******For a moment, the middle-aged man couldn’t react.He simply stood there… utterly frozen, his limbs locked, and his breath stalled, as though petrified on the spot.He couldn’t blink. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even move.He could only stare at Glenn with wide, disbelieving eyes… as though seeing him for the very first time.Although Glenn’s words had been spoken so casually, with such lazy indifference, it seemed he was merely commenting on the temperature outside, to the middle-aged man…Those words were the most beautiful, most astonishing, most heart-wrenching words he had heard in decades.Although he had long taught himself to accept it, though he had numbed himself to it, it had always hurt:No matter how hard he worked.No matter how fiercely he proved his loyalty.No matter how tirelessly he toiled…And no matter how much he proved that he wouldn’t tamper with their finances.The elites he served never trusted him.They always came with battalions of au

******“You did… You did not even read the documents… what if there were hidden traps hidden inside?”But…Glenn didn’t seem remotely bothered.He simply shrugged and dropped the documents back onto the table with lazy indifference, as though the subject no longer held his interest.For a fleeting moment, the middle-aged man wondered if Glenn had even heard him. But then, in that same sluggish, almost absent tone Glenn always used, he finally responded:“Because I trust there wouldn’t be one.”The words struck harder than any scolding or reprimand.The middle-aged man froze anew, his body locking in place as though trapped beneath the weight of something vast and invisible. His chest tightened, his throat constricted, and his eyes burned with the familiar sting of tears.Only if he knew… Only if he realized that Glenn’s trust wasn’t blind or foolish. That Glenn just knew… knew with certainty that this man had passed the unseen, unspoken tests. That he had been chosen because

******Without the slightest sign of urgency, Glenn leisurely pressed a sequence of numbers into his outdated cell phone. His movements were unhurried, his fingers light on the worn buttons as though the task itself was beneath his energy.Then with a final, indifferent tap, he initiated the call.The dial tone stretched on... longer than expected. His brow furrowed, his expression dipping briefly into a faint trace of displeasure. Just as he prepared to hang up with a sigh of irritation, the call connected.A lazy, aloof, and unmistakably cold voice drifted through the receiver. “Who?”At once, Glenn’s brow lifted. His lips twitched slightly, not quite a smile but something hovering near amusement.“… Oh? I didn’t realize you’d grown this arrogant in just a few weeks of not seeing you,” Glenn replied, his tone carrying even more languid arrogance than the woman’s. Every syllable dripped with effortless indifference, like a king too bored to chastise his subject properly.A pau

******As Irene had resolved earlier that morning before walking away from the hotel, she had immediately contacted a local realtor agency to help her arrange a small, discreet, livable apartment far from the city center, so she could hide herself away for the time being until Glenn and her elder sister finalized their divorce.She needed to vanish for the time being. After all, guilt gnawed at her like a sickness she couldn’t cure.How could she possibly face her elder sister after sharing a night with her husband?Even breathing the same air as them now seemed impossible and unbearable. Moreover, she couldn’t stomach how awkward it would be… for herself and for Glenn if they ever crossed paths again in the presence of her sister, and Glenn finally realized who she truly was, that she was his wife’s sister.She had planned to disappear for a while, go ghost mode, as she called it in her head… vanish into anonymity until the divorce papers were signed, stamped, and sealed. And on

******By the time the so-called “meeting” ultimately concluded, her wedding date had been fixed on the spot without so much as a flicker of concern for her opinion.And with that, Irene had left the estate with a heart heavy enough to crush her beneath its weight.She had returned to her small, pitifully rented apartment… her so-called refuge, and there, alone in the silent confines of that bare room, she had wept.For hours, her sobs had racked her body, the image of the hell awaiting her flashing mercilessly in her mind’s eye. An eternal prison she couldn’t escape.If she could run, she would. But the family’s grip on her was iron. They held the chains, and she… she had never been the type to break free. They knew this and counted on it.And finally, when her tears had run dry and exhaustion had left her trembling, Avery… desperate, trembling, and cornered, had gritted her teeth and dialed a number she had sworn she would never, under any circumstance, call.After all, who e