All Chapters of His Darkest Temptation: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The screen glowed, casting flickering silver light across Adrian Blackwood’s face. He sat still, alone in the surveillance suite hidden deep beneath the Retreat. It was sterile and cold, humming faintly with low-voltage energy and artificial air. But the woman on the screen radiated something entirely different—warmth, control, danger.Isabella.She was seated across from Subject P-12, her legs crossed, hands resting calmly in her lap. Her expression was neutral, but not detached. Present. Measured. Listening.Adrian watched, not for the first time. Not even the tenth.What had started as routine surveillance had become something else entirely. At first, it had been professional. Strategic. He had studied her like he studied everyone—breaking down voice patterns, posture, and emotional volatility. But somewhere in the weeks between her arrival and her discovery of Helena’s file, the nature of his interest had shifted.Now, he wasn’t just watching her.He was learning her.P-12 was unr

The therapy room, for all its lavender haze and neutral-toned comfort, had become little more than a stage for controlled implosions. Isabella sat rigid in her chair, her back aching from a sleepless night, her composure as fragile as the porcelain tea set perched untouched on the tray beside her. The world outside might still be waking, but inside, the storm had already begun.Eva Berringer. The name was loaded now. Heiress. Patient. Experiment. Daughter of a powerful cabinet minister with connections deeper than most knew. Her case was one of the most guarded in the Society, and today, Isabella was supposed to document her “progress.”The chime sounded. Isabella rose automatically. The door opened, flanked by two staff members in the Retreat’s beige uniforms. Between them walked Eva, impossibly delicate, her skin nearly translucent, her eyes darting from wall to ceiling to floor, as if each surface threatened betrayal.“Good morning, Eva,” Isabella said calmly. “Would you like some

It was just past midnight when the quiet knock came. Not a sound, really—just the soft slip of a cream-colored envelope under her door. Isabella crossed the floor barefoot, picked it up, and turned it over in her fingers. The Society’s seal glinted in wax-red relief.Ceremony of Renewal. Gardens. Attendance required. Midnight attire.She stared at the words, the edges sharp against her thumb. Rituals like this were common here—an endless cycle of performance passed off as progress. Still, she dressed. Black, simple, deliberate. Her hair was pinned loosely, shadows drawn under her eyes from nights with too little sleep and too many truths uncovered.The garden looked different now, transformed. Lanterns bobbed like soft stars above the hedges, firelight flickering off marble statues that once seemed cold, now almost watchful. At the center of it all, the bonfire blazed—tall and feverish, its heat wild despite being carefully tended. The smell of pine resin mixed with salt from the near

The morning after the archives, Isabella moved through the retreat like a shadow lit from within. Her mother’s death was no longer a mystery—it was a documented erasure. The fragment of handwriting, the exhausted eyes, the lie-stamped "natural causes" haunted her every step. Sleep had barely touched her, but she felt more awake than ever.When the knock came, she didn’t flinch.Adrian stood at her door, shirt crisp, eyes hollow.“We need to talk,” he said, voice low. He waited and didn’t enter until she nodded.Inside, he lingered near the window. His hands twitched. His gaze kept drifting. She said nothing, watching him spiral inward.“There are things you need to see,” he finally said. “Things I should’ve shown you sooner.”“Then show me,” she replied, arms crossed.They walked in silence through corridors still humming with yesterday’s rituals. He led her past the therapy suites, beyond the curated calm, into a corridor that felt colder, more forgotten. The walls here bled a dark r

Hidden behind an iron gate tangled with honeysuckle, Adrian’s private garden felt like another world. Walled off and wild, it pulsed with life—twisting vines, overgrown roses, shadows stitched with light. It was the only part of Blackwood Estate that hadn’t been claimed by the Society’s control. No cameras. No whispers. Just earth, sun, and silence.Isabella came here because it was the one place that didn’t ask anything of her. But deep down, she knew the real reason: this was the only place untouched by lies. No rehearsed rituals, no curated grief.She dropped to her knees in the centre bed and began pulling weeds, as if calming chaos in the soil could silence the one in her chest. The morning’s fight echoed in her bones—Adrian’s plea, her fury, the jagged truth between them.She hadn’t forgiven him. But the more she replayed it, the more she saw him not as a man of power, but a man unraveling.She didn’t look up when the gate creaked open, but every nerve in her body knew it was hi