The room had barely recovered from the intensity of what had just taken place when everything changed again. Moments earlier, all attention had been fixed on Antonio and the delicate, high-risk procedure he had just completed. The draining of the blackened blood, the careful introduction of Cynthia’s blood, the precise control he had maintained throughout—it had all unfolded with such focus that no one had dared interrupt him again. Now, he had stepped back. His hands, though steady, carried the weight of everything he had done. There was no visible sign of strain, but the atmosphere around him told the story clearly. What he had attempted was not ordinary. It was something far beyond what anyone in that room fully understood. For a brief moment— There had been hope. A fragile, trembling hope that had risen quietly, almost fearfully, within the hearts of those watching. It wasn’t loud or certain, but it was there—clinging to the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, the impossi

The minutes after Elias opened his eyes had been filled with relief, gratitude, and a kind of quiet disbelief that no one in the room could fully explain. It felt as though everyone was still afraid to trust what they were seeing, as though one wrong movement might reverse everything and return them to the despair they had just escaped. Servants moved about with renewed energy, their steps lighter than before, some whispering prayers under their breath, others watching Antonio as though he were something far beyond ordinary human understanding.But not everyone shared in that fragile peace.Outside the room, the butler stood in the corridor, his eyes fixed on the time as though it alone held the answer to everything. His face was tense, controlled, but beneath that control was something far less stable.Five minutes.That was all he had been waiting for.Five minutes for the poison to finish what it had started.Five minutes for everything to return to the plan he had so carefully arr

The butler’s voice carried just the right amount of controlled anger as he stood among them, positioning himself carefully within the center of attention without appearing to seek it. His tone was firm, deliberate, and measured, the kind of anger that seemed credible precisely because it was restrained.“This is unacceptable,” he said again, shaking his head slowly as though struggling to accept the reality of what had been revealed. “After everything Mr. Elias has done for this household… for someone to repay him like this…”He allowed the sentence to trail off, leaving it incomplete on purpose, as though words alone were insufficient to capture the depth of his outrage. The silence that followed made the statement feel even heavier, more impactful, as if the entire room was being asked to fill in the emotional weight he refused to fully express.The servants nearby murmured in agreement, their voices low but steady, feeding into the growing sense of shared concern. The physician, ho

Within a short time, the mansion’s surveillance system began to release fragments of what everyone had been waiting for. The process was not immediate or smooth; instead, the footage arrived in batches, carefully extracted recordings pulled from different parts of the vast Greyson estate. Each segment represented a different angle of the house’s daily life—hallways where servants moved in routine patterns, the kitchen corridor where meals were prepared and transported, the outer garden entrance where deliveries came and went, and portions of the dining area where the family occasionally gathered.As Antonio and the others assembled in Elias’s room, the atmosphere shifted into something more concentrated and tense. The room, which had recently been filled with relief over Elias’s recovery, now carried a different kind of silence—one shaped by expectation and unease rather than grief.Cynthia stood close to her father, who was now resting more comfortably than before. His breathing rema

The servants did not hesitate.The moment the order left Cynthia’s lips, panic spread through the corridors like wildfire, fast and uncontrollable. The same man they had just defended moments ago, the one who had spoken with controlled anger about justice, duty, and betrayal, had now become the center of a manhunt inside the very home he had served for years without question.Two senior servants rushed out first, their footsteps sharp against the polished floors as they moved quickly down the corridor where the butler had last been seen. Others followed immediately, breaking off in different directions to cover more ground—checking rooms, storage areas, staff quarters, and even the surveillance control room without waiting for further instruction.“Check the east wing!”“He might be near the gate!”“Go to the servant quarters!”Voices overlapped chaotically. Instructions collided mid-air. Footsteps echoed through the mansion in uneven rhythm. Doors were thrown open with urgency, some