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Chapter 41

ผู้เขียน: Bunnykoo
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2025-12-03 08:00:42

The renaming of the Hawthorne Arts Initiative was not a gift. It was a golden leash, choked tight around my neck.

Silas had spent ten million dollars not to save my mother’s legacy, but to prove that he had the power to resurrect the dead.

He wanted me to look at the screen, see my name on the building, and feel gratitude.

He wanted me to crawl into his lap and thank him for being a benevolent god.

I sat at the dinner table, cutting my steak into precise, geometric squares. I did not thank him.

I did not mention the news. I treated the ten-million-dollar endowment with the same crushing silence I gave the salt shaker.

Silas sat across from me. He had been vibrating with a dark, kinetic energy since he returned home.

He had dismissed the staff early. There were no footmen, no Mrs. Alastair.

Just the two of us in the cavernous dining room, the silence stretching between us like a wire pulled to the breaking point.

"The halibut is overcooked," Silas stated, his voice loud in the empty ro
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  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 48

    ElaraThe drive back to the estate was a blur of speed and silence. Silas drove the Maybach himself, having dismissed the driver at the tower.He drove with a terrifying, controlled aggression, his knuckles white on the leather steering wheel, the speedometer climbing well past the legal limit.I sat in the passenger seat, the metal tracker on my wrist humming against the bone. Proximity Confirmed. I was tethered to him, trapped in a metal box hurtling toward a destination I couldn't escape.He didn't speak. He didn't look at me. But the air in the car was thick with his intent. He had told me he was going to take me apart until he found the fire. He had told me he was done waiting.When we pulled up to the front steps of the estate, he didn't wait for the valet. He killed the engine and got out. He came around to my side and wrenched the door open."Get out," he commanded.I stepp

  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 47

    ElaraThe Vancewick Tower was designed to intimidate. It was a monolith of black steel and glass that pierced the clouds, a physical manifestation of Silas’s ego.But today, the most intimidating thing in the building wasn't the architecture; it was the invisible, ten foot radius that leashed me to the man sitting behind the desk.I sat in the black leather chair by the window, the one Silas had designated as my "station." My hands were folded in my lap. My spine was straight.I looked out at the city, at the thousands of people moving freely on the streets below, and I felt the heavy, cold weight of the tracker humming against my wrist.Proximity Alert: Level One.It was a digital chain. If I moved more than ten feet away from Silas’s bio-key which was currently in his pocket the band would scream.It would announce my disobedience to the entire floor.Silas was working. Or pretending to.He sat at his massive desk, staring at a holographic projection of market data. His jacket was o

  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 46

    ElaraThe mirror in the dressing room had been replaced before breakfast.I woke up, walked into the room to dress, and found a pristine, flawless sheet of glass covering the wall where Silas had shattered his reflection the night before.The blood had been scrubbed from the carpet. The shards had been swept away. The air smelled of lemon polish and chemical cleaner, erasing the metallic scent of his rage.It was as if the violence had never happened.But I saw the evidence. It was wrapped around Silas’s right hand a stark white bandage that stood out against the dark wool of his suit.He was waiting for me in the foyer. He stood by the door, checking his phone with his good hand, his posture rigid.When I descended the stairs, wearing a high-necked dress of olive green wool, he didn't look up immediately. He waited until I was on the bottom step.Then, he lifted his eyes. They were bloodshot, rimmed with the exhaustion of a man who was fighting a war inside his own skull."We are goi

  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 45

    ElaraThe master suite smelled of violence.It wasn't the metallic scent of blood, though I half-expected to see it staining the carpet. It was the scent of shredded wool, of ozone from the tracker on my wrist, and the heavy, suffocating pheromones of a man who had been pushed past the edge of reason.I stood in the center of the dressing room. I had removed the second grey dress the one I had put on after he ripped the black one. I was now standing in my slip, the gunmetal tracker stark and ugly against my pale arm.I was packing.Not to leave. I couldn't leave. The tracker, the guards, the contract… I was sealed in. I was packing away the last of Elara.I took the small, scuffed leather bag that held my paints. I placed it on the highest shelf, out of reach. I took the sketchbook I hadn't opened in weeks and slid it under a stack of heavy winter sweaters. I was burying the evidence of my soul.The door to the dressing room didn't open; it was already open. Silas was leaning against

  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 44

    ElaraThe metal band on my left wrist was not just a tracker; it was a second pulse.It had a weight that defied physics, pulling my arm down, dragging my shoulder into a permanent slump that I had to actively fight against with rigid posture.It hummed against my radius bone, a low-frequency vibration that reminded me, with every beat of my heart, that I was broadcasting my existence to a server in the basement.I was a dot on a screen.A coordinate.A piece of inventory with a GPS signal.I sat in the morning room, the grey light of dawn filtering through the high windows.I was dressed in black today, a high-necked, long-sleeved sheath that covered the tracker completely.But hiding it didn’t make it disappear.I could feel the cold steel warming against my skin, absorbing my body heat like a parasite.Silas had not come to bed.The tracker app on his phone would have told

  • The Gilded Cage   Chapter 43

    ElaraThe sun rose over the city, casting long, pale shadows across the master suite, but the bed beside me remained cold.Silas had not returned.For the first time since the wedding, I had slept alone in the center of the massive mattress.I should have felt relieved.I should have stretched my limbs into the empty space, savored the absence of his heavy, possessive heat, and breathed easier without the scent of sandalwood and repressed rage filling my lungs.Instead, I felt a knot of dread tightening in my stomach.Silas Vancewick did not retreat.He did not surrender ground.If he had abandoned the field of battle for a night, it was not because he was giving up; it was because he was rearming.I rose at six, adhering to the schedule he had set, though he wasn’t there to enforce it.I dressed in a high-necked dress of severe navy wool, the fabric scratching slightly against my skin.It was penitent armor.I pulled my hair back until my scalp ached, securing every strand.I sat at

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