Chapter: Chapter 464. What's LeftHarry sat alone in his study that night, the house quiet around him, and let himself feel the full weight of the past few days settle in without trying to organize it into anything useful.His mother, plain and unembellished, an illness that had no purchase price and no fix, understood now instead of endlessly searched for. His father, gone as of this afternoon, a man he'd forgiven without wanting anything more from him than that forgiveness itself. Both threads closed now, in the span of less than a week, and Harry found the grief that followed didn't feel like it belonged to either parent specifically.It felt like grief for something else entirely. For the shape of a childhood he'd never actually gotten to have. Not the specific loss of a mother who died too young, or a father who left too easily, but the larger absence underneath both of those things, the ordinary, unremarkable family life that had simply never been available to him, no matter how much money he eventually made or
Last Updated: 2026-08-10
Chapter: Chapter 463. JerryRoom 412 reeked of antiseptic and something else underneath it, something Harry didn't have a name for but recognized instantly as the particular smell of a body running out of time. A woman sat in a chair beside the bed, and she looked up when Harry stepped through the door, and for a moment neither of them said anything. She was younger than him, though not by as much as he'd expected, dark haired, with the same shape to her jaw he'd noticed in that old photograph. She stood slowly, careful, like she wasn't sure how to greet him. "Wren," Harry said, more a statement than a question. "Harry." She glanced back toward the bed, where a frail, gray looking man lay with tubes running into one arm, his breathing shallow and labored, eyes closed. "He's been drifting in and out. I don't know if he'll be lucid when you're here or not." Harry stepped closer to the bed, and looked down at the man who was, by blood at least, his father, and felt none of the things he might have expected to f
Last Updated: 2026-08-10
Chapter: Chapter 462: VerifyingHarry didn't act on faith, and he didn't act on paranoia either. He did the thing he actually knew how to do well, the thing that had nothing to do with hope or suspicion at all. He checked.He had someone confirm the hospital admission first, a quiet, discreet call that took less than an hour to produce an answer. A patient named Jerry Farrow, admitted eleven days earlier, room 412, condition listed as critical. The name matched. The timeline matched what little Harry actually remembered about a father who had disappeared from his life so long ago that most of what remained felt more like a shape than an actual memory.That confirmed a hospital bed. It didn't confirm anything about the woman who'd texted him, or whether she was actually who she claimed to be.He looked into her next, carefully, the same quiet resources he'd have used for any piece of due diligence in his business dealings, turned now toward something that felt considerably more personal than anything he'd ever invest
Last Updated: 2026-08-09
Chapter: Chapter 461: The Sister, AgainThe message arrived on a Thursday evening, from a number Harry didn't recognize, no preamble, no easing into it the way he half expected given the history attached to this particular claim. *My name is Wren. I believe we share a father. His name is Jerry. He's in the hospital right now, and he doesn't have much time left. He's asked for you, by name, more than once. I don't know if that means anything to you. I understand if it doesn't.* Harry read it twice, sitting alone in his study with the evening settling in dark and quiet around him, and felt the old, familiar suspicion rise up before anything else had a chance to. He remembered the last time this exact claim had surfaced, months ago now, filtered through Alicia in a way that had smelled like manipulation from the very first message. He remembered deciding, back then, that it was almost certainly a play, someone hoping to attach themselves to the version of him that had money, that had influence, that might feel enough guilt
Last Updated: 2026-08-09
Chapter: Chapter 460. The Plain TruthDr. Gail's office looked the same as it always did, soft lighting, a couch that had never once felt as comfortable as it looked, a small clock on the side table that Harry had spent more sessions than he liked to admit watching out of the corner of his eye instead of actually engaging with whatever question had been asked of him.This time he didn't look at the clock at all."I want to talk about my mother," he said, before Dr. Gail had even finished settling into her chair.She looked up, something careful and attentive crossing her face, the particular stillness of someone who had been waiting a long time for a door to finally open. "Okay. What about her?"Harry sat with the question longer than usual, turning it over, feeling the old, familiar urge rise up to deflect, to circle the subject the way he always had in every previous session that had gotten anywhere close to this particular room in his memory.He let the urge pass, this time, instead of following it."I think I've spent
Last Updated: 2026-08-08
Chapter: Chapter 459: The Old PlaybookThree weeks. Harry had counted them, though he'd never admit to anyone exactly how carefully he'd been counting, each day another small exercise in restraint that felt, some mornings, like holding his breath underwater and waiting for permission to surface. He'd given Melissa the space she asked for. Hadn't pushed, hadn't checked in more than the occasional light text about Anna's school schedule or a question about dinner plans, small necessary logistics that didn't ask anything real of either of them. He'd told himself this was progress. That waiting, actually waiting, without engineering some clever way around it, was itself a kind of growth. By the start of the fourth week, the waiting had started to feel less like growth and more like something gnawing quietly at the edges of him, a itch he couldn't quite reach. He found himself, one evening, standing in the garage looking at an old car he hadn't touched in months, and the idea arrived fully formed before he'd even decided to
Last Updated: 2026-08-07
Chapter: Chapter 87. Isabella's Response R18Isabella smiled, slow and knowing. She stepped closer to Coyote until there was almost no space left between them. Her eyes held his with that familiar mix of confidence and hunger.“I do not care if you have one, two, three or four girlfriends,” she said softly, her voice smooth like silk. “As long as you keep me satisfied.”Before he could respond, she leaned in and kissed him. The kiss was deep and possessive. At the same moment, her hand slid down his body and grabbed his penis firmly through his boxer briefs. Coyote whimpered in shock. The sudden touch caught him completely off guard. He had not expected that response from her at all.He pulled back just enough to speak, his breath already coming faster. “Aren’t you jealous or angry about this at all?”Isabella’s smile widened. She kept her hand exactly where it was and began to stroke him slowly through the thin fabric. “I am not jealous or angry about this,” she whispered, her fingers moving with deliberate pressure. “Because I
Last Updated: 2026-06-24
Chapter: Chapter 86. Maya's Outburst"It's your 'boss,' isn't it?" Maya asked, her voice no longer soft with worry but sharp with anger. The words left her mouth louder than she intended. "So it's your boss, isn't it?" she yelled into the phone, the outburst echoing through the small apartment. Himesh, who had been lazily scrolling through his phone on the living room couch, nearly jumped out of his seat. He turned toward Maya with wide eyes, completely caught off guard by the volume of her voice, but she barely noticed him. Her entire attention was fixed on the phone pressed tightly against her ear. A few seconds of silence followed before Coyote finally spoke. "Maya... please calm down." His voice sounded patient, almost pleading. "It isn't what you think." "Oh really?" Maya shot back. "Then what exactly am I supposed to think? I hear another woman shouting that she made you breakfast right after you told me you wanted to explain everything." She began pacing across the room, one hand gripping the phone while the ot
Last Updated: 2026-06-24
Chapter: Chapter 85. Breakfast In BedTwo hours later Coyote woke up in his bed, he stretched his body while lying down and looked to his side only to find it empty. There was no sign of Isabella anywhere in the room, he pulled down the duvet, to check if he was naked. Most importantly, he wanted to know if Isabella did much more than cuddle with him. To his surprise his underwear was covering his nether region perfectly, and there was no sign of any sexual activity at all. “Man! I was certain she was going to have her way with me,” Coyote said, with a resigned expression. [Why do you sound disappointed? It's as if you wanted her to have her way with you,] the system said in Coyote’s head. “You are in my head so you tell me,” Coyote smiled and got out of the bed. [You humans are just very contradictory. You say something, but mean the opposite.] “It's not like that, I wanted her to at least make another attempt so that I can say no. That would really do a lot for my ego,” Coyote said, as he took off the blue shir
Last Updated: 2026-06-21
Chapter: Chapter 84. Isabella's Secret PlansThe room fell quiet after Coyote finished speaking.For several seconds, the only sound was the faint scratching of Detective Barbara Chen’s pen moving across paper. She stood near the coffee table, writing quickly, her expression unreadable as she documented every detail Coyote had just revealed about his night inside Aldo Lucci’s residence.Coyote leaned back against the couch, exhaustion finally catching up with him. Reliving the events out loud had drained whatever energy he had left. The wine, the garage, Aldo’s unsettling familiarity, Vincent’s hostility, all of it replayed again in his mind as if he had just walked out of the mansion moments ago.Chen stopped writing.She looked up at him.“Is that all?” she asked.Coyote nodded once. “Yes.”The detective studied him for a brief moment, judging whether he was withholding anything. Then she closed her notebook halfway, her face still serious.“With what you just told me,” she said, “it’s clear that Aldo and Vincent don’t get alo
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: Chapter 83. The AssetThe silence stretched longer than anyone in the room seemed comfortable with. Detective Barbara Chen stood motionless near the center of the living room, her posture straight, hands loosely folded behind her back as if she were conducting an interrogation inside a federal office instead of a private home. Her sharp eyes never left Coyote’s face. Coyote, meanwhile, paced slowly across the room, still trying to process what she had just said. Asset. The word echoed in his head like a gunshot that refused to fade. Chen finally spoke again, her tone calm but firm, repeating herself as though addressing someone slow to understand. “In case there was any confusion, Mr. Watkins,” she said, “you will be assisting the FBI as an asset in taking down the Lucci crime family.” Coyote stopped pacing. He turned toward her slowly, exhaustion and irritation mixing across his face. “I heard you loud and clear, Detective. My ears works just fine,” he said flatly. Then his expression hardened. “
Last Updated: 2026-05-28
Chapter: Chapter 82. Coyote Meets Detective ChenSomething told him this wasn’t a friendly visit.Coyote remained standing near the door, one hand still resting against it as if he might need to slam it shut at any moment. The morning light creeping through the windows suddenly felt intrusive, exposing too much, revealing too many things he wasn’t ready to deal with yet.The Asian woman moved further into the living room without waiting for permission, her eyes scanning the space with quiet efficiency. Not out of curiosity. It felt like she was conducting an assessment.She noted exits. Windows. Blind spots.Coyote noticed that she noticed.That alone made his pulse quicken.Still confused, Coyote finally asked, “Okay… who are you?”The woman didn’t answer immediately. She paced slowly across the sitting room, heels clicking softly against the floor. The silence stretched just long enough to make him uncomfortable before she turned and walked straight toward him.Up close, her expression was calm but cold, the kind of calm that came
Last Updated: 2026-02-19
