All Chapters of Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

123 Chapters

CHAPTER 21 — THE PAWN’S CHECK (CASSIUS)

The door to my office closed with absolute silence, but the echo of that meeting still reverberated in my bones. The smell of the bitter coffee they serve in meeting rooms seemed to have soaked into my clothes, a cheap perfume of insubordination.Lena stood before my desk, motionless as a statue. Her eyes, always so quick to decipher my mood, were fixed on me, waiting.“Well.” My voice came out harsher than I intended as I poured two fingers of whiskey into the heavy crystal glass. “It seems my son decided to put on a show.”She didn’t move.“The presentation was… impressive.”A muscle twitched in my jaw. Impressive. The word was a carefully wrapped insult.“It was a circus,” I corrected, taking a sip of the drink. The amber liquid burned in a satisfying way. “A circus staged with my resources, in my theater, for my audience. Raphaël, that skunk with a tablet, and Zahir, the silent guard dog… He brought his own soldiers into my fortress, Lena.”She took a step forward, her heels makin

CHAPTER 22 — THE CROW’S EYES (LENA)

Cassius’s office still smelled of his power and his expensive whiskey. I had just received the order. Increase surveillance on Aurora. As if the cameras, the drivers, and the very walls of the mansion weren’t enough. He wanted a pair of human eyes, dedicated, glued to her.He called her “bait and trap.” To me, she had always been nothing more than an obstacle. The legitimate wife. The jewel in the display case that I could never be, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many times I lay down with the man who held the keys to the world I coveted.Sitting at my own desk — smaller, but still with an impressive view — I made the call. I didn’t use the company phone. I used one that couldn’t be traced back to me, or to Cassius.“I need a crow,” I said when the line was answered. My voice was soft, professional. “Female. Discreet. Intelligent. Someone who can pass as a personal assistant, with impeccable credentials. The job is to observe. Report every movement, every conversation, ever

CHAPTER 23 — THE STRENGTH SHE DOESN’T SEE (THAÏS)

I watched Aurora trying to hide the tremor in her hand as she picked up the coffee cup. She thought she hid it well. I, who have known her since the hallways of Albertus Magnus — where she was the brilliant scholarship student and I was the heiress who preferred filing her nails rather than following the script — saw everything. I always have.“So tell me…” I said, dipping a brush into a jar of pink water, pretending to be completely absorbed in my latest creation. “Has the Lord of Darkness dropped any more pearls? Has he called you ‘my pearl’ again? Because, between us, he has a very limited repertoire for a man who supposedly commands empires.”She let out a muffled laugh, the most genuine sound I’d heard from her since she arrived. It was a rare sound lately. Like a diamond in a pile of coal.“Worse,” she replied, her eyes lost in my pile of green satin. “He… pinned me against the wall of the pool.”I almost dropped the paint jar. Against the wall of the pool. This man doesn’t do a

CHAPTER 24 — THE WEAVER OF SHADOWS (RAPHAËL)

The air in the Delyon Armaments server level had a metallic, sterile taste, like breathing inside the very skeleton of a great sleeping predator.I was leaning against a server rack, watching Zahir work. The man was a masterpiece of silent efficiency. His fingers danced over the keyboards, a choreography of intrusion so smooth it barely disturbed the sleep of the security systems.Meanwhile, my tablet displayed a cascade of code, a real-time translation of what he was extracting.“The old man is organized, I’ll give him that,” I commented, my voice echoing softly in the cold space. “But organization is just laziness in disguise. It creates patterns. And patterns are like footprints in the snow for someone like me.”Zahir didn’t reply. He rarely did. His concentration was absolute. Instead, a new set of files appeared on my screen, marked with the old Delyon Armaments logo. Decades old.“Look at this,” I murmured, enlarging one of the documents. It was an acquisition proposal. A small

CHAPTER 25 — THE INVISIBLE GUARDIAN (MATEO)

The engine fell silent. A whisper of steel and rubber against the wet asphalt. The fine Munich rain painted the world gray outside, but inside the black sedan, the air was dry and controlled.My eyes, in the rearview mirror, were fixed on the yellow door of Thaïs Schulz’s studio. Waiting was part of the job. Patience, a weapon.The discreet earpiece in my ear hissed with familiar voices.“…And then he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, like this, for the photo.” Anya’s voice, laced with malicious delight, filled the silence. “It’s the cover of Berliner Gesellschaft. They look like the perfect family. Or an Ibsen play about to collapse.”“The perfect family with a blood secret in the basement,” Edda’s clinical voice cut in like a blade. “Did you see the boy’s eyes in that photo, Anya? That green?”“Bozhe moi! (My God!)” Anya exclaimed, and I could almost see her spinning in her chair. “It’s the same color! It’s as if little August were a miniature clone of our dear and troubled Löwe.

CHAPTER 26 — THE MIRROR ON PAPER (TRISTAN/LÖWE)

The magazine lay on my desk in the arsenal, a stain of glossy paper and artificial colors in the sober environment of the Arsenal. *Berliner Gesellschaft*. On the cover, the “perfect” Delyon family. Cassius, with his satisfied predator smile. Aurora, beside him, a frozen portrait of resignation. And me. With my hand on the boy’s shoulder.August.My attention, which had initially fixed on Aurora — on the way her emerald dress enhanced her eyes, on the almost imperceptible tension in her smile — was irresistibly pulled toward the child beside me. Toward us.There was something there. Something that had disturbed me since the photo session, an unease I had ignored, attributing it to anger, to the discomfort of the situation.I had seen him as a detail, my father’s son, one more link in the chain that bound Aurora to this hell. Now, under the raw light of the lamp in my sanctuary, something different was happening.It wasn’t the features. It wasn’t anything so obvious. It was… the postur

CHAPTER 27 — THE SECRET AND THE TOOTH (AUGUST)

Matilda is a really nice person. She gives me cookies when no one is looking. But today she is the Tooth Monster.My front tooth is so loose it wobbles when I breathe, and she said she was going to “take a little look.” I know what that means! It’s going to hurt! Klaus at school said his sister pulled his tooth with a string and he screamed so loud he almost broke the glass on the door.No. I don’t want that.So when I heard her footsteps in the hallway, my heart started beating like a trapped little bird. I had to hide. The farthest place from the kitchen! I thought of the entrance hall, behind the big heavy curtain.I ran out of the library without making any noise. Just looking back to see if Matilda was coming. And then… BUM!I crashed into something. Something big and hard. I almost fell, but two strong hands caught me by the shoulders.“Whoa! Careful, Junge (boy).”I looked up. And it was Onkel (Uncle) Tristan’s green eyes! He was back! He was wearing black, and his jacket was r

CHAPTER 28 — THE WEIGHT OF THE DIAMOND HEART (AURORA)

The distant sound of August laughing, followed by Matilda’s patient voice insisting that he stop moving so she could finish combing his hair, reached my room.The dinner was tonight, and the air in the mansion was already filled with that peculiar silence that precedes great events — a silence made of hurried footsteps and tension.The black silk box with the dress Thaïs had given me lay on the bed like an accusation. A deep navy-blue satin slip, a cut that was a challenge. Beautiful. Bold. Everything I needed to be tonight and that felt absolutely impossible in that moment.But first, a more repulsive task. Cassius’s order echoed in my mind.“Choose a piece for Erika.”I went down to the atelier, my sanctuary that, in those moments, transformed into a torture chamber. The soft light from my work lamps seemed to cut into my eyes as soon as I entered. The pressure was already beginning, a dull pain in my temples, the familiar warning.I opened the armored safe where I kept the finished

CHAPTER 29 — THE DELIVERY (MATEO)

The black sedan glided through the nighttime streets of Munich, a black fish in a river of asphalt and lights. The rain had stopped, leaving the air clean and cold. Inside the car, the only sound was the almost imperceptible hum of the engine and the soft noise of the tires against the road.In the palm of my black leather glove rested a small plastic bag with a hermetic seal. Inside, two strands of hair, thin as threads of hope — or of condemnation.Löwe had handed it to me minutes earlier, in the mansion’s garage, without a word, only with a look that was a complete order. His eyes, in the dim light, gleamed with a feverish intensity, a mixture of coldness and an almost savage anxiety, tightly contained.He didn’t need to tell me where to go. The Arsenal was the only possible destination for something of that nature.My earpiece hissed.“Shadow, do you have the package?” Edda’s voice, clinical and impersonal as always.“Confirmed,” I replied, my voice a flat echo inside the car. “On

CHAPTER 30 — THE GOLDEN FARCE (TRISTAN)

The flashes were an assault. Each burst of white light against the darkened glass of the Bentley served as a reminder of the spectacle that was about to unfold. Outside, the press swarmed like vultures hungry for a piece of our farce.The car stopped in front of the Goldene Saal, the most exclusive and ostentatious restaurant in Munich. Before the driver could get out, I glanced at the velvet box on the seat beside me. The necklace. The diamond heart that Aurora had been forced to choose.“Wait,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence inside the car.I picked up the box. The lid opened with a soft click. The diamonds sparkled, cold and empty. A perfect symbol for the night we were about to endure.The door opened. The flashes exploded in a blinding barrage. I ignored them, my face a mask of polished indifference. On the other side of the car, Erika Meyer stepped out, dressed in a shocking pink that defied good taste. Her smile was wide for the cameras, but her eyes were hungry.

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