Semua Bab Bound by Sin: The Heir & His Stepmother: Bab 111 - Bab 120

The phone vibrated on the nightstand like a viper ready to strike. I woke before the second ring, instinct sharper than consciousness, and answered before the sound could disturb Aurora.She slept beside me, wrapped in white linen sheets, her dark hair spread across the pillow like a stormy cloud. Her face was calm — for the first time in weeks, calm — lips slightly parted, breathing slow and deep. The pregnancy exhausted her in a different way now, an exhaustion that didn’t come from fear, but from the life growing inside her.I gripped the phone and slipped out of the room without making a sound.“Talk.” My voice came out rougher than I intended.“Löwe.” It was Mateo. His voice was controlled, but there was something there — a tension I rarely heard. “We have a problem.”The world stopped. Not literally, of course. The wind still blew, the sea still crashed against the rocks, the house still creaked under its own weight. But for me, in that moment, time froze.“What?”“Raphaël was c

The phone vibrated in the vest pocket just as we were positioned.The pattern was specific — the number I didn’t want to answer, but knew I needed to.Cassius.Mateo looked at me from the driver’s seat, eyes narrowed. Luca, in the back, already held the pistol with white-knuckled tension. Zahir, in the passenger seat, adjusted his earpiece, face calm, eyes fixed on the drone monitors flying over the area.“Answer it,” Zahir said. “Find out what he wants.”I answered.“Tristan.” My father’s voice was calm, controlled, as if discussing the weather, not my best friend’s life. “I imagine you already know about my… guest.”“Where is he?”“You thought I was going to make it easy?” He laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “I want you to come alone to the abandoned warehouse in the industrial sector. I’ll send the coordinates. If I see anyone other than you, Raphaël dies. If I suspect anything, he dies. If you take longer than an hour, he dies.”“Cassius…”“Alone, Tristan. Don’t test my patience.”

I descended the embankment carefully, feet slipping on the loose dirt, hands steady on the pistol.The car was on its side, doors crushed, windows shattered. The smell of gasoline and blood filled the air, sweet and sour at the same time.The driver was partially outside the vehicle, body twisted in an angle no human being should occupy.His eyes were open, fixed on nothing.Dead.I walked past him without looking. I didn’t care.Cassius was in the back seat — or what remained of it. The dark suit was torn, stained with blood.His face was marked by cuts and bruises. One of his legs was trapped under the crushed metal, and he groaned — a low, hoarse sound from someone who was alive against all odds.“Tristan,” he whispered, eyes glazed with pain. “Help me.”“I will help.” I knelt beside him, pistol still in hand. “But first, I want to hear you beg.”“What?”“You spent your entire life taking. Killing. Destroying. Now I want to hear you beg.”Cassius’s face contorted — not from physica

The television was tuned to the news channel, as it had been for days. I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t stop watching.It was like watching an accident in slow motion, the kind of disaster you know is going to happen but can’t avoid.And there he was.Tristan.On the screen in the living room of my family’s country house, in a setting I didn’t recognize. He wore a simple white shirt, cuffs rolled up, hair combed back. He looked tired. He looked sincere. He looked exactly the opposite of what I knew he was.“Good afternoon,” he said, and his voice echoed in the empty room like a gunshot. “My name is Tristan Delyon.”My hands squeezed the remote so tightly that my knuckles turned white.Your name is a lie, I thought. Your life is a lie. Your face is a lie.I listened to every word. Every rehearsed pause. Every calculated sigh. The accusations about Aurora’s parents? “Fragile evidence.” The poisoning of his mother? “Absurd.” The disappearance? “Confidential army mission.”Confidential

The house in Paraty was silent that morning. Not the oppressive silence of the Delyon mansion, which always seemed to be waiting for something terrible. It was a peaceful silence, broken only by the singing of birds and the distant sound of waves crashing against the rocks down below.I was on the veranda, gaze lost on the horizon, when I heard the sound of the car coming up the dirt road. My heart raced, not from fear, but from anticipation. I knew who it was. I knew that after months of anguish, weeks of escapes, she was finally arriving.I got up from the chair so quickly I nearly knocked over the teacup. I ran through the house, bare feet pounding on the wooden floor, ignoring the dizziness that had been following me lately.The front door opened before I could reach it.She was there.Thaïs.Her red hair, now longer, fell over her shoulders in messy waves. The suitcase lay abandoned on the floor behind her, as if it no longer mattered. Her eyes — those eyes I had known since adol