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CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Penulis: Wren Gray
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-06-04 21:46:28

"The most dangerous man in the room is never the loudest one."

ZYRAN

"You're not nervous," he said.

"No."

"Most men your age get nervous around me."

"Most men my age haven't done what I've done," I said. Not as a boast. Just as a fact, which was worse.

He tilted his head slightly, acknowledging that. "Sit down, Theon."

"I'm fine standing."

Another small smile. He was reading me the same way I was reading him and we both knew it and neither of us pretended otherwise. That was the strange courtes
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    "The most suffocating thing about being loved by a dangerous man is that his fear for you looks exactly like control."MYRAIt happened gradually and then all at once.That was the best way I could describe it. The morning after my father left, things started changing in ways that were individually reasonable and collectively overwhelming, each new addition arriving with its own logical justification that I couldn't argue with and didn't want to argue with and somehow still found myself arguing with anyway.It started with the vehicles.Marcus told me over breakfast that the car I'd been using had been replaced. The new one was armored, he explained, in the particular matter of fact tone he used when delivering information he expected might be received badly. Reinforced panels, blast resistant glass, the kind of specifications he listed with the brisk efficiency of someone reading from a technical document."Okay," I said.That one was fine. That one was reasonable. I'd been in the ba

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