LOGINJeffery stood right at the bedroom entrance for a long moment. He did not walk away after he closed the door behind him. A new idea suddenly came into his head and he turned back around without thinking twice.He stepped into the bedroom again with slow steps. Clara's face lightened up the moment she saw him return through the door. Her eyes softened right away and something close to relief washed over her dripping body.He moved closer and unlocked the chains from her wrists first. Then he freed her legs and picked up a light robe from the couch beside the bed before dropping it gently on her. Clara pulled the robe around her body and sat up slowly on the mattress.Her hair stayed messy all over her face and she made no move to fix it with her hands. She moved off the bed with very careful steps like someone whose body had gone through something completely new and deep. The ache between her legs reminded her with every small movement that this time Jeffery had really been inside he
Chapter 129: Left Wet and Furious Her body jerked violently against the unyielding metal restraints, wrists pulling hard until the chains rattled with a cold, unforgiving sound. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes almost instantly, blurring her vision as a wave of overwhelming vulnerability crashed over her. She hadn't expected it to hit this hard, this fast.Jeffery watched her the entire time, his intense gaze never once leaving her face. He remained completely silent, observing every twitch of her muscles, every flutter of her eyelids, like a predator studying its prey. The silence inside the room grew heavier with each passing second, thick and suffocating, pressing down on her chest until every breath felt like a struggle.The pain came first, sharp, searing, and brutally real. It started as a sudden sting deep inside her and slowly bloomed outward, spreading through her core like liquid fire that refused to be ignored. Clara bit down on her lip, trying to stifle the sound risin
Jeffery had barely reached the elevator entrance when his phone vibrated inside his pocket. He glanced at the screen and immediately saw Mei’s name staring back at him. His expression hardened slightly before he answered the call and placed the phone against his ear.“Such a cold gesture. Not even a hello.” Mei’s voice drifted through the line smoothly. “I was beginning to think we had become close after our last conversation. Turns out we have not. Anyway, I called because i noticed you just placed an order through one of my stores. Since the anniversary is coming in a few days, I thought I should personally deliver it and use the opportunity to check on my dear friend.”Jeffery stepped into the elevator slowly while listening to her. “Stop pretending, we both know you are not Clara’s friend.” His tone remained flat, but there was already irritation sitting beneath the words. A soft laugh escaped Mei. “I guess I should stop pretending then.” She paused briefly before continuing. “Th
Clara had said it clearly.The day you see staff come in with clothes and shopping bags, checked the flower vase.He reached the side table.He picked up the vase with both hands as if he was examining it.Then he bent it slowly. His fingers found the bottom.Something was there.His heart was beating considerably faster than his face suggested.Whatever Clara had left him, he was now holding it.Theodore set the vase back down carefully and closed his hand around what he had found, keeping his expression completely neutral and his body language completely unremarkable.He looked at the trolleys one more time.Then he turned and walked back toward the corridor, returned to his original purpose of finding something to eat.His appetite had improved considerably.___Clara had been at the bottom of the pool long enough that the staff in the sitting room had stopped making eye contact with each other.Jeffery's patience had reached a place it had not been in some time. He looked down at
Jeffery checked three rooms before he accepted that Clara was not going to be found by checking rooms.The sitting room. The east corridor. The kitchen. The mansion felt occupied the way it always did even when it was quiet, and Clara had a way of leaving small evidence of herself in spaces she had recently passed through. A displaced cushion. A glass moved two inches from where it had been. He found the traces. He did not find her.He pulled out his phone and opened the CCTV panel.Fifteen seconds later he found her in the swimming pool, moving through the water with the unhurried ease of someone who had nowhere else to be and no strong feelings about that.He stared at the screen for a moment."Of course you went swimming," he said quietly. "After the stunt you just pulled."He put his phone away and walked toward the pool.Clara heard the shift in the air before she saw him and finished her stroke anyway, touched the wall, turned, and looked up.Jeffery stood at the pool edge in
Jeffery read it once. Then again. Not because he had not understood it the first time but because his mind was doing the work of tracing it backward from the headline to the source, following the thread from where it had landed to where it must have started, and every direction that thread pointed in led to the same place.The mansion.This is Clara's doings.A phone he still could not find on any camera footage.The silence in the corridor lasted several seconds.When Jeffery finally spoke his voice was completely level in the way that things were level when everything underneath them was moving in the opposite direction."When did this go out," he said."Approximately three hours ago," Logan replied. "It's too far out now to pull back quietly. Any cancellation at this point raises more questions than the appearance itself."Jeffery looked at the phone screen one more time.An amusement park. Public entry. Children and ordinary people and open space that no security arrangement could
Then came a knock on each cabin door. The sound arrived almost at the same moment across the entire yacht.Clara looked toward the door from where she stood near the edge of the bed, the dark red fabric of her assigned costume falling smoothly against her body while the gold-detailed mask rested c
“Are you sure this man really loves you, Clara?”Clara stayed quiet for a moment after Mei’s question settled between them. The room felt heavier than before. The sound of distant waves pressing against the resort’s shore slipped through the open balcony doors, soft but constant.Then she finally
The entire beach club slowly quieted the moment the lights around the stage dimmed lower.A soft blue glow spread across the platform while the speakers released a deep rhythmic beat that rolled smoothly through the air like slow fire. The ocean breeze pushed against Clara’s hair the moment she st
The instructors eventually started explaining safety procedures while everybody listened with different levels of seriousness. Clara surprisingly looked calm.Jeffery moved slightly closer toward her afterward. “You’re seriously not scared?”Clara shrugged lightly. “I’ve already been emotionally fr







