VELVET CONTROL のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 141 - チャプター 150

The emergency board session had barely ended when Shawn made his decision. He didn’t wait for the room to empty. He stood at the head of the long glass table, my hand firmly in his, the new ring on my finger catching the light like a declaration of war. Mayette had arrived minutes earlier at his request and now sat near the center of the table, watching with quiet maternal intensity — this being only her second time seeing me, yet her support felt solid and unwavering. Every director was still present. Charles remained at the far end, his polished mask finally cracking at the edges. The air was thick with tension, the faint scent of expensive cologne, stale coffee, and fear. Shawn’s voice cut through the lingering silence like a blade. “Before this meeting adjourns,” he said, voice steady but raw with emotion, “there is something you all need to know.” He lifted our joined hands, the diamond sparkling under the conference room lights. “Attorney Catriona Agreste has agr

The surgeon emerged from the operating room at 2:14 a.m., still in scrubs, his face drawn with exhaustion. We had been waiting for hours. Mayette sat quietly in the corner, composed but deathly pale. Shawn stood a few paces away from me, staring blankly at the sterile tile floor. The tremor in his body had become constant—a visible reminder that the Phase V system was still fighting to complete its merge inside his mind, currently sitting at 97%. The doctor didn’t waste words. “Mr. Laurent survived the surgery,” he said gravely. “But the spinal injury is severe. Multiple fractures in the thoracic vertebrae, with significant damage to the spinal cord. He has temporary paralysis from the waist down. We’ve stabilized him, but he’s currently in a medically induced coma to reduce swelling and give the cord the best chance to heal.” The words landed like stones in the quiet corridor. “Will he recover fully?” Shawn asked, his voice tight, stripped of its usual authority. The su

The final hours before Phase V reached full integration felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with the ground already crumbling. We returned to the penthouse just after 5 a.m. The city below was beginning to wake, but inside our world everything felt suspended — heavy, quiet, and charged with the knowledge that we had less than three hours before the system tried to finish rewriting Shawn’s mind. I moved through the living room like a ghost, still replaying Charles’s second proposal in my head. The rooftop lounge. The glittering city lights. Charles on one knee, tears in his eyes, voice cracking as he begged me to choose him. The ring box trembling in his hand. The raw, desperate hope when he said he would sacrifice everything. I had said nothing then. Now he lay in a hospital bed with a shattered spine, in a medically induced coma, his future uncertain. The guilt didn’t consume me. I was Attorney Catriona Agreste. I knew how to compartmentalize, how to analyze risk, h

The final stretch before Phase V reached critical mass felt like standing at the absolute edge of a collapsing cliff, the jagged earth crumbling beneath their boots while a howling, endless void waited below. Every tick of the digital clock on the wall was a physical blow, a rhythmic reminder that time was no longer a luxury they possessed. The world outside the reinforced walls of the estate had faded into a distant, irrelevant blur, leaving only the suffocating reality of the trap they were caught in. They had retreated to the sanctuary of the study, a sprawling room swallowed by heavy shadows save for the harsh, blue luminescence of the massive central monitor. The electronic glare cast a ghostly, underwater glow over the dark mahogany bookshelves and leather-bound volumes, illuminating every decrypted file that could be salvaged from the shattered, bleeding servers of Project Orpheus. Shawn sat heavily on the edge of the desk, his frame uncharacteristically rigid. Cords of m

The call came at 6:05 a.m., pulling us back to the hospital before the sun had fully risen. Shawn’s phone lit up with an unknown number. When he answered, his expression tightened. He put it on speaker. “Mr. Reid,” a woman’s voice said, sharp and cold. “This is Sophia Laurent, Charles’s sister. You need to come. Now.” We arrived twenty minutes later. The private wing was quiet, the only sound the soft beep of monitors behind closed doors. Mayette had already left hours earlier, but two new figures waited in the hallway outside Charles’s room. Sophia Laurent was a tall, elegant woman in her late thirties, with the same sharp features as her brother but colder eyes. Beside her stood a woman I recognized from old photos — Marianne Voss, Charles’s ex-girlfriend of five years, who had been out of the picture long before I entered it. She looked exhausted, eyes red from crying. Sophia didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “You did this,” she said, voice low but venomous as she gl