His Darkest Temptation のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 40

The tech lab was ice and metal. No windows. No warmth. Just quiet hums from machines and the faint crackle of static in the air. Monitors lined the walls—flickering images, biometric data, endless strings of code. This was where memory lived in wires. This was where the Society kept its ghosts.Isabella scanned her badge. A green light blinked. She hesitated. Adrian had promised her full access. But in this place, promises felt fragile.She stepped inside. The air was still. Cold. Familiar. This was the same lab where Adrian once explained “ethical surveillance.” She had believed him then. Believed in him.But that was before the garden. Before the kiss. Before her resolve fractured beneath the weight of grief and desire. She hadn’t stopped wanting answers. She just couldn’t pretend she was untouched anymore.She sat at a terminal, logged in, and bypassed the default system. Code unfolded in front of her—files, feeds, logs. She watched security footage of herself pacing the hall. Adri

Adrian’s private suite was unlike any other space in Blackwood Estate. Built high into the west wing, it was all sharp lines softened by time. The floor-to-ceiling windows faced the roaring sea, waves flaring white against the dark cliffs. Stone and steel met here in quiet surrender. No guards. No surveillance. Just the hush of wind and the low crackle from the fireplace.Isabella stepped inside and stopped, unsure. Her jacket was clutched to her chest, her shoulders still tight with the weight of the tribunal. The walk from the boardroom had been silent, his presence beside her a heat she didn’t know what to do with. She wasn’t here as an employee. She wasn’t sure what she was now. But he’d asked her to come, and she had.Adrian poured two glasses of whisky. His hands trembled. He handed her one, but said nothing. Just walked to the window, where the light cut across him like a blade.“We can’t go back now,” he said.Isabella didn’t sip the drink. “I never thought we could.”He nodde

n Isabella finally returned to her quarters. The hall behind her was silent, the air heavy with the echoes of everything she’d seen in the mirror room. She stood with her back pressed to the door, chest heaving, as if the act of walking away from that footage had somehow unmoored her. Her mother’s face—exhausted, defiant, dissolving—played over and over behind her eyelids. And now, here in the quiet, there was nothing to shield her from it.She didn’t know how long she had stood there. Long enough for her pulse to calm. Long enough to wonder if she’d ever feel steady again.Then came the knock.She didn’t move right away. She didn’t have to. She already knew.When she opened the door, Adrian stood on the threshold, undone. His shirt was creased, sleeves rolled, hair disheveled from restless fingers. The tension clinging to him was brittle, as if the wrong word might shatter him. But there was no demand in his posture. Only a quiet waiting.She stepped back.He entered silently, pausin

The estate was quieter than usual, cloaked in a silence that felt unnatural. Even the wind outside seemed to tiptoe past the windows, as though the world itself had grown wary. Isabella moved through the hallways with deliberate calm, though each step thrummed with tension. The bugs she had planted, the board’s threats, the whispered warnings—none of it would leave her alone. Something gnawed at her, a missing piece she couldn’t yet name.She kept thinking of what Vance had said: “We move the files tonight.” That line wouldn’t let her go. There was something deeper, more damning, buried beneath the foundation of this place, and she wouldn’t rest until she found it.Timing her movement between staff shifts, Isabella made her way to the estate’s restricted lower level. She wore the borrowed staff badge like armour, her mind focused, her face unreadable. The elevator didn’t go this deep; she followed service stairs, their metal grates groaning underfoot. Finally, she reached an unmarked

The corridors leading to the Society’s IT server room felt different from the rest of the estate. While the upper floors echoed with the quiet hum of old money and carefully cultivated lies, the basement had a pulse all its own—alive and dangerous. The air was thick with the metallic scent of recycled air, the faint crackling of static from the fluorescent lights above, and the distant hum of machines that never truly rested. Isabella moved through the hallways quickly, but there was a wariness in her step. Her stolen badge was still warm in her palm, and her mind raced with exhaustion, grief, and the weight of everything that had come before.Adrian’s face haunted her thoughts—his pleas, his confessions, his unbearable honesty. She forced herself to push him out of her mind, focusing instead on the mission that had to be done: find proof, find leverage, find a way to make the Society answer for its crimes. The memory of Leah’s terror, the haunting words of her mother, and the spectre