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CHAPTER 72 — The Rats Abandoning The Ship (Lena)

Author: Queen Bee
last update publish date: 2026-05-06 21:29:04

The television in the living room was tuned to the financial news channel, more out of habit than interest. My eyes were glued to the screen, although my mind was a thousand miles away, trapped in that glass cage Cassius called “protection.”

His bodyguards were outside. Two silent and efficient men who followed me everywhere, who monitored every call, every outing, every breath. Protection, he said. House arrest was the truth.

And then the headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

“Arm
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  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 93 — SLEEP, BROTHER (Raphaël)

    The sun was already setting when the movement began.Zahir kept constant contact through the encrypted channel. His voice, always calm, now held a contained urgency that I rarely heard.“The cars are coming up the road. Two, not one. The one you detected before plus another that joined it. Different plates, but the same model. Suspicious.”“Does Mateo already know?”“Yes. He is positioned at the entrance to the dirt road. Edda is covering from the attic window. Tristan… Tristan is standing.”“Tristan is what?”“Standing.” Zahir paused. “And armed.”“He is not in any condition to fight.”“He’s not going to fight. He’ll cover the retreat. Aurora is already with August in the helicopter.”“Helicopter?”“What did you want? For us to leave on foot through the mountains? Tristan planned everything. There is a helicopter parked two kilometers from the cabin, in a clearing that isn’t on any maps.”I took a deep breath.Good. At least he had thought about the escape.“What do you need from me?

  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 92 — THE INVISIBLE WEB (Raphaël)

    The computer never slept.Neither did I, these last few weeks. The bluish glow of the monitors illuminated my pale face, reflected in the multiple screens that covered the Arsenal wall like the eyes of a digital spider. Every pixel was a thread in the web I wove around Tristan and his family—an invisible web, made of code and surveillance, designed to keep them safe.And to detect when someone tried to break it.The alert system I had built was a masterpiece of meticulous paranoia. Any movement around Füssen, any call to Dr. Weber’s office, any suspicious payment to local intermediaries—everything passed through my filters, everything was verified, cross-checked, archived.In the first days after the rescue, the silence was a blessing.No suspicious movement. No strange contact. No gaze lingering too long in the wrong directions.Tristan was recovering in the cabin. Aurora was taking care of him. August was learning to call his real father “Dad.” And I, on the other side of the screen

  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 91 – THE BLOOD TRAIL (Cassius)

    Cassius expected a middle-aged man with oily hair and evasive eyes. Instead he was met by a thin young man in an impeccable black suit, hair shaved on the sides, with clear, far-too-intelligent eyes.“Mr. Delyon,” he said, bowing respectfully but not submissively. “It is an honor.”“Save the pleasantries.” Cassius sat in the chair in front of the desk, in the minimalist office the man kept in the back of an art gallery in Zurich. “What did you discover?”Gregor did not hesitate. He opened a laptop and turned the screen toward him. On it was a complex spreadsheet filled with numbers, dates, and codes Cassius did not recognize.“Your son is careful. Very careful. All his transactions are in cryptocurrency, routed through temporary wallets that self-destruct after use. They cannot be tracked directly.”“So why did I hire you?”Gregor smiled. The smile was not offensive—it was confident, almost amused.“They cannot be tracked directly. But they can be tracked indirectly.” He turned the sc

  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 90 — THE RAT IN THE DEN (LENA)

    The apartment where I was hiding on the outskirts of Salzburg was small, dirty, with walls that smelled of mold and dampness. I lived on canned food and tap water, the money running out, the fake documents feeling more and more fragile. With every siren in the street, my heart raced. With every knock on the neighbor’s door, I held my breath.Cassius won’t find me, I repeated to myself, like a mantra. He’s too busy with Tristan. With Aurora. With the wedding scandal. He’s forgotten about me.What a fool I was.The sound of the door being forced open ripped me from the deepest sleep. I woke with a scream stuck in my throat, eyes wide, body rigid. Shadows invaded the room — large men, uniformed, armed. Not Cassius’s usual guards. These were different. Quieter. More lethal.“Lena Von Strauss?” The voice was deep, without inflection.“I’m not… I’m not…”The slap came fast and precise. My head snapped to the side, the taste of blood flooding my mouth.“Don’t lie. We don’t have time for lies

  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 89 — WHEN AUGUST DISCOVERED THE TRUTH (AURORA)

    After the bath, when we were already wrapped in the bedsheets, August still sleeping in the room next door, Tristan pulled me close.“Tell me more,” I asked, my head resting on his chest, my fingers tracing circles over his scars.“Tell you what?”“How it was. The war. The men you killed. The monster you had to become to survive.”He remained silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and distant.“It wasn’t a war, Aurora. It was a slaughterhouse. And I was the butcher.” His hand tightened on my shoulder. “I learned that fear is the most valuable currency. That violence, when used with precision, is more effective than any negotiation. That death, when it comes quickly, is a gift. And that… the only thing that kept me human was the memory of you.”“Of me?”“Of your eyes. Of your scent. Of the way you laughed before everything fell apart.” He turned his head, kissing my hair. “You were my shelter, Aurora. Even when I hated you for leaving me. Even when I swore I would n

  • Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother   CHAPTER 88 — THE BEAST AND THE FLESH (AURORA)

    The weeks in the cabin stretched like a fever dream, a suspended time between what we had been and what we were becoming. Tristan healed slowly — the stitches on his abdomen dried and fell away, the broken ribs stopped hurting with every breath, the fever finally broke. But there was something in him that did not heal. Something I didn’t know if I wanted to heal.The beast. The other face of the man I loved.On sleepless nights, when August was asleep and the silence of the mountain wrapped around us like a heavy blanket, Tristan cooked. It wasn’t ordinary cooking, the kind learned from recipe books. It was instinctive, almost brutal. The hands that had held rifles and pulled triggers now sliced onions with the same lethal precision, seared meat in the pan as if executing an enemy, seasoned broths with the meticulousness of an alchemist preparing poison.“How did you learn to cook?” I asked one night, leaning against the counter of the tiny kitchen, watching him stir a pot of soup. Th

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