บททั้งหมดของ The prison where I found you: บทที่ 91 - บทที่ 100

The fire from the secondary transformer cast jagged, flickering shadows across the concrete floor of the boiler room, but the room felt completely frozen.My hand trembled violently around the faded glossy print. The sharp edges bit into my palm, but I couldn't feel the pain. I was staring at the small, red-brick house in suburban Illinois—the porch where my mother used to water her ferns, the narrow driveway where my father parked his sedan every evening at six o'clock."Kael," I whispered. My voice was dangerously thin, stripped of all adrenaline, echoing hollowly above the dying wail of the sirens. "Look at me."Kael didn't look at my eyes. His storm-gray gaze remained pinned to the back of the photograph, staring at those six handwritten words as if they were written in acid: *ASK KAEL WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FAMILY.*His breath came in short, shallow gasps. The invincible, terrifying Reaper—the man who had just torn through a tactical hit squad without flinching—was backing away fr

The stub of lead in my fingers snapped in two.The broken tip rattled across the steel table, but I didn't reach for it. My eyes remained locked on the margin of my contraband notebook, tracing the letters I had just decoded from the hexadecimal header.`THORNE, ARIS — DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT`The name wasn't a random corporate officer assigned to approve state infrastructure. It appeared on the secondary routing lines of three separate shell corporations—*Vanguard Asset Management*, *Crestview Real Estate Holdings*, and *Monarch Logistics*.Those were the exact same ghost entities Julian Vance-Cross had used to frame me for the `$14 Million` embezzlement scheme at my Chicago firm."Hart?"Kael’s low, raspy voice broke through the silence of the cell. He was sitting upright on his iron cot, his storm-gray eyes sharp, instantly attuned to the sudden change in my posture.I didn't cover the notebook this time. The distance I had held between us for twenty-four hours dissolved beneath th

The cell was suffocatingly quiet. The metallic echo of my outburst still hung in the air, vibrating against the damp concrete walls, but the anger that had fueled it began to recede, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache in my chest.Kael stood by the steel table, his towering frame shadowed by the dim amber bulb above us. He didn't look like the untouchable Reaper of B-Block, nor did he look like the ruthless tactical operator who had ruled Sector 2 for five long years. He looked completely stripped bare."I'm not going to tell you to stop anymore," Kael whispered, his gravelly voice low and cracked. He kept his hands at his sides, maintaining a careful distance, respecting the boundaries I had set. "And I'm not going to pretend I was just protecting you."I stayed silent, my hand resting flat on the scrap of paper, watching him carefully.Kael let out a slow, shuddering breath, his storm-gray eyes locking onto mine with an agonizing, unvarnished honesty."When Mercer brought me your fi

The silence of B-Block at 0300 hours felt heavy enough to collapse the iron catwalks overhead.I slipped back into the cell, my socks damp from the drainage tunnel, my pulse hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against my ribs. Kael was standing near the steel table, his heavy brow furled, wiping a streak of black grease from his palm. When the iron door clicked shut behind me, his storm-gray eyes snapped to my face, instantly registering the pale, hollow shock frozen on my features."Eli wasn't in the south hub," Kael rasped, stepping toward me, his voice tight with an edge of quiet alarm. "Hart... where were you?""I followed Eli," I said softly, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp, absolute whisper. I closed the distance between us, standing chest-to-chest with him in the dim amber light. "He met an unbadged handler near the Sector 1 steam vents. He handed over a drive with my sealed Chicago file."Kael’s jaw clenched violently, his fists tightening until his knuckles popped. "I'll

The glossy photograph felt heavier than lead in my hand.My vision blurred, the edges of the small black-and-white print bleeding into the dark corners of Storage Bay 4. The cold dampness of the concrete floor beneath my knees vanished, replaced by the sudden, suffocating phantom scent of wet pine needles and ozone.I was ten years old again.The memories didn't arrive as a clear, orderly sequence of facts. They hit me in jagged, terrifying fragments—broken glass floating in a dark pool of water.*A heavy downpour drumming against the glass of the back porch.**The sharp, metallic smell of wet rain bleeding through an open screen door.**My father’s voice, raw and frantic, shouting over the sound of thunder.*"Hart?"Kael’s voice sounded miles away, muffled through a thick wall of fog. He dropped his blade, stepping away from the dark doorway, his heavy boots crunching against the grit on the floor as he dropped to his knees beside me.I couldn't look up at him. My chest heaved, my br