บททั้งหมดของ My Father’s Enemy, My Obsession : บทที่ 141 - บทที่ 150

The auditorium smells like old paper and coffee.It’s one of those mid‑sized university lecture halls: tiered seating, scuffed steps, a projector screen at the front that has seen both great ideas and terrible PowerPoints.Tonight, it’s hosting a panel called:> **Ethical Power in the Modern City** > with Damian Kade & Ava Moretti of Empire of Sin HoldingsAva still isn’t entirely sure how that happened.She sits at the folding table on stage, a bottle of water in front of her, a name placard that looks faintly ridiculous. Damian is beside her in a dark blazer and open‑collar shirt, the picture of “reformed billionaire” that half the room came to gawk at.Across from them, a professor with wild hair and too many notes shuffles index cards.“Thank you all for coming,” he says into his mic. “We’re here to talk about what power looks like when it’s…well…not entirely terrible.”A ripple of laughter.“Empire of Sin Holdings,” he goes on, “has become a case study in…let’s call it ‘aggress

It starts with a cough.It's not a dramatic, hacking thing. Just a little dry sound as Sofia sits on the living room rug, building a precarious tower of blocks that looks suspiciously like one of their early, overleveraged deals.“Again,” she says, stacking another piece. “High.”“Structural integrity, my love,” Damian says from the couch, flipping through a file. “Even towers have load limits.”She coughs again.Ava looks up from her laptop.“You okay, bug?” she asks.“’M fine,” Sofia says, in the tiny martyr tone of a two‑year‑old who desperately wants to appear fine so no one suggests bed.By dinner, she’s quieter than usual.She pushes peas around her plate, doesn’t demand extra bread, and leans her head against Ava’s arm.Her forehead feels warm when Ava kisses it.“Maybe she ran too hard at the park,” Damian says, but there’s a crease between his brows.They check her temperature.100.8.“Low‑grade,” Ava says. “We’ll give her fluids. Keep an eye on it.”By midnight, it’s 102.5.

The morning unravels before it even properly begins.Sofia wakes up in a mood.Not sick.It's not hurt.Just full of three‑year‑old injustice.“I don’ wanna pants,” she announces from her bed, clutching her pajama bottoms like a lifeline.“You have to wear pants to school,” Ava says, trying to coax her into a pair of tiny leggings. “It’s in the Geneva Convention.”Sofia’s eyes widen. “Who’s Geneva?”“A very mean lady who loves pants,” Damian calls from the doorway, one hand on his tie, the other scrolling through an email on his phone.“Mean,” Sofia echoes darkly, glaring at the leggings.Ten minutes later, she is in pants, but only because Ava has bribed her with the promise of dinosaur stickers and because Damian, the alleged king of ruthless negotiations, has resorted to putting his own leg into a matching pair and hopping around the room until Sofia laughs so hard she loses track of her protest.Downstairs, breakfast is a battlefield.“Eggs or oatmeal?” Ava asks, flipping through

The rain comes in sideways, just like that first night.Not a downpour—just enough to turn the city lights into smeared streaks of color, neon bleeding into asphalt, headlights haloed.They’re on a balcony halfway up one of their own towers this time—not the Axiom, not Valen’s lair, just a sleek shard of glass and steel with an open terrace carved into its flank.The building is closed for the night. The office floors below them are dark, the conference rooms empty. Only a few security lights glow inside.Out here, the city feels close and far at once.Ava grips the cool metal of the railing with both hands, rain misting her face, hair frizzing in defiance of every styling product she’s ever owned.“You really have a type,” she says, watching the red smear of a passing cab below. “Industrial views. Questionable weather.”Damian steps up beside her, hands sliding into his coat pockets, tie already a little askew from the long day.“What can I say,” he replies. “The city looks best when

Ava has never been good at sitting still with her own thoughts.For most of her life, she treated quiet like a gap to be filled—with noise, with work, with other people’s expectations.Today, she sits at her desk in the shared office, a legal pad in front of her, a pen in hand, and forces herself not to reach for her phone.The date in the corner looks wrong.It shouldn’t be this far from the girl she can’t stop thinking about.*Dear me,* she writes.Then stops.Too formal.Too distant.She scratches it out.*Hey, you.*That’s better.Less performative. It's more like what she would have needed to hear.*Hey, you.**The one standing in Vince’s doorway right now, trying to decide if you should knock or walk away. The one who already knows the answer and is just scared to say it out loud.*Her hand moves.The room fades.***She’s nineteen again, barefoot in the corridor outside Vince’s study, listening to him talk to a man whose name she’ll never remember and whose life will bend under