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Chapter 10: The Depths of Fear

ผู้เขียน: cindyy
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2025-12-04 15:13:14

The cold war in the penthouse stretched on for days, a silent battle fought with looks and withheld words. The air was so thick with tension it was hard to breathe. Lynn continued to paint his dark, angry canvases, stacking them against the studio wall like a silent protest. Caius watched him with a simmering frustration he couldn't articulate. He felt the boy slipping further away, and his attempts to pull him back—through control, through demands—only seemed to push him deeper into his shell.

Then, abruptly, Caius announced they were leaving. "We're going to the island," he said one morning, his tone brooking no argument. "You need a change of scenery. This... mood... ends now." It was framed as a command, a solution imposed from above. A "vacation" in a newer, more remote cage.

Lynn didn't protest. What was the point? Resistance was futile. He packed a small bag with a sense of numb detachment. The "island" turned out to be a private, stunningly beautiful speck of land in a turquoi
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    The cracked photograph remained on the console table, a silent, screaming testament to the line that had been crossed. In the hours that followed its arrival, the penthouse underwent a subtle but profound transformation. The air of corporate crisis was replaced by something else—a cold, focused, and deeply personal fury. Caius moved with a new intensity, his silence more threatening than any outburst. The battle was no longer about stock prices or boardroom politics; it was a vendetta.That evening, after a series of terse, encrypted calls, Caius emerged from his study. He found Lynn sitting in the living room, staring blankly at a book he hadn't read."Come with me," Caius said, his voice flat, devoid of its usual clipped authority. It was a command, but it carried a weight that went beyond business.Lynn looked up, startled. The expression on Caius's face was unreadable, but his eyes held a glint of something dark and final. This wasn't a lesson. This was a revelation.Without anoth

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  • Plaything in one's palm    Chapter 76

    The days following the email leak were a descent into a silent, high-stakes war. The penthouse became the nerve center of a corporate siege. Caius was a ghost, visible only in fleeting glimpses—pacing the study during endless conference calls, his voice a low, relentless drumbeat of commands and countermeasures. The air was thick with the scent of strong coffee and tension. He had James install multiple large screens in the study, each displaying a different battlefield: stock tickers, news feeds, legal dockets. The empire was under assault, and Caius was fighting a multi-front war with a cold, terrifying ferocity.Lynn kept to the periphery, a silent witness to the storm. He saw the strain on Caius’s face, the shadows under his eyes that no amount of authority could conceal. The invincible facade was still there, but it was stretched thin, like ice over a raging river. The emails had struck a blow far deeper than any scandal about Lynn’s captivity. They had attacked the foundation of

  • Plaything in one's palm    Chapter 75

    The manufactured calm lasted less than forty-eight hours. The Evans Group's slick press release and carefully staged photographs had successfully muddied the waters, turning public sympathy towards the "sensitive artist" and casting doubt on the initial salacious reports. But it was a temporary victory, a bandage on a festering wound. Lynn existed in a state of suspended animation, the taste of humiliation still bitter in his mouth. He avoided the studio—it felt tainted by the photoshoot—and spent his time listlessly staring out the window, watching the city that was buzzing with a distorted version of his life.The new attack came not from a tabloid, but from a respected, mainstream financial investigative journal, The Capital Ledger. It wasn't a whisper; it was a thunderclap.James entered the living room, his face graver than Lynn had ever seen it. He handed Lynn a tablet without a word. The headline was stark black and white, devoid of sensationalism, which made it all the more te

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