All Chapters of Reborn as the villain's obsession [MM romance]: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

187 Chapters

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 1: The Contract

Three seconds before the bullet shattered the window, Adrian had already thrown his client to the floor, his own body covering him completely, his heart hammering with the kind of focus that came only from years of training."Do you always have to be this dramatic?" Cassian's voice came muffled from beneath him, irritated but eerily unbothered, as if gunfire crashing through his study window were simply another Tuesday afternoon."Better dramatic than dead," Adrian said, pressing him lower against the carpet, his eyes fixed on the shattered window, scanning for movement. "Stay down. Don't move until I say.""You're heavier than you look," Cassian muttered, though there was no real complaint in it, more curiosity than anything else."Would you rather I let the bullet find you instead?" Adrian shot back, his voice sharp with adrenaline.A pause. Then, unexpectedly, a low chuckle rumbled beneath him. "No. I suppose I'll tolerate the weight."This was the third week of Adrian's new assign

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 2: The Traitor

Adrian's blood turned to ice the instant those words crackled through his radio, his entire body going rigid where, seconds earlier, it had been leaning helplessly into Cassian's touch. A traitor. Inside the house. At the exact moment he himself had been standing on the edge of shattering every professional boundary he'd sworn to keep.He stepped back so fast he nearly lost his footing, already scrambling to reassemble the composed, unaffected mask he wore for a living, though his pulse refused to cooperate. "Say that again," he said into the radio, his voice clipped, steady in a way his hands weren't."Server room, east wing," the security chief's voice crackled back, sharp with urgency. "Someone's manually disabling the camera grid. We think they're clearing a path — either for the shooter from this morning, or for someone else entirely. Get Mr. Volkov to the panic room. Now, Adrian."Cassian's easy, dangerous warmth vanished in an instant, replaced by something colder, harder, more

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 3: Betrayal's Face

The monitor showed Marcus's face in unforgiving, grainy clarity — hands steady and precise on the exposed wiring, his expression carved from something Adrian had never once witnessed in three years of working alongside him. Not anger, exactly. Just a terrible, hollowed-out calm, the calm of a man who had already made peace with whatever came next."How long," Cassian said, his voice low, almost unrecognizable to Adrian's ear. "How long has he been planning this?""I don't know," Adrian said, already pulling him toward the hidden panel he'd noticed the previous night, fingers finding the latch Cassian had shown him without needing to be told twice. "But we're not staying here long enough to find out. Move, now."The tunnel swallowed them whole in darkness and thick dust, narrow enough that Adrian's shoulder brushed cold stone with nearly every step, Cassian close behind him, close enough that Adrian could feel the tension radiating off him in waves."You should probably be more frighte

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 4: What Remains

"Maybe I have," Adrian's admission hung in the air of the tunnel between them, and for a long moment neither of them moved to break it, the weight of everything that had happened that night settling heavy around their shoulders.The security team led Marcus away in restraints that felt more like careful support than punishment, two officers half-carrying him between them as his sobs echoed off the stone walls, growing fainter with every step until the tunnel fell silent again. Adrian stood rooted in place, his weapon still loose and forgotten in his grip, watching the empty space where Marcus had been until Cassian's hand closed gently over his wrist."Come on," Cassian said quietly. "There's nothing more either of us can do for him tonight."They climbed out of the tunnel in silence, emerging into the main house where the rest of the security detail had already restored the camera feeds, sealed the breach, confirmed that no other active threats remained anywhere on the property. The

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 5: The Boardroom

"Word's already spreading about what happened in that tunnel last night. All of it. Including whatever happened afterward."Adrian's stomach dropped through the floor, a cold, sickening wave of adrenaline surging through his bloodstream. His breath hitched in his throat as the silence of the bedroom suddenly pressed in on him like lead. "Define 'all of it.'""I don't have specifics," his assistant said, his voice tight, breathless, and laced with barely restrained panic over the phone. "Just rumors moving fast through the staff channels, the guard rotations, the administrative floor. Everyone is whispering. You need to get dressed and get to that office, now, before this spirals any further out of control."Adrian hung up, the line cutting off into an ominous dead tone. He turned to find Cassian already pulling on a crisp shirt, his expression carved back into something harder, infinitely more composed—the vulnerable, gentle man from hours ago folding neatly back beneath heavy, famili

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 6: Exposed

"Footage of us — what exactly did they film?" Adrian's voice came out sharper than he intended, his mind racing through every second of the previous night, trying to remember which cameras had been active, which had been disabled during the breach, and which hidden feeds might have been left humming in the background."Just the office," the assistant said quickly, her breath hitching as her eyes darted nervously down to her polished shoes, unable to meet his gaze. "Not... not anything explicit. Just you two, close together. A kiss. But it's clear, Adrian. It's undeniable. It's enough that people are already speculating wildly online, and internal communications are completely melting down."Cassian's jaw tightened instantly, a visible muscle working violently beneath his pale skin as his dark eyes narrowed into razor-thin slits. "Marcus," he said grimly, the word dripping with icy venom. "He must have set up a secondary recording loop before we caught him in the lower levels. Insuran

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 7: A Face in the Room

"Still sitting in this very room." Grace Harvey's words landed like a physical blow, heavy and suffocating. Every head at the long mahogany table turned instinctively toward their neighbors, cold suspicion blooming instantly across the polished, high-society surface.Cassian's grip on Adrian's shoulder tightened, his fingers digging in with hard, grounding tension. "Explain," he said, his voice gone dangerously flat, carrying a lethal edge that made the air in the room drop several degrees."Our forensic team traced the encrypted offshore funds that paid for the secondary, highly specialized rival security contractor Marcus hired to help disable the lower camera grid," Grace said, sliding her tablet slowly toward the center of the table. "The wire transfer didn't come from Marcus’s modest bank accounts. It originated from an offshore shell account registered in the Cayman Islands. One tied directly to a board member's personal holdings."Silence stretched across the boardroom, brittle

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 8: The Garage

Adrian was already moving before he finished reading the message, his chair scraping hard against the polished floor as he pulled up the live parking garage feed on his tablet, his hands rock-steady despite the fresh surge of adrenaline flooding his system.The security camera footage showed three shadow-draped figures moving with terrifying purpose between the parked luxury cars on Level Two. Their faces were obscured by deep hoods, and one carried a long, heavy item wrapped tightly in dark canvas. Adrian's blood ran ice-cold at the practiced, military-grade coordination of their movement."That's no amateur operation," Adrian said grimly, his voice dropping into the flat, lethal tone of an operative. "Those are professionals. High-end mercenaries.""Whoever sent this warning wanted us to see them coming," Cassian said, his jaw tightening as he reached for his discarded jacket, all executive exhaustion vanishing. "Which means either they're trying to save our lives, or they're trying

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 9: The Deeper Thread

"Someone's been planning this longer than we realized." The words settled heavy and cold over the subterranean garage, and Adrian felt the fleeting warmth of their kiss evaporate entirely, replaced in an instant by the familiar, icy clarity of battle readiness."Bring that burner phone straight up to the top-floor office," Adrian instructed the lead officer, his tone leaving zero room for delay. "And pull every scrap of encrypted communication data you can extract from its hardware. I want to know exactly how far back this conspiracy goes."Ten minutes later, in Cassian’s private executive suite—the reinforced heavy doors locked, and two fully armed tactical guards posted outside—Adrian stood over the desk. He mapped the phone’s decrypted message history across a high-definition tablet screen, manually scrolling through weeks of heavily coded, timed exchanges. Cassian leaned over his shoulder, close enough that Adrian could feel the intense, rigid tension radiating off his body."Thes

Rules of Engagement — Chapter 10: At the Gate

"He's not waiting for anything," Adrian said, already moving with practiced tactical speed, sidearm drawn at the low-ready as he radioed the remaining security detail. "Full perimeter lockdown, now. Nobody approaches that gate without my direct order."Cassian rose immediately to follow him. This time, Adrian didn't waste a single breath arguing with him about staying behind in the safe room—there was no time, and some part of him understood by now that Cassian would simply follow him regardless into whatever fire was coming. They moved together down the wide corridor toward the primary security console, where three officers stood monitoring the perimeter feeds with tense, absolute concentration.On the main central monitor, Elias Thornfield remained standing calmly beside his idling armored sedan. His hands were loose and visible at his sides, wearing a tailored dark coat, showing no visible weapons, and presenting no obvious tactical threat—except for the sheer, terrifying audacity

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