot with his nightgown is dragging behind him. He mutters something under his breath and lines up five dolls in a perfect little row beside the fireplace.
He kisses each one calls out in a sweet voice.
"Bambi, Baby Bambi, Little Bambi, Sister Bambi, New Bambi..."
The television was on in the background, with the volume on mute. The news anchor’s mouth moves behind a lower-third headline.
CEO Adin Van Rensselaer Still Absent From Mogoru Corp Amidst Family Tragedy Rumors
Adin looks at it emotionlessly, because truthfully he doesn’t care anymore.
He hasn’t cared since the blood that was spilled.
One morning, Adin had stepped over the destroyed parts of the last doll, looked at Valentino’s palms red from the force he held, before holding his omega’s face between his hands and whispered, “Let me hold you.”
Valentino had laughed then.
It wasn’t a cruel laugh, that would have been far easier.
Instead, it was small and helpless.
“Hold what?” he said with a derisive laugh. “There’s nothing left to hold.”
But Adin held him anyway, because love, in its rawest form has no dignity.
And monsters don’t deserve any pride nor dignity.
He kisses Valentino’s knuckles now tenderly as he ignored the blood on the gauze from a still healing wound. He wraps the fingers gently with a new one, before kissing them again.
All the while Valentino watches him like a stranger.
“I made soup,” Adin murmurs.
“Baby doesn’t like soup.”
“You do.”
“No, she doesn’t like it. It makes her cry.”
Adin nods without protest.
“No soup, then.”
The dolls have eyes that follow him. He thinks, sometimes, he sees them blink.
At 3 A.M., Adin wakes to the sound of screaming.
Valentino’s voice tears through the bedroom like a fire alarm. His fingers are fisted into his own hair and his body was shaking. He was sobbing, screaming, and kicking the dresser down. The doll lies facedown on the floor, beheaded and shredded.
Adin doesn’t ask what had happened.
Because he already knows.
“I saw it again,” Valentino sobs hysterically. “I saw it! I saw he he was on top of him, you? Who? on our bed–”
Adin had risen by then and wraps his arms around him.
“It wasn’t real,” he lies with a quivering voice, because the truth was too ugly.
“It was my bed,” Valentino whispers into the dark. “It was my baby. Why wasn’t I enough?”
“You were everything.”
Valentino shoves him away and raised his arm. The slap doesn’t land, but the tremble in his fingers did.
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
“I wish it was you.”
“I know, Val.”
Valentino collapses against him and Adin stays there, kneeling in broken glass, until the sun begins to rise.
And by morning, the screams have faded.
Valentino is asleep again, curled into Adin’s chest like he once did. Adin strokes his hair, breathes in the scent of rosewater and dust, and closes his eyes.
He remembered the day Valentino told him he was pregnant, he cried in his joy.
The only time he ever did, not even when his own father died.
Valentino had held the test out with shaking hands and whispered, “Are you ready to be a father?”
Immediately, Adin had fallen to his knees and kissed his mate’s bare stomach like it was the world's greatest treasure.
And honestly? It was.
He bought out the mansion next to theirs, just to have more space. He had custom-made security systems installed and eventook six weeks off work.
He even offered to build Valentino a new garden, but Valentino just laughed and said, “You spoil me too much.”
“I breathe for you,” Adin had said honestly.
Valentino had looked at him then with soft eyes filled with warmth as whispered, “Then don’t ever stop.”
Adin never did.
Even now, even when the air tastes like ash.
Three weeks after the fall, they tried therapy.
Valentino was quiet as the doctor asked him questions about his mood, his sleep, his appetite.
He didn’t answer until she asked, “Do you feel safe in your home?”
That was when he looked up and smiled, not at the doctor, but at Adin.
“He never lets me fall,” he said as he let out a bright smile. “He always catches me.”
The doctor paused before making notes on her clipboard and said nothing.
Adin didn’t even need to ask what she wrote.
And later that week, Valentino threw himself against the nursery door, sobbing as he begged to go inside.
“She’s cold,” he cried out. “She’s alone in there. Why can’t I go to her? Why?”
Adin unlocked the door without any other words and watched Valentino took one step inside and screamed.
He ripped the stars from the ceiling, clawed the deer off the wallpaper, shredded the tiny blankets, and tore the crib apart with his hands.
Adin had watched silently.
And when Valentino collapsed in the middle of the mess, gasping for air and cody shaking, Adin finally joined him, pulled him into his arms, and rocked him slowly like a babe.
“She’s not here,” Valentino said, his voice broken.
“I know.”
“She never was.”
“She was,” Adin whispered. “She was ours.”
Valentino had cried until his voice gave out.
They never opened the door again.
Adin has memorized Valentino’s scent in every variation. In heat, in sickness, in grief, and in silence. Now, he memorizes it in madness.
Some days, it’s all he has left of him.
And at a press conference three months ago, one of the board members made a joke and said Adin was going soft, that his omega had him on a leash now.
Adin had looked him in the eye and replied, “I would burn down everything I’ve built if it meant he’d smile again.”
They didn’t joke again after that.
Valentino used to sing in the bath.
Now, Adin bathes him in silence, lathers his arms with patience, kisses his mark when Valentino isn’t shaking too badly.
He uses the shampoo Valentino once liked. He whispers nothing but his name.
On good nights, Valentino lets him stay.
On bad ones, he screams at the reflection in the mirror, convinced it’s Redika in his skin.
“It’s not me,” Adin tells him desperately.
But he never says, "I didn’t kiss him back."
Because the damage was already done. What help would it be?
Valentino doesn’t sleep much.
But when he does, his fingers curl into Adin’s shirt like a child’s.
“Don’t go,” he mumbles absentmindedly. “Please don’t leave me again.”
“I never did,” Adin whispers, even when he knows Valentino already long gone.
Valentino hasn’t touched food in two days.
The soup goes cold on the tray and the toast is barely nibbled. He sits in the middle of the living room floor with his arms wrapped around his knees, rocking gently, and whispers to the newest doll.
“This one is really her,” he says quietly. “I can feel it. The others weren’t right. But she’s warm, see? She listens.”
Adin nods as he kneelt beside him.
He doesn't say that the doll is as cold as everything else in this house. That the glass eyes reflect nothing. That warmth has long since fled.
Instead, he smooths Valentino’s hair back and kisses the crown of his head.
“You found her,” Adin says instead.
“I did.”
“She missed you.”
“I never left her.”
Valentino looks up at him with eyes that flicker like dying stars.
“You think I’m crazy,” he said with finality.
“No.”
“You should, they all do. Your father called me a curse.”
“He’s never set foot in this house. He doesn’t get to speak her name.”
Valentino clutches the doll tighter.
“She was so small, I didn’t even get to see her. They took her away before I could even—” He swallows hard at that. “I just wanted to name her.”
“What name?”
“Alina.”
The name freezes Adin's breath in his lungs.
Alina, my Light.
Adin clenches his jaw, holds back the tears. He’d written it once, on the inside of a drawer in the nursery. A name no one else but Valentino knew.
“She would’ve loved that,” he says, his voice hoarse.
“I think she still does,” Valentino whispers.
And that was the last of the conversation.
Because that night, Valentino disappears.
For one hour, Adin cannot find him.
The panic was instant as he tears through the mansion like a man possessed as he checked the bathroom, the balcony, and the hallway closet whilst screaming his name as he pulled open every door.
He finds him in the nursery. The one he thought would remain untouched again.
Valentino was curled up in the demolished crib, blood still on his fingers from the splinters. The doll was in his arms and his eyes are open but glassy, staring at the ceiling like he’s waiting for it to collapse.
Adin had dropoed to his knees and pulls him out.
He holds him like he did when they were both twenty-two and stupidly in love and drunk on champagne. He holds him like the world is ending.
Because it is.
Valentino blinks slowly, registering the warmth of his husband’s shaking body.
“I thought if I came here, she’d come too,” he finally says, his voice barely a whisper. “But it’s just shadows.”
“She’s with you, Val.”
“No, she’s not. I killed her.”
“You didn’t.”
“I killed her,” he repeats powerlessly. “Because I loved you too much. Because I let you lie to me.”
Adin doesn’t respond, because there was nothing left to say. He just pulls Valentino closer and lets the silence answer for both of them.
And then, two days later, the final porcelain doll Adin kept by the shelves shatters.
It’s 4:17 A.M. when the sound wakes him. Adin immediately bolts upright and runs toward it with his heart in his throat.
Valentino was standing in front of the fireplace, hus feet bare, his hair wild, and his arms limp at his sides.
There was glass is everywhere as tiny gold eyes scattered across the rug. The doll’s head lies with the empty sockets staring at him.
It was Valentino who broke the silence.
“I dropped her,” Valentino says softly.
“It’s okay—”
“She cried. Did you hear it?”
“No, baby. I didn’t.”
“She cried,” Valentino insisted. “She screamed.”
Adin then reaches for him.
“Let me get the broom—”
“No!”
Valentino finally, turns to him. And it was then that Adin noticed his eyes, Gods his eyes, were lucid. Clearer than they’ve been in months, as if the fog has parted and all that’s left is grief stripped of madness.
“You held me while I broke,” Valentino says again. “But you never told me why.”
Adin respond, but Valentino continued as if he knew that.
“You loved me.”
“I still do.”
“Then why him?” Valentino whispers brokenly. “Why that bed? Why that room?”
“I didn’t kiss him.”
“I saw his mouth.”
“He kissed me. I didn’t stop it fast enough. I was shocked, I was stupid. I pushed her off, Val. I swear to God, I did.”
But Valentino continues to stare at him despite his plea.
And then he sits down among the glass shards and runs his hands through them like snow.
Adin immediately kneels and grabs his wrists as he pulls them away from the sharp shards.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he says, his voice trembling. “But I’d trade places with her if I could.”
“I know,” Valentino says quietly.
And he smiles.
...but it was not a comforting smile.
It’s a smile of someone who had given up.
That night, Adin sleeps holding Valentino against his chest.
He whispers the name again, Alina, and He swears he feels something warm pass through them.
But by the next morning, Valentino doesn’t wake up.
Adin knows before he even opens his eyes. The weight in his arms was still, too still.
He pulls back the blanket slowly.
Valentino’s lips were parted, his eyes closed, and his skin pale like the porcelains he had. His fingers were curled against Adin’s chest, but they don’t move. The bondmark on his neck was faded, and his scent is faint.
But he looked finally at peace.
Peaceful in a way Adin hasn’t seen in months. Adin held him tighter and cried.
And when he finally mustered the strength to rise, he noticed a note.
It was folded on the nightstand with the handwriting shaky.
She came back to me last night and held my hand.
I’m sorry it took me this long.
I love you.
–V
Adin doesn’t cry at first, he just sits there quietly and brushes Valentino’s hair back before kissing his forehead.
It’s hours before he makes the call and even longer before he lets go.
He buries them together.
There was no press, no funeral, just him in a field of white lilies, and a stone with three lines.
Alina Van Rensselaer
Valentino Van Rensselaer
And Adin?
Adin had stopped breathing long before he died.
But every year, on the same date, he visits.
With one doll clutched by one hand, and a lullaby from his lips.
He sits at the grave and whispers.
“Come home.”
Because monsters don't deserve forgiveness.
But sometimes, they still wait by the door.
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END