Sullivan was ten when he was taken. When he finally walks back into the Su house, his chair at the table is already filled — by Soren, the adopted son his parents raised in his absence. Soren frames him for a crime he didn't commit, and Sullivan spends his twenty-fourth birthday behind bars. The day he gets out, his fiancée Quinna tells him she's marrying Soren instead.
Sullivan doesn't beg. He signs on to a classified state assignment and vanishes for three years, letting the Su family believe he's gone for good. Without him holding the walls up, Soren's real appetite comes out, and the family he abandoned starts to rot from the inside. When Sullivan comes back, he has the evidence, the leverage, and no remaining interest in being anyone's eldest son.
