บททั้งหมดของ The heir's mask : บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

What will happen next is not seen or thought of ken with disbelief and wanting to know didn't stop his search at the kitchen counter with the encrypted file open on his laptop he has been trying to find out the truth alone but this time with speed and little secret at the process Ken’s fear was gradually walking back in again.In distress, he placed his hands on his head, fingers moving restlessly from the table to the laptop. The message had arrived an hour ago under a strange set of nonsense characters that only resolved after three layers of decryption he had written himself years before, so that no one else could touch it. No subject line. Only Sophia’s name, and then the body of the letter that refused to stay still on the screen. He took his time opening and closing it when he heard his name again, then carried the laptop to another corner before he could force himself to read it once more. It said:Ken,I have tried every other way. You have blocked the numbers of the lawyers

He already knows you’re coming. Don’t bring the husband.Ken’s lungs locked. The air simply stopped. He stared at the six words until the letters blurred, the kitchen counter cold under his palms, the first grey light of dawn crawling across the tile. Behind him the bedroom door stood open. Steve’s footsteps crossed the hallway, slow and deliberate.“Who the fuck sent that?”Ken did not turn. “I don’t know.”Steve reached past him, snatched the laptop, and read the line twice. His face went white around the mouth. “Mark, Eleanor. Or Sophia playing both sides. Doesn’t matter. You’re not getting on a plane.”Ken finally looked up. “He’s my son.”“And that message is a trap with your name already written on it.” Steve set the laptop down hard enough to rattle the cups. “Someone is waiting for you in New York. Alone. Vulnerable. Exactly the way they want you.”“I still have to go.”Steve stepped in close, crowding him against the counter. “No. You want to go. There’s a difference.” His ha

ChooseKen read the message twice, the words burning into the screen under the kitchen lights. The boy is already on a plane. Destination: Florence. Landing in ninety minutes. Steve snatched the phone from his hand. His face went rigid as he scrolled. “They’re bringing him here. To us. To this house.”“To me,” Ken said. “They want me alone.”Steve’s head snapped up. “And you’re considering it.”“He’s three years old and someone put him on a plane across an ocean. Yes, I’m considering it.”Steve threw the phone onto the counter hard enough that it skidded. “This is Mark. This is Eleanor. This is every trap we left New York to escape, delivered to our front door with a child as the package. You walk out there alone and they own you.”Ken stepped into his space. “If I don’t walk out there, that child lands in a foreign airport with whoever Mark sent and no one who belongs to him.”“I belong to you,” Steve snarled. “Or did that stop mattering the second a photograph showed up?”This past

Ken wrote the letter on hotel stationery at 6:12 a.m., the ballpoint digging into the thin paper while the sky outside the window turned the colour of wet concrete.SteveI saw him. He has my eyes and Sophia’s stubborn mouth and a red truck he will not put down. He looked at me like I was a stranger who might still be safe. I held him for four minutes. It was not enough and it was everything.I cannot come back to the villa and pretend the last three years can stay sealed. He is real. The life we built is real too. I do not know how to hold both without breaking one of them. So I am choosing the one who cannot choose for himself.Do not follow me to New York. Do not send lawyers or money or the kind of help that comes with strings. I will figure out the rest. You gave up the company, the city, the name for me. I will not ask you to give up the rest of your life waiting for a man who already left.I loved you in the chapel. I loved you in the olive trees. I loved you last night when we

Steve landed in New York with the letter still in his jacket and the taste of the empty villa lodged in the back of his throat.JFK smelled the way it always had jet fuel, damp concrete, too many bodies moving too fast. He walked through the terminal without checking bags. The photograph of Mateo and the single sheet of hotel stationery were the only things that mattered. Outside, the sky was already sliding toward the same bruised colour it had worn the night Ken first kissed him back in the Hamptons cabin years ago. Steve did not call a car. He took a cab straight to the address Mark had given him and sat across the street from the second-floor windows for a long time, watching the light behind the curtains.Ken was inside. The boy was inside. The life Steve had built with both hands was on the other side of brick and glass and a decision Ken had already made.He did not knock.Instead he opened the letter one more time under the streetlight and read the lines that still cut cleanes