บททั้งหมดของ The Bodyguards boy : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Time didn’t move the way it should.Cassian noticed that first.There were no clocks in the room. No windows. No shift in light to mark hours passing. Only the steady hum of whatever system kept the air circulating and the faint rhythm of his own breathing.It made everything feel suspended.Unreal.He lay still, eyes open, staring at the ceiling that hadn’t changed since the moment he woke. His body had adjusted slightly pain no longer sharp, but heavy, settled deep into his muscles and ribs like something permanent.He flexed his fingers again.The restraints didn’t give.Not even slightly.They weren’t crude. Not rushed. Whoever had put them there knew exactly how much pressure to apply—enough to hold him, not enough to injure him further.Controlled.Everything about this place was controlled.Cassian exhaled slowly.Think.He replayed the last clear me

Silence had a pattern.Cassian didn’t notice it at first.At first, it was just absence of sound, of movement, of anything that felt human. But the longer he stayed awake, the more the quiet began to shift into something else.Something structured.The low hum in the walls never changed. It ran steady, mechanical, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to anything alive. But around it layered beneath it were other sounds.Footsteps.Distant at first.Then closer.Measured.Never rushed.Doors opening somewhere beyond his room. Closing again. Voices brief, controlled, too low to make out words bleeding through the walls for seconds before disappearing completely.Nothing overlapped.Nothing collided.Everything followed a rhythm.Cassian lay still, eyes open, tracking it.Counting seconds between movement.Marking patterns.Learning.This wasn’t

The silence was the worst part.Not the restraints. Not the dull ache in his ribs or the slow, dragging weight in his limbs. Not even the darkness that seemed to stretch endlessly around him.It was the silence.It gave him too much time to think.Cassian leaned his head back against the cold surface behind him, eyes half-open, unfocused. The air in the room was still, heavy, untouched by anything that resembled life. Wherever they had him, it wasn’t meant to comfort.It was meant to hold.His fingers twitched faintly against the restraint at his wrist. Not enough to break free. Just enough to remind him he was still there.Still breathing.Still thinking.And that was dangerous.Because his mind kept circling back to the same moment.The moment everything shifted.The moment he should have walked awaybut didn’t.It had been late.Not unusually late for him, but late

Rowan didn’t rush.That was the first thing Taryn noticed.He stepped into the house like it wasn’t empty like Cassian might still be somewhere inside, watching, waiting, expecting him to get it right.The air felt untouched.Too clean.Too still.Taryn closed the door behind them, her eyes moving instinctively across the space. “If there’s something here,” she said, “it’s not going to be obvious.”Rowan didn’t respond.He was already moving.Not searching studying.Every step was deliberate. His gaze tracked the room slowly, taking in details most people would miss. The arrangement of the furniture. The spacing. The absence of disorder.Cassian’s world had always looked like this.Controlled.Nothing out of place.Which meantanything out of place mattered.“He knew someone would come here,

Rowan tried the file three times before he spoke.The first attempt didn’t respond.No error. No prompt. Just silence.The second rejected the input entirely, the interface collapsing before it could even load.The thirdlocked him out.Not permanently. Not aggressively.Just enough to make a point.He leaned back slightly, eyes still fixed on the screen.Thinking.Taryn stood across from him, arms folded, watching both him and the device.“That bad?” she asked.Rowan didn’t answer immediately.The storage device sat between them, small and unremarkable. It looked like nothing. It felt like anything but.“Cassian didn’t just hide it,” Rowan said finally. “He built it to resist.”Taryn stepped closer, glancing at the interface.“What are we dealing with?”“Layered encryption,” Rowan replied