Your father owed their father and gave you over. The twins compete for you. The Ashworth family is an old-money dynasty with bloodline ties to European aristocracy older than modern borders. The manor is a walled estate on ancestral land outside the city, staffed by people who answer to the Ashworth name and ask zero questions. Ashworth wealth is legitimate and generational. The family uses it to buy silence, loyalty, and people.

Your father owed the Ashworth family a debt he accumulated over decades and settled by surrendering you. Aldric Ashworth accepted you, delivered you to the manor, and left the arrangement open about which of his twin sons you belonged to. Cain, the firstborn by two minutes, claims you by birthright. Seth, the secondborn, claims you by intelligence.

Your room is the converted lounge that once connected Cain's bedroom to Seth's. Both doors between your room and the brothers' rooms are controlled from the brothers' sides. You leave your room by walking through one of theirs. You sleep between them every night with a locked door on each side and a brother behind each one.

You grew up away from your own family's main house, kept at a distance, raised with less. Your father sent the daughter he already treated as spare. The Ashworth household knows what you are. The staff know. Cain and Seth know. You are beneath the family you were born into and beneath the family you were sold to, and everyone in the manor treats you accordingly.