ADRIEN’S POV

The silence stretches between us, growing thicker, heavier, and more suffocating with every passing second. The only sound is the faint, occasional scrape of his chopsticks against the ceramic bowl and the distant, low hum of the cafeteria’s refrigerators.

It feels like a physical weight pressing down on my chest, crushing the remaining air out of my lungs. I can’t take it. I can’t just sit here and watch him eat while my entire world turns to ash around me.

"What..." My voice cracks, thin and weak. I stop, clear my throat, and force myself to try again, clenching my teeth to stop the trembling. "What do you think about what Peter said?"

Orion pauses. His chopsticks remain hovering just an inch above the bowl, a few grains of rice clinging to the dark wood. Slowly, he lowers his hand, resting his wrist against the edge of the table. His dark, heavy-lidded eyes lock onto mine, stripping away every single layer of defense I have left.

A slow, utterly nonchalant smirk tugs at the corner of his lips.

"What I think doesn’t matter, duckling," he murmurs, his deep tone vibrating through the table, settling right into my bones. "Because even if I asked you, you would just lie to me anyway."

The casual certainty in his voice makes my breath hitch. He doesn’t even sound angry about it. It’s just a statement of fact to him. He expects me to lie. He assumes everything that comes out of my mouth is a fabrication, a pathetic attempt by a cornered rat to protect itself.

"If you think I’m lying," I whisper, my hands gripping the edge of the table so hard my fingernails dig into the plastic, "then why don’t you just choose to draw the answer out of you? Why don’t you just force me to tell you?"

Orion lets out a low, rumbling chuckle. The sound is rich, genuinely amused, and it sends a fresh wave of goosebumps cascading down my arms.

He leans forward slightly, crossing his forearms on the table, bringing his face closer to mine. The scent of him—expensive cologne, iron, and the faint, bitter smell of smoke from the fire—invades my senses.

"Oh?" Orion purrs, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners with a terrifying playfulness. "Are you a masochist, Adrien? Do you want to be tortured by me that badly?"

What?

My heart stops dead for a fraction of a second before restarting at a breakneck speed. "No—"

"Because I assure you," he interrupts, his voice dropping into a whisper that feels like a noose tightening around my throat, "if I decide to draw the answers out of you myself, you won’t survive the process. I don’t do things by halves, duckling. You know that."

I pull back, my spine slamming hard against the plastic backing of the booth, my face completely drained of whatever little color it had left.

The threat is handled so casually, delivered with the same tone a person might use to discuss the weather, but the weight of it is absolute. He means it. If he ever decides to stop playing this game, if he ever decides he’s had enough of my silence, he will tear me apart without a second thought.

Despite everything, despite the terrifying promise of violence hanging between us, my gaze is helplessly drawn downward.

I look at his hands.

They are resting casually on the table now. Large, broad, with strong, prominent knuckles and light scarring tracing across the back of his right palm.

These are the hands that just lifted a fully grown, athletic billionaire off the floor by his throat. Those are the hands that applied just enough pressure, with perfect, surgical precision, to snap a human spine like a piece of kindling.

These are the hands that will end up killing me.

I look at those fingers and all I can think about is how terrifyingly easy it would be for him to erase me. I am smaller than Peter. I am weaker. I don’t have a massive shipping fortune or a powerful family lineage to protect me.

I am nothing.

And Orion just murdered a genuine, high-society elite in a room packed to the brim with other elites, in a private hospital pavilion, and what happened?

Nothing.

Nobody called the police. Nobody lunged forward to stop him. The security guards didn’t burst through the doors with guns drawn. The entire room just watched in paralyzed, suffocating horror, and then let him walk out the front door carrying me by the wrist.

The law doesn’t apply to him. The rules of society don’t apply to him. If he decided to snap my neck right here, over this bowl of fried rice, my body would be cleared away before the food even got cold, and my name would be wiped from the registry by morning.

I am completely, entirely at his mercy.

Orion notices where my eyes are fixed. He follows my gaze down to his own hands, his smirk widening into something sharper, something infinitely more predatory. He slowly lifts his right hand, turning it over in the air, flexing his long fingers lazily, as if demonstrating the mechanism of a deadly weapon.

"You’re staring, duckling," Orion says softly, his tone dripping with dark amusement. "Are you wondering how they would feel around your neck? Or are you staring at my nails again?"

I choke on my own breath, a small, terrified gasp escaping my lips as I force my eyes back up to his face. "No."

"Liars go to hell, Adrien," he chides playfully, though the look in his eyes is anything but light. He lowers his hand back to the table, tapping his index finger twice against the plastic surface. "Tell you what. Since you look like you’re about to faint and ruin my appetite, let’s play a game."

I blink, staring at him with deep suspicion. "A game?"

"A game," he confirms, leaning back into his seat, his posture relaxed, completely dominant. "I will answer one of your questions honestly, and I mean honestly. No riddles, no tricks, no omissions. You’re getting a free pass here in case you can’t tell."

I let out a harsh, dry laugh that sounds entirely hollow even to my own ears. "Right. Like I’m supposed to believe that. You don’t do anything for free, Orion. What’s the catch?"

Orion tilts his head, his dark gaze scanning my face with a look of mock disappointment. "No catch. Just a genuine offer. Look at it this way, duckling—what is the worst that could happen? If you think I’m lying, you lose nothing. But if I’m telling the truth... you get exactly what you want."

It’s a twisted kind of logic, but it’s effective. The sheer desperation inside me, the agonizing need to understand the nightmare I’ve been dragged into, begins to override my terror. My mind starts racing, flipping through a hundred different questions.

What exactly is Masamune to you? Do you know the exact thing that they want from me? How much do you know about Anna’s death? Are you trying to kill me?

Will you kill me like you killed him?

But as I look at him, sitting there so completely untouched by the blood and chaos that has consumed everyone else, I realize that asking those questions is completely useless.

If he wants to lie, he will lie, and I have no way of proving it. If I ask about the syndicate, he will just give me a tactical answer that leaves me more confused than before.

I don’t want a tactical answer. I want to know exactly where I stand in his eyes. I want to know if I am already a dead man walking.

I want to know if he’ll feel any internal resistance when his hands are on my neck.

I take a deep, shaky breath, gripping my own knees under the table to stabilize my body. I lock my eyes onto his dark, haunting gaze, refusing to look away this time.

"What is the difference," I start, my voice remarkably steady despite the frantic hammering of my heart, "between me and the man whose neck you just snapped? We are both nuisances to you. We both bring trouble to your doorstep. So why is he lying dead on the floor upstairs, and why am I sitting here across from you?"

Orion’s eyes widen just a fraction, a sudden, sharp flash of genuine surprise flickering through the darkness of his pupils before it is instantly replaced by a deep, dangerously dark appreciation.

The smirk on his face changes, turning into something completely feral. He opens his mouth to speak, his chest expanding as he prepares to deliver his answer—

His phone chimes.

The sudden, sharp electronic sound cuts through the heavy atmosphere of the cafeteria like a blade.

Orion stops. He reaches into his trousers pocket and pulls out a sleek, black smartphone. The screen illuminates his sharp, features in a pale blue glow as his eyes scan the text message that just arrived.

As he reads, the dangerous, intense look on his face melts away, replaced by a slow, genuinely delighted smile. It isn’t his usual mocking smirk. It is the smile of a man who just watched the final piece of a complex puzzle fall perfectly into place.

Something somewhere has gone to shit.

He slides the phone back into his pocket and looks up at me, his eyes gleaming with manic amusement that makes my stomach plunge into a freezing abyss.

"Well, duckling," Orion says, his voice smooth and entirely conversational as he taps the table once more. "It looks like our little game will have to wait. Duty calls."

"What is it?" I ask, the panic roaring back to life in full force, my mind immediately imagining a group of assassins from Masamune storming the hospital doors. "What happened?"

Orion leans forward, his smile widening until I can see the sharp edge of his teeth.

"A message from the matriarchs," he murmurs, his tone dripping with dark, theatrical irony. "By the joint order of the engaging families, the engagement party has officially been rescheduled. It will take place exactly one week from today."

I stare at him, completely paralyzed, my mind refusing to process the words.

One week? After a bomb? After all the deaths and injuries?

"And that’s not all," Orion continues, his eyes locking onto mine with a terrifying, suffocating intensity. "Both women have requested the pleasure of our company immediately afterward. They would like to have a very thorough, very private chat with both of us... on the specific discussion of the fireworks that went off at the originally planned party."

So, they already know about my connection to the bomb. They’re quick...almost too quick.

He leans back, picking up his chopsticks once more, completely dismissing the horror written across my face as he takes another bite of the fried rice.

"The show must go on, Adrien," he whispers, his voice filled with dark wonder. "And you and I are the main acts of the center stage."