Chapter 982:

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His eyes flickered from the gown back to her face, and that was when it hit him. A strange, jarring sense of familiarity. It wasn’t just a resemblance. It was in the stubborn set of her jaw, the defiant fire in her eyes. Eyes that were hauntingly, painfully familiar. Eyes that reminded him of someone he had tried to forget for decades.

The hand holding the cigar paused mid-air. The order for security died on his lips.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his voice no longer dismissive, but sharp, urgent.

Cailin saw the flicker of confusion in his eyes and felt a dark, twisted satisfaction.

She didn’t answer his question. Instead, she asked one of her own, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. “Do you remember her? The woman you threw away? The one you left to rot in the Ashford family twenty-five years ago?”

The color drained from Donovan’s face. The cigar slipped from his suddenly numb fingers, falling to the gravel path. That secret was a locked, buried vault in the deepest part of his soul.

𝗝оі𝗇 𝘵𝗁𝗼𝘂𝗌𝘢𝗇𝖽𝗌 o𝗳 𝖿𝘢𝘯𝘴 o𝘯 𝗴𝗮𝗅𝗻𝗈𝘷e𝗹𝗌.с𝘰𝗺

“What do you know about that?” he snarled, taking a threatening step toward her.

Cailin didn’t back down. Her eyes, now shimmering with unshed tears, held his. “I know that she’s dead,” she said, each word a perfectly aimed dagger. “She died alone. In despair. From poison.”

The words struck him with the force of a physical blow. He staggered, his powerful frame swaying for a moment. His face was a mask of shock and a deep, complex pain.

He lunged forward, his hand reaching for her, needing to know more, needing to understand.

Cailin flinched away from his touch as if he were a leper. The sudden movement, combined with her own weakness, sent her tumbling to the ground. The sharp gravel of the path bit into her palms, drawing blood.

She looked up at him, at the hand he had extended to help her, and her face contorted with pure, undiluted loathing.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked, the sound raw and wounded.

His hand froze in mid-air. He stared down at the bleeding, broken woman on the ground, his mind reeling.

Suddenly, the quiet garden was filled with the sound of running feet. Two men in dark suits materialized, flanking Donovan, their bodies forming a protective barrier. The moment was shattered. The raw, fragile connection was severed.

Eleonora turned from the bar, a heavy crystal tumbler in each hand. The amber liquid swirled, catching the light. Her smile was a masterpiece of social grace, betraying nothing of the lethal intent behind it.

She crossed the room, her movements fluid and elegant, and extended one of the glasses toward Silas. “Donovan was saving this Macallan for a special occasion,” she said, her voice a warm, inviting murmur. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

Silas’s eyes were cold and hard. He didn’t move to take the glass.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Eleonora’s arm remained outstretched, her smile beginning to feel brittle at the edges.

Silas was a man who had survived decades of corporate warfare, a world where smiles concealed daggers. He had an animal instinct for danger. He noticed the faint, almost imperceptible tightness in her grip, the way her knuckles were white against the crystal.

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