Chapter 182: What I see…

ADRIEN’S POV

Once Yaya felt the conversation was over, he didn’t give me the chance to speak. He didn’t give me the luxury of a reply.

He moved like a shadow. His hand pressed into a part of my neck faster than I could see it move; blackness swallowed the brightly lit room, and I was knocked out cold right in front of Yaya before a single word of my fury could leave my lips.

When I woke up later, I was with Orion. Alive, untouched, while Anna remained buried in the cold ground.

Just because people say it is karma, just because Masamune hijacked Leon’s kidnapping and I woke up in that casino, had a quick talk with Yaya, and ended up alive, that does not make me feel grateful to them.

That does not make me like them. Just because it is karma does not mean it does not matter to me.

I have not forgotten that Masamune killed Anna. Anna is dead. Just because I am good at compartmentalizing and arranging things in my head, and because I am going with the flow because I don’t want to crash and burn, does not mean that I am not feeling it.

I am feeling everything.

Anna is dead, but somehow Masamune kidnapped me and let me live. It makes absolutely no sense. Anna, the woman who made me fall in love with my face, who made me want to start taking care of myself after those three disgusting years.

Masamune killed her. And yet once again, Masamune kidnapped me and nothing happened to me. It makes no sense.

Every single time I think of it, I am filled with such a restless, suffocating rage that I don’t know what to do with myself.

Even as I am sitting here right now in this luxurious jet, staring out at the empty sky, I am filled with rage.

Everything in my life is moving in directions I don’t understand. I am married to Orion. I am sleeping with Orion. It makes absolutely no sense.

I think back to the vial of poison Alice gave me to use against Orion.

She had pressed the small glass vial into my palm, her cold fingers wrapping around mine, her venomous green eyes demanding and intense.

"Put it in his food, Adrien," she had said to me back then, her voice carrying an unyielding weight of command. "Since you are so... close to Orion Vassilis, we believe you can do a little favor for us. And for a very interested, very wealthy party."

"A wealthy party?" I had asked, my voice barely audible as I looked down at the tiny glass vial in my hand. "Who wants him dead?"

"That is none of your concern," Alice had snapped softly, her fingers digging into my wrist until her nails bit into my flesh. "All you need to know is that if Orion dies, our family gets everything. Do this, and you will finally be of some use."

As I think about that vial now, sitting here high above the clouds, I remember sitting in our little wooden cabin at the resort when I was seventeen.

I was there with Timothy, my best friend at that time. I remember sitting at the small wooden table, staring at the vial in my hand under the dim yellow lamp while Timothy slept in the next bed.

I look back on that night now, and a sudden wave of confusion washes over me.

Why do I remember this so clearly now? How is this memory coming back to me so easily?

It sits right there in my mind, so clear, so surprisingly effortless. It didn’t come back with a sudden flash of light, a dramatic wave of agony, or a violent shock to my system.

It was just... there.

It feels like it had been sitting quietly in a dusty corner of my mind all along, like a piece of furniture I had walked past a thousand times without ever turning my head to look at it.

The sheer ease with which the memory returned is what leaves me completely unnerved. I am just sitting here, tracing back through the years, and suddenly the fog parts, revealing a bit of what happened in that cabin.

I had taken that vial out. But people don’t just try poison. They don’t just casually taste a deadly toxin out of idle curiosity.

I didn’t take a drop to test its flavor. I took it because I wanted to kill myself.

I was seventeen years old, completely broken, suffocated by Alice’s demands and terrified of the monster she wanted me to murder.

I sat on the edge of that narrow bed, holding the liquid death in my hands, contemplating ending my own misery right then and there instead of carrying out Alice’s command.

I wanted to drink the whole thing. I wanted to swallow every last drop and let the darkness consume me so I would never have to face Alice, my father, or Orion ever again.

But I was terrified.

I could not muster enough courage to drink the entire vial. My hands shook so violently that the glass rattled against my teeth.

Cowardly and desperate, I decided to take just a single drop mixed into my food— just one tiny drop— to check if that single drop was enough to kill me, so I wouldn’t have to face the agony of swallowing the full dose if it failed.

It took only one drop. And that single drop did not kill me, but it put me through absolute hell.

The moment the poisoned food hit my stomach, a horrifying reaction took over my nervous system. All I did was laugh and laugh. I couldn’t stop.

A hysterical, agonizing laughter burst from my chest, tearing through my throat until my lungs burned. I kept on laughing continuously until night fell.

Timothy woke up and found me lying on the cabin floor, howling wildly, my face contorted in a terrifying grin while tears streamed down my temples.

He genuinely thought I was going completely mad.