Semua Bab LOVE AND DEATH : Bab 11 - Bab 20

CONTD“Lucian,” she said, her voice shaking, and the name hit me like a splash of cold water. “He’s broken a maid’s head with a flower vase. He... he... he stabbed a security guard this morning.”The words landed in my chest like stones dropped into still water, each one sending ripples I couldn’t track. For a moment, I just stood there, my bare feet cold against the floor, my brain refusing to process what I’d just heard.“He did what?”The question came out flat, almost mechanical, because the alternative was shouting and I wasn’t ready to shout yet. I needed to see it. Needed to confirm that this wasn’t some elaborate prank Catherine had cooked up in her desperation to keep my attention.But the look on her face told me everything. She wasn’t lying or exaggerating. This was real.I was out of bed before she could answer, my feet finding the cold hardwood as I crossed to the dresser. I slipped on a Joggers and a Simple t-shirt. The fabric felt rough against my skin, still cool from

“Like I said before,” Ceal murmured, crossing his arms, and the softness of his voice was somehow worse than a shout, “save your voice for later. You’re really going to need it.”A chill dragged itself down my spine despite the damp heat of the basement. I tried to keep my face blank, tried to summon that mask of arrogance I’d worn my entire life, but it kept slipping. My jaw tightened until my teeth ached. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me afraid, but my pulse hammered in my throat, and I knew he could probably see the vein jumping beneath my skin.“Untie me from here,” I said, reaching for the commanding tone that had always worked on servants, on drivers, on anyone unlucky enough to stand in my path, “now.”Panic was already bleeding through the edges of the words, turning them thin. My wrists had gone numb from the chains, but my shoulders screamed with a deep, grinding ache every time I shifted. The concrete floor had leached all the warmth from my legs, and the d

CEALI was thirteen when a woman I had never seen before sat down next to me on a bench and said my father's name.It was not the Frost household name , used when they referred to him. Or the way people disposed my father's name like it's a rag, when they thought I was not listening, like he was a footnote in someone else's story. She said his real name. The name I had been carrying inside me foryears like a coal that refused to stop burning.I almost kept walking.Almost.---It was a Thursday afternoon. I remember because Thursdays were the days I stayed late at school on purpose. The Frost mansion had a kind of energy on Thursday evenings, something to do with the weekly meeting of senior lieutenants that filled the ground floor with men who looked at me the way men look at things they have not decided the value of yet. I had learned early that disappearing on Thursdays was better than being visible during those meetings. The library stayed open until seven, and I I used it. I

LUCIAN My eyelids were heavy, weighted down like someone had pressed stones against them, but I managed to pry them open anyway. The light hit me first, white and sharp, and I squeezed my eyes shut again as a headache bloomed behind my temples. A groan escaped my lips, low and ragged, scraping past a throat that felt lined with sandpaper. "Lucian?" My father's voice. It's so firm, familiar, cutting through the fog that had settled over my brain. I forced my eyes open again, slower this time, letting the light filter in gradually until the world stopped swimming. And there he was. Adrian Frost, sitting beside my bed, his graying temples catching the fluorescent glow, his mouth set in that familiar hard line that meant he was holding something back. Behind him, another figure. A man, standing in the corner of the room, his features blurry at the edges of my vision. Something about him tugged at the back of my mind, a thread I couldn't quite grasp. "Father?" The word came o

CEAL The files were already stacked in uneven towers by the time I reached my desk. My secretary had done her best sorting them by priority, but the sheer volume made my temples throb before I'd opened the first folder. I pulled my glasses off and pinched the bridge of my nose, letting the pressure build until the ache subsided to something manageable. But one thing kept ringing in my head. The way Lucian had changed. Not overnight—over two nights. After the incident, after I'd left him in that clinic and walked back to the mansion, I hadn't seen him, since then, until Adrian called me last night, his voice carrying that particular weight he used when he'd already made up his mind. He wanted to put Lucian in a position at the company. Starting Monday morning. Fine by me. And I would be his aid for the time being. I flipped a page, forcing my eyes to track the dense paragraphs of contract language. My fingers moved faster now, trying to make up for the lost hours. Then I heard i