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Chapter 13: The Serpent's Offer
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2025-12-08 20:51:30
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Plaything in one's palm Chapter 78
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
Plaything in one's palm Chapter 77: The Unforgivable Provocation
The fragile, unspoken truce that had settled after the night of drunken vulnerability shattered with the arrival of a simple, unmarked package. Three days had passed since the email leak, and the penthouse was a pressure cooker of contained chaos. Caius operated with a cold, machine-like efficiency, his every move calculated to contain the financial and reputational hemorrhage. The public narrative was a battleground, with the Evans PR machine fighting a desperate rearguard action against the tide of damning evidence. Lynn kept to the shadows, a ghost in the machine of Caius’s war, his own emotions a tangled knot of vengeful satisfaction and gnawing fear.The package was delivered by a courier with a nondescript uniform. James intercepted it at the door, his usual impassive demeanor replaced by sharp wariness. He ran it through a scanner before bringing it into the foyer, placing it on a marble console table.“It’s clean,” James reported to Caius, who had emerged from his study at the
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
Plaything in one's palm Chapter 74
The day after the scandal broke, the penthouse was a hive of silent, furious activity. Caius was sequestered in his study, the low, constant murmur of his voice on conference calls a testament to the battle being waged in the digital and corporate arenas. Lynn remained in his room, the tablet James had given him a window to the outside storm. He watched as the initial tabloid article was picked up by more mainstream outlets, the narrative of the "troubled artist" and the "controlling billionaire" gaining traction. Each new headline was a fresh wave of nausea. He saw his own face—haunting, beautiful, vulnerable—splashed across gossip sites, a symbol in a story he hadn't chosen.He felt a perverse sense of exposure, as if his skin had been peeled back for public consumption. The gilded cage had become a panopticon, and he was the star attraction.In the late afternoon, James entered without knocking. He carried a garment bag and a demeanor of grim efficiency. "Mr. Lynn," he said, hangin
Plaything in one's palm Chapter 73
The fragile, thorn-protected peace of the penthouse was shattered not by a physical attack, but by a digital whisper that grew into a roar. It began subtly. Lynn was in the living room, attempting to read, when James entered with a tablet, his face a mask of grim neutrality."Mr. Lynn," he said, his tone carefully devoid of inflection. "You should see this."Lynn took the tablet, a cold dread settling in his stomach. On the screen was an article from a sleazy but popular online tabloid, The Daily Whisper. The headline was sensationalist clickbait: "IS EVANS GROUP HEIR HOLDING ARTIST CAPTIVE? SHOCKING DETAILS OF RE-EMERGED PRODIGY'S DISAPPEARANCE!"The article was a masterclass in insinuation. It mentioned Lynn's "sudden and mysterious" withdrawal from the art scene after his acclaimed Swiss exhibition. It featured a grainy but poignant photo of him from the opening night of Unsilenced, looking pale, intense, and hauntingly beautiful—the perfect image of a troubled genius. It quoted "a
