All Chapters of under his control : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Ava’s POV The first thing I learned in captivity was that silence was never safe. It wasn’t the silence itself that broke you it was what came after, what crept into it and tore pieces of you away. The cell tonight was quiet, too quiet. My ears caught everything: the scrape of a chair against concrete somewhere far off, the steady drip from the leaking pipe overhead, the shuffle of boots pacing beyond the door. That sound had become the rhythm of my life here. Boots, whispers, locks. The music of someone else’s control. But tonight, something was different. The rhythm was wrong. I sat hunched on the cot with my fingers curled so tight around the thin blanket that the fabric bunched like claws in my grip. I tried to breathe steadily, to remind myself I was still alive. Still thinking. Still me. That was the one thing they hadn’t stolen yet my mind, my will. Inside, I whispered the only prayer that mattered: Liam. Don’t stop looking for me. Don’t believe I’m gone. When the door cla

Ava’s POVBefore I even confirmed the news, I felt it in the air. It was in the way the guards moved, the way their voices were hushed behind closed doors instead of barking orders. Something had shifted. Some of them had even left their posts, like they were waiting for the storm to pass before returning.I didn’t have to wait long to know what it was.Jessica.Her name alone made bile rise in my throat. She had always been there, a shadow in Liam’s life and mine, quiet at the edges. But now she had slithered back into the grass like a snake, spitting poison into the world. I didn’t see the broadcast myself, but the guard who brought me food let it slip. “Proof,” he called it. “Evidence that Ava cheated on Liam before she died.”For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.Evidence?It was nothing more than a weapon Jessica had twisted together, fabricated piece by piece. But I knew it didn’t matter whether it was true or false. What mattered was the story. If she had convinced enough people, p

Liam’s POVThe boardroom smelled of polished oak, steel tension, and betrayal. I sat at the head of the long table, a throne carved out of leather and cold authority, but tonight it felt more like a coffin. Twelve sets of eyes stared back at me directors, investors, parasites. Some loyal, some already bought by the King.The news cycle hasn’t stopped bleeding since Jessica’s little stunt. Fake photos, forged documents, and whispers of Ava’s betrayal had spread like wildfire. And the timing wasn’t a coincidence, it was orchestration. King’s fingerprints were all over it.Morgan leaned casually against the wall, arms folded, his presence steady, grounding. But I could read the storm in his jaw, the way he clenched it when anyone said Ava’s name like it was poison.“Mr. Carter,” one of the older board members cleared his throat. “We need to address the… situation. Shareholder confidence is slipping. Clients are nervous.”I didn’t blink. “Confidence doesn’t pay the bills. Results d

Liam’s POVThe silence in my father’s study was a living thing. It pressed on my chest, heavy, suffocating, like the ghosts of every conversation we never had. The air smelled faintly of aged scotch and cedar, the scent he always carried one that used to mean power, authority, permanence.Now it only smelled like rot.The file sat on the mahogany desk in front of me, its pages spread open like wounds. Morgan stood at my side, his face unreadable, though I caught the tightening of his jaw, the way his hand flexed when he turned the final page. He had known pieces of this truth longer than I had. Maybe all along.But I was the son. The heir. The one who should have known.Instead, I was the fool.My father hadn’t died in an accident. He hadn’t collapsed in his office from stress or age. He hadn’t even chosen to bow out quietly from the empire he built.He’d been poisoned. Slow. Precise. Undetectable until too late. And the poison hadn’t just been chemical, it had been human.“Edward Kin

Ava’s POVThe silence in this place was worse than the darkness.They had moved me again to different walls, different guards, but the same feeling of being swallowed whole by something bigger than me. The estate was colder, older. The air smelled like dust and iron. The room they locked me in had no windows, only a heavy steel door with a slot for food. But it was the small things that gave me away. The way the guards’ boots echoed down the hall. The hum of power in the walls. Cameras tucked into corners like blinking, red eyes.They thought they had erased me. Buried me under layers of security, silence, and fear.But I hadn’t stopped listening. Watching. Counting.And tonight, I had a chance.It started with the guard they called Royce. He wasn’t like the others. He was younger, cocky, and always fiddling with his comms device. Too eager to prove himself, too careless. He didn’t know I watched every time he keyed in the security codes, every time he muttered under his breath when t