Novels by Pen thinker

Immediately, the king's brother began murmuring to himself, his voice barely audible but filled with absolute disbelief and rising panic."This shouldn't be happening," he whispered, shaking his head repeatedly. "This cannot possibly be happening right now."His voice grew more desperate and confused. "How can something like this actually happen? What the hell is really going on here?"He looked around the room with wild, unfocused eyes. "How? Is this some kind of elaborate prank? Some kind of sick joke?"But it was very clearly not a joke at all.That was when Brain and Serenity walked toward him with calm, deliberate steps, their expressions completely composed and professional.Brain spoke first, his voice quiet but carrying absolute authority. “As we speak to you right now, this entire palace and every exit surrounding it has been completely secured.”His tone left no room for misunderstanding. “You cannot escape from here. There is nowhere left for you to run.”Serenity stepped

At that moment, the king's brother's confident smile slowly began to fade as he pressed the phone harder against his ear and listened to the continuous ringing on the other end.He had called the ACE number, the most direct and secure line to the person he had personally handpicked and placed in charge of the entire Circle operation, his most trusted ear within the organization, his most reliable eye on everything that moved within the Circle's ranks.But nobody answered, the phone rang once.Twice, three times.Then more, each unanswered ring hitting him like a physical blow to the chest.Then he pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the screen with growing disbelief, then brought it back up and listened again, desperately hoping for a voice on the other end.But Still nothing Just the hollow, mocking sound of an unanswered call echoing in the silence of the chamber.That was when the thoughts began flooding his mind uncontrollably, crashing through his carefully construct

At that moment, the king's brother threw his head back and started laughing, a deep, unhinged laughter that filled the entire chamber with an unsettling echo.“Just imagine!” he exclaimed between laughs, his composure finally cracking into something more unraveled and desperate. “Just look at the situation we've arrived at!”His laughter slowly faded into something more bitter and resentful as he turned his gaze back to his brother.“You have been walking around this palace acting as if I'm not worth anything,” he said, his voice dripping with years of accumulated resentment. “Acting as if only you matter in this entire equation!”His tone grew more wounded as he continued. “You never once consulted me when it came to important matters of state, never thought to bring me along when crucial decisions needed to be made!”He began pacing again, his emotions now fully unmasked. “You did everything possible to make sure that yes, I don't matter, that my opinions are worthless, that my pr

At that moment, hearing the full extent of his exposure and realizing that every single one of his carefully constructed plans had been completely unraveled, that was when something shifted dramatically in the king's brother.The desperate pleading and emotional appeals disappeared instantly, replaced by something far more cold and calculating.He nodded his head slowly and deliberately, his expression transforming from wounded brother to something far more dangerous and controlled.“Well, fine,” he said quietly, his voice dropping to an almost eerily calm tone. “Fine, fine, fine.”He straightened his posture and smoothed his clothing with deliberate composure. “Everything is perfectly fine with me now.”His eyes became harder and more focused. “I'm not going to waste any more time defending myself against your accusations.”His tone became completely cold. “And I'm not going to say anything else that I don't genuinely mean anymore.”A thin, dangerous smile spread across his face.

The king leaned forward with intense conviction. “Don't you realize that you can't keep pretending anymore? Can't you see that absolutely everything has been completely exposed right here in front of you?”His voice grew more incredulous. “And yet you are still claiming and acting as if you didn't do anything wrong, as if you're some kind of innocent victim!”The king's tone became more bitter. “You were supposedly literally fighting for me, fighting for the country, fighting for all of us and our royal family, when in reality you were literally fighting only for yourself and your own selfish ambitions!”His voice rose with righteous anger. “So what other kind of greatness could you possibly be talking about now?”The king's expression grew darker as he revealed the depth of his knowledge. “Oh, you think I don't know what you have been planning all along? You think I'm that naive and blind?”His voice became more intense. “I know everything that you've been scheming. I know exactly w

Immediately after hearing his brother's harsh words about shame and disgust, that was when the king's brother felt a surge of desperate indignation rise up within him.His voice became more passionate and pleading as he tried to defend himself against these accusations.“Why would you possibly be disgusted with me?” he demanded, his tone filled with genuine confusion and hurt. “Like, seriously, if we're going to be completely frank and sincere about all of this, what exactly have I done wrong?”His voice grew more urgent as he pressed his case. “Are you honestly telling me that you are going to believe whatever lies and propaganda the Supreme King literally feeds you, and you will abandon your own flesh and blood brother who has always stood by you?”The brother's tone became more emotional. “Have I ever done anything, even once, that would give you legitimate reason to feel as if I don't literally want to fight beside you in battle?”His voice cracked slightly with emotion. “Have

She came down the last step.She was wearing a dark coat that had been made for her a very long time ago and did not fit her now, and a hat, and gloves, and she had put her hair up, and she stood in the hall of the house she had run for forty years and she was a hundred and thirty-two years old and she was upright and she was in no hurry at all."Mr. Raymond," she said.He came out of the library."The page," she said."In my coat.""Keep it. Do not put it in a drawer and do not put it in a box and do not give it to a record keeper and do not bury it. Keep it on you, and if you have a safe place, keep it there, and if you do not have a safe place then find one, and do not tell me where it is and do not tell Sayle where it is." She pulled on one glove. "There is a great deal of the old families that is going to be asking for that page in the next twelve months. They will ask kindly and they will ask unkindly and they will ask with money and they will ask with a man in a doorway, and th

The quiet lasted a long time.That was the thing nobody in the room had expected and nobody afterward could describe properly, which was that the quiet was not an absence of noise. The house still creaked and the rain had started again on the tall windows and somewhere below them a door was being opened and closed by somebody who had not been told to be quiet, and the record keeper was breathing in a way that was audible because she had sat down hard on a chair that had not been offered to her. All of that was still happening. And underneath it there was a quiet, and the quiet was in the room the way water is in a glass.Sayle was the first to speak."The ledgers," he said."What about them?" Raymond said."They're heavy." He lifted a hand off the table and looked at it, and then he turned and went to the shelves and put his hand flat on the spine of the nearest ledger, the eleventh, the one that had been carried in from the room on the north side of the city and re-shelved, and he st

He put his hat on. "The page in the morning. Noon. I will be here."Then he went out.**The rest of them sat in the long room until the sky began to grey, and the record keeper went home in a car that Sayle called for, and Leonie Vasan was helped upstairs to a bed she had not slept in in forty years, and by four in the morning the house on the north side of the city was quiet and had the particular stillness that a house has when the thing that has been happening in it has stopped.Raymond and Melissa sat in the long room with the candles out and the fire down to its last and the tall windows going grey."You told me to look at you when it was over," he said."I did.""That was four days ago. It feels like a different life.""It was a different life," Melissa said. "I was a woman who had an uncle and a house and a name that was not in a page. That woman is not here any more and I am not going to pretend to be her just because it would be easier for you." She turned in her chair. "Yo

Leonie Vasan opened her eyes."Later," she said. "Give me a moment. I have just had sixty-two years and I am not going to spend the first minute of the rest of it talking."---They sat in the long room at two in the morning with every candle put out and the door to the corridor open and the lights on in the hall, and the record keeper made tea in the kitchen and brought it up on a tray, and there were six of them in the room and nobody was standing.Leonie Vasan sat in the deepest chair with her hands around a cup and her white hair down and her old face turned to the fire, and she talked for an hour. She talked about the house she had been born in and the spring of nineteen thirty-two and the woman with the blade, and about the sixty-two girls she had sent through spring dinners in sixty-two springs, and she did not once try to make any of it sound better than it was. She talked about what the page does to a name, which is that it holds it, and that a name that has been in the page

The man in the yard did not move.Then he lowered the gun.He did not lower it all the way and he did not put it away, and he stood there in the rain-wet coat with his hat still on his head and his face doing something that Raymond had seen on the faces of men in rooms far worse than this one, which was the face of a man who has walked into a room with a plan and has found the room has a different plan, and who is now doing the arithmetic of how much of his own plan he can salvage before he has to give up and go home."You have nothing," he said. "You have a page and a blade and a woman who is leaving. You do not have the hall and you do not have the old families and you do not have the four.""I have the four," Sayle said. "Two of them are in this house tonight and two of them are not, and the two who are not have been waiting for the two who are to make a mistake, and the mistake they have made tonight is that they have come up these stairs with a gun and left the long room empty. T

The man in the yard was the smaller of the two and he came in with the rain still on his shoulders and his hat still on his head and the gun held low at his thigh, and he came in without knocking and without hurrying and he stopped three feet inside the door and looked at the room.He looked at it for a long time.He looked at the page on the black table and the record keeper with her hands flat on one end of it and the woman in the dark dress with her hands flat on the other, and he looked at Leonie Vasan with the stylus in her hand, and at the small square of vellum lying on the linen beside the page with the name in it, and at Melissa standing in the corner in the dark coat with her hair pulled back, and at Sayle standing behind the chair with his hands behind his back.Then he looked at Raymond."So it's done," he said."It's done.""Then you're the name.""I'm the name."The man in the yard turned his head very slightly and said, over his shoulder, to somebody in the corridor beh

CHAPTER 544THE VERDICT 'You're under arrest, Mr Richard. Let me see your hands,' the chief of police demanded, his voice loud and stern.The senator knew at that point that there was no way to escape. He had been exposed, and the only thing left to do was to accept his fate.He raised his hands and was handcuffed while the other police officers pushed him further along.'You can't do this, please! There must be another way,' Jessica managed to say, though she wasn't sure what she was saying.The evidence was everywhere and she knew she wouldn't be able to avoid this one.Her husband was in trouble, and if she wasn't careful, she was going to get caught up in it too.By the time they came out of the house, everyone in the estate had gathered to witness the commotion. They stood with shocked expressions on their faces.The senator, who had just expressed his desire to become governor, was now handcuffed and being taken away by the police.It was a completely new experience for everyon

CHAPTER 543SHAMEJudge West was ashamed when he looked at his son.He had never been so angry about anything in his life. He was so furious that he felt like murdering someone to quell his anger.He was sitting in his house, about to finalise a deal, when the authorities burst in and began arresting everyone.This had never happened before, and it didn't take long to realise that it was his foolish son who had done it, exposing him to forces too big to tear down.'Father, what's going on, and why are you handcuffed like a criminal?' Andrew asked, his eyes filled with confusion.He had thought that, once he got to the police station, he would just call his father and everything would be settled. But what he was witnessing was a big shock that he couldn't explain.What was he going to do without his father, who had always been a pillar of support and shed light on his path?The road ahead seemed slippery and dark, and for the first time, he was scared of what the future might hold."Fa

CHAPTER 542DEFEATED "Suit yourself, but you're done for, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can try everything you know, but it won't work," Jeremy said confidently to Andrew. He made sure that he left no stone unturned.Everything that had happened had made Jeremy exasperated and he was ready to get justice.He had worked too hard to allow Andrew to be released so easily. He wasn't going to allow it. He was going to make the man suffer for everything he had put him through."You don't know what you're doing. If you did, you would stop now. I come from one of the most powerful families in New York, and you will not walk free from what you have done." Andrew muttered angrily to Jeremy.He couldn't believe that his control over those powerful men had been reduced to nothing. He was handcuffed like a common criminal; his father would be so disappointed to see him like this. This was a big disgrace to a man of his standing.He needed to think of an escape plan. He could not al

CHAPTER 541APPREHENDED Jeremy came outside and looked at the boss. They maintained eye contact for a while before Jeremy spoke with realisation "I actually knew that you were part of the circle, but I wanted to be sure before making any moves. Now it has come to light," Jeremy muttered with a smirk.He had his doubts, but after some research and conversations, he discovered that he was on the right track.Andrew,his father's butler had been the circus master all along while he was acting as though he had his back and wanted the best for him."After I spoke to you, you said something in that direction, but you quickly diverted it. I knew that something was wrong. I paid more attention whenever we spoke, but I didn't want to take drastic steps without solid evidence, because i knew that men like you could easily escape the law and i didn't want to take any chances. Now that we have proof, you will go down," Jeremy added. He was disgusted by Andrew.He was even surprised himself to se

CHAPTER 540FOLLOW THE TRAILS The circus boss started laughing to himself; he couldn't believe he had missed it. The answer he had been craving had been right in front of him the whole time, but he just hadn't noticed.For him, this was the connection he had been searching for, and there was no way he wasn't going to get what he wanted.The owner of the school, Mr Philip, must have known something, or rather, received the support he needed, which was why he thought he could challenge him.Although he was angry with the senator for his mistake, there was no reason why Mr Philip couldn't be involved.The situation was complex, but all he wanted to do was unravel the connection and iron out the kinks.He took out his phone and dialled a number; his patience was wearing thin and he just wanted to do something quickly.'Hello boss, at your service,' a man at the other end quickly answered, his voice filled with humility and loyalty.'Do you know Mr Philip's house? He's the owner of the bi

CHAPTER 539NEW DISCOVERY "What have I done? The Senator asked in awe, his mouth open in anger.It wasn't what he had expected Mr Raymond to say and the word alone had left him distraught."Don't you dare point the finger at me Raymond, I wasn't the one who was greedy and wanted twenty percent of someone else's profits. It was your selfishness and greed that brought us to where we are now". The Senator condemned, his tone firm with accusation.He wasn't going to accept Raymond's words and how he wanted to paint him as the bad guy. He had seen the signs and he wouldn't accept it."Greed, you say? You don't have the right to call me greedy. You wanted the governorship and you didn't care who you hurt as long as you got it. You're practically the reason we're in this mess," Mr Raymond fired back at the Senator.He was furious that the Senator was trying to use his involvement with Mr Philip to pin the blame on him.The indulgence of Mr Philip couldn't be the reason why things were going

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin

On the other end of the line, James's brother was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. "No problem," he said finally, his voice flat and decisive. "Since you feel this person is actually responsible, since you are pinning everything on him, then fine. Do what you think is right. Do what you think will save us from all of this bullshit." He paused. "Just handle it. Do what needs to be done." James nodded, even though his brother could not see him. "I will," he said. The call ended. James stood there in the parking lot, staring down at his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest was tight with the kind of cold, focused anger that comes when a decision has been made and there is no turning back from it. And then the phone rang again. James looked at the screen. This was the call he had been expecting. He answered immediately. "Yes," he said. The voice on the other end did not waste time with pleasantries. It went straight to the point, low and busin