All Chapters of In Love With My Dad's Best Friend : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Kael We hit the scribal wing at a dead run. The horn was still blowing. Smoke was already in the corridor, paper smoke, sharp and chemical. Not a kitchen fire. A burn meant to erase. Adrian limped hard on the arrow wound and still kept pace. Elias took the left stair. Liana stayed on my right with her bad arm bound and a blade in her good hand. I did not waste breath telling her to stay back. After the garden, after the river, that argument was dead. The main copy room door was open. Inside, shelves had been pulled. Ink jars smashed. A man in scribe grey was on the floor with his throat cut so freshly the pool was still widening. Not Davan. An assistant.

Kael We did not wait for a perfect plan. Perfect plans were what the leak used while we arranged paper. Adrian took twelve men and the dock charts. Elias came because the note had named him. Liana came because she refused the infirmary and because the vials in the vault had made her blood the target, not only her body. Seraphina rode with a sealed case of counter-draughts and a face like stone. The subordinate dock route under Soren’s network ran through a warehouse on the black water, registered as net repair and salt storage. At night it smelled of pitch and wet rope. We hit both doors at once. 

LianaSoren Hale did not come like a guest.He came under six of Kael’s men, wrists free, dignity intact on purpose, because binding a parley name too early gave him theater to stand on. They brought him into the war room where the doctrine pages from the warehouse already lay open under weighted corners. Chemical annotations. Bridge stamps. The same sweet edge that had been in my father’s corridor.Soren’s gaze found those pages before it found me.That was the first mistake he made in front of this table.“You requested your presence,” he said. Calm. Almost bored. “I assume this is about the dock inconvenience.”“It is about completing cargo on a road your subordinate structure used,” Kael said from the head of the table. “And about a mask with a bridge stamp in a north-wing attempt on Elias Veyne.”A murmur moved through the captains. Elias stood at my left, still blood-flecked at the cuff, eyes locked on Soren with a heat that made the air harder to breathe. My father did not look

LianaWe rode the return like the road itself might open under us.Kael did not speak. He did not need to. The bond carried everything in hard pulses: fury, calculation, the sick edge of a man realizing his choice had been priced in advance. Elias kept looking back at the limestone smoke as if he could still drag Rook Marris out of burned crates by hate alone.Adrian met us at the outer curtain with blood already on his sleeve that was not from the corridor.“East archive stair,” he said without greeting. “Two dead guards. Seraphina’s junior pulled a live vial from under the council threshold stone. They timed it for a session change.”My stomach dropped. “Casualties.”Adrian’s mouth flattened. “Harren’s second is down. Not dead when I left. Bad. And they tried the war-room door wards with a solvent paste. Failed. Barely.”Kael dismounted in one movement. “Liana with me. Elias takes north family wing integrity. Adrian locks the inner ring. No public horns unless the outer wall goes. Q

LianaWe changed every seat by mouth only.No paper. No slate. No servant list. Captains learned their places in Kael’s voice and mine, then the doors opened.Most men walked in confused and stopped where we told them.One man did not look confused.He stepped toward the old mark on the floor, the false-slate place, then caught himself too late. His eyes flicked to the empty space, then to Kael, then to me.Adrian closed the doors.“Rhel Vossan,” Adrian said. Not loud. Hard. “Steward liaison to border supply. Command-adjacent. Second key access on three rotations.”Rhel’s face went pale. “This is a mistake.”Elias moved first.He crossed the room, grabbed Rhel by the collar, and slammed him into the wall hard enough to rattle the map boards. “You sold the hours around my daughter.”“I sold numbers,” Rhel choked. “Not blades—”Kael’s voice cut in, cold. “Numbers put vials under the stairs. Take him.”Guards dragged Rhel out while still talking. No one listened long.For one breath, the