Chapter Text
At eleven years old, Phoebe Laurent learned exactly how cruel the world could be when Cerise entered her life. It started with only hushed whispers in the school courtyard and cold shoulders from classmates she used to command with a single look. Phoebe, possessing her father’s sharp intellect, didn’t panic; she investigated, tracing the poison back to its source. It was Cerise. The seemingly sweet new girl who for some reason secretly harbored a venomous obsession with destroying Phoebe’s perfect life. Cerise had systematically fabricated sickening rumors—lies about her family, her character, and things she had supposedly said behind people’s backs—spreading them with such calculated malice that Phoebe’s entire social empire she created had shattered in a matter of days. For the first time in her life, the proud Laurent blood in Phoebe’s veins turned to ice as she realized the entire school now looked at her with pure disgust, all because of a master manipulator she hadn’t seen coming.
The heavy oak doors of the Laurent atelier had barely clicked shut before the poise Phoebe had maintained all day completely dissolved. She dropped to her knees right there on the cold marble floor, her breathing coming in ragged, hyperventilating gasps as the sheer weight of Cerise’s vicious isolation finally broke her. Apollo was by her side in an instant, wrapping his arms tightly around his twin sister, his own green eyes burning with a mixture of panic and protective fury as she sobbed into his chest. Gabriel didn’t just casually turn around—he actively surged out of his chair, the rare, terrifying sight of his absolute composure shattering as he rushed across the room. He dropped to his knees right alongside his children, his hands trembling slightly as he firmly gripped Phoebe’s shoulders to stop her shaking.
“Phoebe, look at me—breathe.” Gabriel demanded, his voice laced with a raw protective panic, that he never showed to the outside world. “Who did this? Tell me right now, and I swear to you, we’re leaving this city.” Phoebe’s chest heaved as she fought for air, her usual untouchable pride completely shattered by the weight of the school’s hatred. She stared up at her father, her eyes wide with a suffocating fear as she bit her trembling lower lip, deeply hesitant to utter the name. Part of her, absolutely loathed showing this kind of vulnerability, terrified that admitting defeat would make her look weak in her father’s eyes. But as Apollo squeezed her hand tightly, his silent reassurance giving her a desperate surge of courage, the dam finally broke.
“It… It was Cerise.. Cerise Bianca,” Phoebe choked out, the name tasting like pure poison on her tongue as fresh tears spilled over her flushed cheeks “She made up everything, Père. The entire school believes her, and they all look at me like I’m some kind of monster..”
Gabriel’s hands tightened on Phoebe’s shoulders, his knuckles turning stark white as an icy, murderous calm instantly replaced his panic. He didn’t yell; instead, his voice dropped to a terrifying whisper that made the temperature in the room feel like it dropped ten degrees.
“Cerise,” Gabriel repeated, the name sounding like a death sentence in his mouth. “She will regret drawing breath in this city.” Beside them, Apollo slowly stood up, his face completely pale and his fists clenched so hard that his fingernails nearly bit into his palms. He didn’t look like a gentle eleven-year-old anymore; the pure Laurent venom had taken over his expression, his eyes burning with a ruthless, protective malice that mirrored their father’s.
“She’s not going to get away with this, Father.” Apollo whispered, his voice shaking. “I’m going to make sure she pays for every tear.”
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Phoebe paced the length of her bedroom floor, her Mary Janes clicking sharply against the cold marble as she gripped her hair in sheer frustration. “They actually believed her,” she whispered to the empty room, her voice shaking with an anger that was rapidly turning into hollow despair. “Every single one of them looked at me like I was a monster, all because that pathetic liar shed a few fake tears.”
She stopped in front of her vanity mirror, staring at her reflection through a blur of furious tears, the echo of the school’s malicious whispers suffocating her until she could barely breathe. “I’m a Laurent,” she choked out, her fingers tightening into fists as her chest heaved. “I shouldn't care about these insects.. God, this is ridiculous.. I can’t live in a world where a fraud like Cerise can completely erase who I am..”
She turned away from the mirror, her gaze locking onto the bathroom door with a sudden, eerie calm that completely replaced her tears. The endless noise in her head faded into a heavy silence as she walked across the bedroom, her movements deliberate and robotic. Every step toward the threshold felt like a total surrender to the water filling up the bathtub waiting inside, a final escape from a school and a city she no longer had the strength to fight. She stepped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her with a soft, definitive click, ready to let the cold numbness wash away Cerise’s poison for good.
The suffocating weight of the school’s hatred eventually drove Phoebe to a dark, quiet breaking point inside the cold, echoing walls of the Laurent mansion. She locked herself in the cavernous bathroom, blocking out the endless echo of Cerise’s poisonous whispers, and stared at the water filling the deep porcelain tub. Consumed by a desperate, hollow urge to make the noise stop, she stepped into the cold water fully clothed, letting herself sink beneath the surface as she closed her eyes and waited for the numbness to take over. It was Apollo’s frantic, sudden shattering of the locked bathroom door—a twin instinct telling him something was horribly wrong—that broke the silence. He plugged his arms into the freezing water, violently hailing his gasping, choking sister over the edge of the tub, both of them collapsing onto the marble floor in a tangled, shivering heap of raw terror.
Apollo squeezed his arms tightly around Phoebe’s shivering, soaked frame, pulling her head tightly against his chest as she coughed up that freezing water. “Père! Papa, help!” Apollo screamed, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing terror that tore through the quiet halls of the mansion. He rocked his twin sister back and forth on the wet marble floor, his hands trembling violently as he looked at the open bathroom door. He yelled for his father again, the desperate, frantic echoes bouncing off the high ceilings, a terrifying plea for the only person in the world who could fix the nightmare they were trapped in. The heavy wooden door flew open with a violent crash, and Gabriel Laurent surged into the room, his signature composure entirely shattered by the raw terror in his son's voice.
His eyes darted from the flooded bathroom to the marble floor, locking onto the sight of Apollo cradling a drenched, shivering Phoebe, and for the first time in his life, Gabriel’s face went completely pale. He dropped to his knees in an instant, utterly ignoring the freezing water soaking through his designer trousers as he reached out with trembling hands to pull both of his children against his chest. “Phoebe—Phoebe sweetheart, look at me..” Gabriel choked out, his voice cracking with a fierce, terrifying panic as he checked her pulse, a dangerous and protective darkness flaring in his eyes as held his broken family together.
Gabriel didn’t wait for an ambulance; he scooped Phoebe’s freezing, sodden body directly into his arms and sprinted down the grand staircase, Apollo trailing desperately at his heels. The ride to the hospital was a blur of flashing city lights and a reckless, high-speed race through the streets of London, the interior of the limousine thick with the suffocating sense of chlorine and raw panic. Gabriel held his daughter tightly against his chest the entire way, his hand pressed firmly over her heart to monitor every shallow, irregular beat while Apollo clutched her ice-cold fingers, whispering frantic promises to the darkness as he tried to bring heat back to her hands.The moment they burst through the emergency room doors, a swarm of medical staff rushed forward to take her, leaving Gabriel and Apollo standing in the sterile, glaring light of the hallway—soaked, exhausted, and united by a terrifying new hatred for the girl who had driven them to the hospital floor.
The sterile smell of bleach and the rhythmic, hollow beep of the heart monitor filled the private room where Gabriel and Apollo sat in a tense, unbroken vigil. Gabriel stood completely rigid by the window, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as he stared down at Phoebe’s pale face, the deep shadows under his eyes betraying the sleepless, agonizing hours that had passed. Apollo sat slumped in the bedside chair, his small hand still fiercely clamping onto his sister’s limp fingers as if he could physically hold her soul in place. Neither of them spoke; the silence between father and son was heavy, suffocating and loaded with a dark, unspoken promise. In the quiet of that hospital room, the last remnants of their mercy died, replaced by a cold, calculating resolve that they would make Cerise pay for every single beep of that machine.
The rhythmic, hollow beep of the heart monitor was the first sound that broke through the heavy fog in Phoebe’s mind. She slowly blinked her eyes open, the glaring fluorescent lights of the hospital room forcing her to wince as the blurry shapes around her began to sharpen. The moment she stirred, Apollo surged forward from his chair, his grip tightening on her hand as a choked gasp of pure relief escaped his throat. Gabriel moved instantly from the window, dropping his rigid stance to lean over the bed, his cold demeanor completely melting as he stared down at his daughter with raw, uncharacteristic emotion. “Phoebe,” Gabriel whispered, his voice thick and rough from hours of silent panic as he gently brushed a stray blonde curl from her forehead. “You’re safe. We are right here, and I swear to you in our family name, the girl who did this to you will never hurt you again.”
The ride back to the Laurent mansion was entirely different from the frantic race to the hospital, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence that settled over the luxurious interior of the limousine. Phoebe sat wedged between her father and brother, wrapped in an over sized cashmere blanket, her eyes staring blankly at the passing British streets that now felt entirely alien to her. No one spoke a single world; the only sound was the quiet purr of the engine as they glided past the grand gates and pulled up to the looming stone fortress they called home. As Gabriel helped his children out of the car, his grip was firm and unyielding on his daughter's shoulders, a silent declaration that the outside world was officially locked out, and the walls of the mansion would now serve as their fortress until they moved to France.
Once inside the quiet sanctuary of the grand atelier, Gabriel closed the massive double doors, leaving Apollo to sit in the living room while he sat across from Phoebe, his face a mask of intensely controlled focus. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees to look directly into her hollow green eyes, his voice dropping into a low, carefully measured cadence to avoid triggering her into another panic. “Phoebe, I need you to be entirely honest with me, because I cannot dismantle an enemy I do not fully understand,” Gabriel said, his hands clasped tightly together as he pressed for the details. “I know Cerise is the source, but I need to know exactly what vile lies she whispered to turn the entire school against you; what did she claim you did that pushed you to do something like that..?”
Phoebe pulled the cashmere blanket tighter around her shoulders, her jaw clenching as the sickening humiliation of the lies threatened to choke her all over again. “She told everyone that I was a completely broken, desperate girl who was—who was secretly sleeping with older men for expensive clothes..” she spat out, her voice trembling with a lethal mix of disgust and leftover tears. “But that wasn’t even the worst part, Père.. She made it look like I was selling myself online..” She looked up at Gabriel, her green eyes flashing with a desperate, wounded fury. “..and when I tried to deny it, the boy started making weird comments to me and the girls looked at me with just disgust.”
Gabriel’s jaw locked so tightly that a sharp muscle twitched in his cheek, his cold green eyes narrowing into a gaze of pure, murderous calculation. The sheer malice of Cerise’s lies didn’t just cross a line; it was a direct, calculated strike meant to completely ruin a Laurent, and Gabriel’s protective fury burned hotter than it ever had before. He reached out, his large hands firmly covering Phoebe’s trembling ones, his voice dropping into a low, lethal whisper that carried the absolute weight of a death sentence. “That is enough, Phoebe—you will never speak of this filth again, and you will never set foot in that pathetic school again,” Gabriel commanded, his words dripping with a chilling resolve. “Neither will your brother. I am pulling you both out in three days. Make sure you pack. We’re leaving London.”
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The next morning, the school courtyard was buzzing with the foul poison of Cerise’s rumors, but Apollo marched through the crowd with a cold, single-minded focus. He found Cerise standing near the lockers, wearing her usual sweet, innocent mask as she gossiped with a group of easily fooled classmates. Apollo didn’t hesitate; he stepped directly into her path, his green eyes blazing with a dangerous fury.
“You’re going to stop this Cerise,” Apollo hissed, his voice dropping into a low, amazing register that made the surrounding students fall dead silent. “I know exactly what you did to my sister, and if you breathe one more lie about Phoebe, I will personally ensure your life in this city becomes a living hell.” Cerise’s eyes widened in feigned shock for a split second before a sinister, mocking smirk crept across her face, realizing she finally had the perfect opportunity to break the other Laurent twin.
Before Apollo could even register the shift in her expression, Cerise took a dramatic step backward, her eyes welling with fake tears as she let out a loud, theatrical gasp. “Apollo, please! I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so much!” she cried out, her voice easily carrying across the dead-silent courtyard to ensure every student heard her. Right on cue, three of the school’s oldest athletes—boys Cerise had spent weeks wrapping around her finger with her sob stories—stepped out from the lockers and completely blocked Apollo’s path The ‘leader” slammed a heavy hand directly into Apollo’s chest, shoving the boy backward onto the concrete floor with a dull thud. Apollo scrambled to stand, but before he could strike back, the three older boys swarmed him, raining down a brutal, coordinated hail of kicks and punches that left him gasping for air, bloodied and broken on the pavement while Cerise watched from behind them, her weeping mask completely replaced by a sickening, victorious grin.
Phoebe paced anxiously near the school gates as the final bell rang, her eyes scanning the crowd of students who still shrank away from her, whispering and pointing. The heavy suffocating weight of the isolation pressed down on her, but it instantly vanished when she finally spotted her brother limping through the courtyard.. Her breath caught in her throat; Apollo’s pristine clothes were dirtied, a dark purple bruise was already blooming across his jaw, and a trail of dried blood cut through the dust on his cheek.
“Apollo!” she gasped, rushing forward and catching him by the arms just as his knees buckled slightly. Before she could demand names, a sleek, black limousine with heavily tinted windows glided smoothly to the curb right in front of them, the engine a quiet, menacing hum. The door swung open, revealing the cold, unyielding face of the driver Gabriel had personally dispatched, his silent nod a clear indicator that their father already knew exactly what had happened—and that the time for running away was officially over.
The heavy limousine doors parted, and the twins stepped out into the familiar, echoing courtyard of the Laurent estate, their shadows stretching long against the stone. Waiting for them at the base of the grand staircase stood Gabriel, his posture rigid and his expression unreadable, though his eyes narrowed imperceptibly as they caught the fresh bruises darkening Apollo’s jaw. He didn’t ask for explanations, nor did he offer comfort. He gestured toward the sweeping staircase where a row of sleek, black designer luggage already stood waiting. “Go upstairs and ensure you have packed every single thing you wish to bring with you to France,” Gabriel commanded, his voice carrying a cold, decisive finality that brooked no argument. “The arrangements are already finalized. By tomorrow morning, the people of this city will not exist to us.”
An hour later, Phoebe tossed a silk scarf into her final suitcase, her movements sharp and aggressive as she vented her lingering fury on the expensive fabric. Across the room, Apollo sat on the edge of her bed, carefully folding a matching jacket while his thumb gently traced the tender bruise blossoming across his own jawline. “I still can’t believe we’re just leaving,” Apollo muttered, his voice dropping into a frustrated whisper as he looked up at his twin. “It feels like we’re letting her win, Phoebe. Like we’re just running away.” Phoebe stopped what she was doing, her green eyes flashing with a dangerous, icy resolve that mirrored their father’s. “We aren’t running, Apollo,” she hissed, slamming the suitcase lid shut with a definitive snap. “Père said this is part of the plan, we are disappearing so we can dismantle her when she least expects it.”
The heavy bedroom door glided open without a sound, and Gabriel stepped into the room, his towering frame immediately casting a long shadow over the twins. He looked down at the neatly zipped luggage, his face an unreadable mask of absolute calculation before his gaze locked onto his children. “Your sister is right, Apollo—you are not running away, but we aren’t going by ‘The Laurents’ anymore. Apollo and I will be the Agrestes."
“Huh?
“What about me Père..?”
“A family friend, André Bourgeois, required a pristine legacy to aid his upcoming mayoral campaign, and his wife Audrey is incapable of providing an heir. Effective tomorrow, you will be arriving in Paris not as my daughter, but as Chloé Bourgeois. You will keep our true bloodline an absolute secret, and you will speak of your twin-hood only behind the doors of my atelier, where the three of us can discuss more about your new identities and this plan against that wretched girl.”
Apollo’s hands froze over the jacket he was folding, the fabric slipping from his fingers as his mind raced to process the impossible words. “Chloé Bourgeois?” he echoed, his voice dropping into a breathless, fractured whisper as he looked between his father and his sister. “You’re splitting us up? Father, she just barely survived a nightmare—she almost died! You can’t just hand my sister over to strangers and erase her name ‘cause of some campaign!”
Phoebe stood frozen, the heavy syllables of her new name hanging in the air like a physical weight. A look of pure terror crossed her face at the thought of being separated from the only two people who knew her truth. “Will I still be able to see you guys..? Is—Is Apollo getting a new name too?”
Gabriel’s rigid posture didn’t break, but the icy coldness in his eyes softened just a fraction as he looked at his daughter’s terrified expression. He took a single, commanding step forward, his heavy hand coming down to rest firmly on Phoebe’s trembling shoulder to anchor her. “You will never be separated from us, Phoebe,” Gabriel said, his voice low, steady, and filled with an absolute certainty that left no room for doubt. “The Grand Paris hotel and the mansion I bought are going to be under my complete surveillance. You will see Apollo every single day under the guise of business partners, and I want you to come straight to that mansion whenever the weight of the mask becomes too heavy to bear.”
He then turned his sharp gaze toward his son, a dark, calculating smirk playing at the edge of his lips. “As for your brother, he will be getting a new name. From tomorrow onward, the world will know him as Adrien Agreste—the pristine, untouchable golden boy of my fashion empire.” He paused. “You are not being erased, my children; you are being weaponized.” He looks back to his daughter, speaking to her again, “André and Audrey Bourgeois will give you everything you demand because they fear my power. Use their wealth, use their influence, and let this new city pamper you while we quietly construct the plan for this girl’s destruction.
The final night in their childhood bedrooms was stripped of all luxury, leaving only the raw bond between the two siblings. Apollo dragged his mattress across the hardwood floor, sliding it right next to Phoebe’s bed so they wouldn’t have to face the sudden, upcoming distance alone. They lay awake for hours in the dim moonlight, listening to the distant ticking of the hallway clock while the reality of their new lives settled heavily over them. Phoebe reached down, her fingers tightly interlocking with Apollo’s as she stared up at the dark ceiling, the silence between them thick with the unspoken terror of the masks they would have to put on by morning.
“We don’t answer to Adrien and Chloé,” Apollo whispered into the dark, his voice fierce and unyielding as he squeezed her hand. “No matter what Father says to the public, or what the Bourgeois family calls you, you are Phoebe and I am Apollo.” Phoebe turned her head to look at him, his eyes flashing with a cold determination that burned through the shadows. She moves slightly, cuddling closer to her brother as he speaks up again. “Every single day,” he promised quietly, his voice dropping into a blood-pact whisper. “We play their stupid games, we wear those stupid names, but we never forget what Cerise did to us—to you.”