Lahat ng Kabanata ng Blood Ties And Silk Chains: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

The penthouse felt too large. Too quiet.Liora sat on the edge of the low sofa, her knees drawn tight, her hands clenched together so hard her knuckles were white.Varian reappeared from the kitchen with two glasses. Amber light caught the swirl inside.“Drink,” he said.She shook her head. “No.”“You’re shaking.”“I’m fine.”“You’re lying.”He set one glass on the table in front of her. “It’ll stop the tremors.”Her eyes flicked to the glass, then back to him. “I’m not like you. I can’t—”“This isn’t about being like me. This is about not collapsing before sunrise.”“I don’t want whiskey.”“You want control. That’s all this is.”She pulled her hands tighter together. “I want to forget.”“You won’t. Not for a long time.”Silence stretched. The whiskey sat between them, glowing like a warning.“You didn’t have to kill him,” she said finally.“Yes, I did.”“There could’ve been another way.”“Not in my world.”Her eyes burned, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing tears. “

The penthouse had been busier than usual all afternoon—staff moving with the brittle energy of people bracing for something. Ines had summoned Liora to the security office, where a wall of monitors cast cold light over a table stacked with personnel logs.“You wanted to see me?” Liora asked.Ines didn’t look up from the tablet. “Staff morale is dipping. Too much tension. Too many orders without explanations.”“That's… your job, isn't it?”“It was. Now it’s also yours.”Liora blinked. “Why?”“Because you’re the one they’re watching,” Ines said flatly. “If they think you’re cracking, they’ll lose faith. And faith is the only thing keeping them here when the pay isn’t enough.”An hour later, Liora found herself walking the main service hall, offering small talk and an extra set of hands. She carried trays, helped fold napkins in the kitchen, and even learnt how to reset a jammed dumbwaiter from a surly maintenance tech named Pol.“You’re not like the others,” Pol muttered as they worked

The call came just after midnight.Liora’s phone buzzed once, then again, and she almost didn’t answer—Varian’s rules were already a chokehold. But the name Dr Patel on the screen yanked the air out of her lungs.“Dr Patel?” Her voice was a whisper, sharp with fear.On the other end, the cardiologist didn’t waste time. “Wren’s numbers are slipping. She’s stable for now, but her oxygen saturation dropped twice tonight. I thought you’d want to know.”Liora’s knees went weak; she pressed her back to the nearest wall. “I—can I come? Just for a little while? Please.”“I can’t make that call,” Patel said carefully. “But if you can get here in the next two hours, she’ll still be awake.”A shadow fell across her. She didn’t need to look to know who it was.“Who’s Wren?” Varian’s voice was calm. Too calm.Liora’s free hand curled into a fist. “My… cousin.”His eyes flicked over her pale face, her trembling fingers on the phone. “That’s the same cousin you went to see in the hospital?”“Yes.”“

The elevator ride to the penthouse was suffocating.Varian didn’t speak. Didn’t look at her. His reflection in the mirrored panel was a razor held steady.When the doors slid open, he stepped out first—long, hard strides down the corridor.Halfway to the study, he stopped.The silence broke with a sound like a tree splintering—his palm smashing into the wall.Plaster crumbled around the deep imprint of his hand, fingers splayed.Liora flinched.He didn’t even look at her. Just kept walking, disappearing into the shadows of the hall.Five minutes passed. Ten.She was still standing where the elevator had left her when he returned, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, face unreadable again. The storm was tucked away—but not gone.“Dates,” he said flatly.Her throat tightened. “Varian—”“Start from the day you left me,” he cut in. “Give me proof. And every missing year in between.”She wrapped her arms around herself. “I left because you—because your world was burning from the inside out.

The hospital smelt faintly of lemon disinfectant, the kind that coated the air and clung to clothes.Varian’s convoy had taken a side entrance. Three men stayed in the hall while he stepped into Wren’s room.She looked up from her coloring book, eyes flicking from him to the paper bag in his hand.“What’s that?”“A puzzle,” he said, setting it on the tray table. “Thought you might like it.”Her brow furrowed. “Like… a jigsaw?”“Something like that.”It wasn’t. The box held a set of wooden tiles etched with geometric shapes. He spilled them out, arranging them in a crooked line.“You match them by pattern,” he explained, “but the trick is you can’t touch the same symbol twice in a row.”She studied the shapes for a moment—triangle, circle, sunburst—then began sliding tiles around with small, quick hands.Varian leaned on the side of her bed. “You’re fast.”“Gotta be,” she said without looking up. “The nurses don’t let you leave stuff out. If you don’t finish, it gets put away.”Within