Sweet Temptations: My lover, My Ex's Father のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

~Victor's POV~ The clink of the sterling silver fork against the Limoges porcelain plate was the only acceptable sound in the dining room, a metronome counting down the seconds until I inevitably lost my temper. Everything else was a grating, unnecessary cacophony.And that included Mia's hair. I watched, my jaw tightening imperceptibly, as she delivered the tenth....yes, the tenth....of the goddamn hair flips since we’d sat down for this farce of a luncheon. It was a fluid, practiced motion: a quick tilt of the head, a toss of that garish, copper mane over her shoulder, a brief, theatrical suspension of the air around her, and then the inevitable, silky fall. “Please pass me the pepper shaker, Eric darling,” she purred, her voice a low, manufactured sweetness. Flip. The movement was pure theatrical filler. Was the hair actually bothering her, or was this her version of a feminine punctuation mark? It was so tacky. I’d always associated that kind of performative preening with a c

~Victor's POV~ Eric’s hand, pale and slightly shaking, reached across the table, his fingers covering Mia’s clenched fist. The silver tines of the forgotten fork were still catching the light right where his gaze had been moments before. “Babe, please. Just wait outside. It’ll only take a second, I promise.” His voice was a pathetic whine, the sound of a man trying to placate two unstoppable forces at once, failing miserably at both.I watched the interplay, my expression a mask of detached cruelty. The clock, my inner clock, was already past nine. This little drama, this pathetic family squabble, was a monumental waste of my time. “Nine.” My voice was a gravelly monotone, devoid of inflection, a sound of inevitable finality that scraped the last layer of defiance from Mia’s face. She looked utterly defeated, yet somehow managed to hold onto a sliver of her infuriating composure. Her eyes dropped to Eric’s hand, which still covered hers, and the look she gave him was a stunning ma

~Clarissa's POV~The air seized in my lungs, cold and sharp, a complete contradiction to the late afternoon sun still trying to warm the brownstone. I froze, my body halfway turned to flee, like a deer caught in the headlights. The heavy oak door had opened, and the figure now emerged fully through the frame, dispelling the shadows that had initially masked their identity. It was her. I didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. Only one person in this world could greet me, could welcome me with such cynical, weary amusement.My mother. No, scratch that....the woman I thought was my biological mother...Margaret. Marga, for short.She stood there, blocking the doorway, a monument of stiff disapproval. Her arms were folded across her chest, a classic power stance that managed to look both defensive and aggressively smug. Her face, perfectly made up, naturally wore a look I’d known since I was old enough to know what disdain felt like: a sizing-up, condescending smirk that made my

~Clarissa's POV~ The sheer, raw power in my father’s voice....that dangerous, stripped-down baritone...was something I hadn't heard since I was a scared eight-year-old and he’d caught a bully cornering me in the park. It was the sound of all his civility finally cracking, the noise of a man pushed past his last nerve.The silence, after that cold, final command, was heavier than the brownstone itself. I was still caught on the threshold...one foot on the cold, unforgiving granite of the step and the other poised to cross the worn oak floor. The air, already thick with venom and shock, snapped with a new, dangerous electrical charge. Margaret’s face, usually a mask of effortless control, was a masterpiece of conflicting emotions: fury, raw and unmasked, battling a desperate, deeply buried fear. She was losing control, and it terrified her. She’d always reigned supreme in this house, her will the only law that mattered, yet here was Richard, my father, publicly challenging her, effect

~Clarissa's POV~ The weight of Papa's words hung heavy in the air, thick and suffocating. The world around me had blurred into a haze of noise, my heart pounding in my chest like a drum, each beat echoing in my ears. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could feel were the hot tears I’d been suppressing with an iron will, the ones that had been stinging and pricking at the back of my eyes, now streaking down my face, pooling onto my lap, my chest tight as if the grief had wrapped itself around me like a vice, squeezing the life out of me. I wasn’t just crying anymore...I was sobbing, gasping for air as each breath came shallow and uneven. My shoulders shook violently with the force of it. It felt like my very soul was being ripped apart by the truth. The truth that my very existence had cost her life. I tried to swallow, to choke back the sobs, but they kept coming, stronger and more violent. It felt like I was drowning in my own grief, a weight pressing down on me that no