บททั้งหมดของ The Devil's Debt : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

The days that followed blurred into silence.Lucian was present—always present—but never near. He moved like a shadow in the rooms they shared, his footsteps measured, his presence sharp as a blade yet distant as a horizon. He spoke only when strategy demanded it, when maps or coded messages required his voice. With Ayla, his words were clipped, calculated, stripped of any warmth that might betray him.The gestures had stopped too. No more coffee waiting on the table, no carefully arranged fruit, no small touches that lingered longer than they should. No cloak pulled higher around her shoulders. No hand correcting her stance with unnecessary patience. Only distance. Only the wall he had rebuilt, mortar thick and ruthless.Ayla bore it with as much defiance as she could muster. But every night, as silence stretched between them, the cracks inside her widened. The quiet he weaponized cut sharper than any knife. Worse still, it wasn’t indifference she saw when their eyes accidentally met

Hours bled into the walls.At first, Ayla tried to keep track of them. She counted the faint ticks of the hidden clock in the corner, tried to measure how long the lamplight shifted across the polished marble. But soon the moments blurred, collapsing into a shapeless haze of silence and waiting.The room didn’t help. It was beautiful, yes—lavish in every way, velvet drapes sealing off the sprawl of the city, golden trim catching faint glimmers of light, marble gleaming like water frozen mid-motion. But beauty here was a weapon. Everything was too precise, too immaculate. The curtains fell perfectly straight, not a wrinkle in sight. The bedspread gleamed smooth as still water, uncreased, as though no one had ever dared lie upon it. Even the air felt curated, scented faintly with something floral but sharp, like perfume meant to choke.It wasn’t comfort. It was control.And Ayla felt it.The silence pressed close, heavy, suffocating. The weight of it seemed to push against her ribs, to

The silence after his words clung to her like smoke.Ayla’s legs moved before her mind caught up, each step wooden, automatic. She forced her fingers around the file, gripping it so tightly the edges bit into her skin. The paper crinkled under the strain, but she didn’t let go. If she released it, she feared she would unravel entirely, her body spilling the grief and anger she could no longer contain.She didn’t look at him again. She couldn’t.The doors opened when she neared, the guards waiting without expression, as though they hadn’t heard what had just shattered inside that room. She lifted her chin, straightened her back, and walked past them. Her throat burned, her eyes stung, but she would not let them see her crack.Her boots struck the marble like hammers. Every step away from his office deepened the hollow in her chest, until it felt like she was walking with nothing left inside her but the file clutched to her chest.Nothing more than a debtor.The words spiraled through h

Ayla sat frozen long after the file was shut, her hands pressed flat against the leather as if pinning it down might also anchor the storm tearing through her chest. The silence in the room swelled until it roared in her ears.Alone.The word repeated like a hammer strike, sharp and merciless. It reverberated through her bones until she could almost hear the echo in her blood. Alone meant no cover, no fallback, no eyes on her back when everything went to hell—as it inevitably would.Lucian knew that.Of course he did.He’d read the risk assessments. He’d written half of them himself, in that cold, meticulous scrawl that dissected death into neat columns of probability. He knew what Darius Veynar was capable of, what his fortress swallowed whole. He knew the cost—he always knew the cost—and still he had written her name on this assignment.Why?The question cut her deeper than any blade could.Her head fell into her hands, fingers knotting in her hair. She pressed her palms hard agains

The crack of a gunshot split the night.Ayla flinched, bracing for the explosion of pain she was certain would follow. Her chest tightened, breath caught halfway between life and death. But the agony never came.Instead, a body dropped heavily to the dirt in front of her. The guard who had leveled his rifle at her heart convulsed once, eyes wide in shock, before going still. Rain washed across his face, carrying the last trace of warmth from his body into the earth.For a moment, Ayla couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. That shot hadn’t come from him.It had come for him.She turned, disbelieving, scanning the shadows, until her eyes locked onto a figure through the sheets of falling rain.Lucian.He stood a dozen paces away, his silhouette etched in stark relief against the floodlights. The storm drenched him, water streaming from his dark suit, plastering the fabric to his frame. His gun still smoked in his hand, the faint curl of gunpowder twisting into the rain.But it wasn’t his we