2025-04-12 23:38:06Hilda slowly shook her head.
Her expression was sharp. Cold. Unforgiving. Freda and Clarissa saw it… and shook their heads in similar fashion. Their faces showed it all—they didn’t buy Nolan’s show. Not one bit. Evelyn saw their reactions. She turned back to Nolan with a strange look in her eyes. She stood up to her feet, brushed her gown lightly, and gave him a slow shake of the head. “No, Nolan,” she said coldly. “Not here. Not like this.” She walked past him. The music faded. The dancers paused. Even the jazz band started playing more slowly, unsure of what to do. Nolan gently grabbed her hand. His voice broke as he spoke. “Evelyn, please,” he said. “I didn’t plan all this just for attention or drama. I meant every single word. I’m not ashamed of you, and I’m not ashamed to show how much I love you. That’s all I wanted. That’s why I came here tonight. That's why I arranged for all this.” Evelyn turned to him slowly. She looked into his eyes. There was real pain in his eyes. Her eyes dropped to the cake he was still holding. She reached out and collected it carefully. She looked at the pink and white cream… the neat writing on top: PLEASE FORGIVE ME. “Hmmm…” she hummed. “Nice cake.” Nolan’s heart lifted for a second. But only for a second. Because the next moment… SPLAT!!! Evelyn smashed the cake into his face. Cream flew everywhere—on his hair, on his shirt, on his lips, even on his ears. The restaurant gasped. People’s mouths opened wide in shock. One waiter dropped a glass. Someone shouted, “Oh my God!” Nolan stood frozen. Cake spattered all over his face, slowly sliding down. He looked like a clown at a children’s party—but without the smile. Evelyn wiped her hands with a napkin. “Come on girls,” she said with her chin raised. “Let’s get out of here.” Hilda let out a small laugh. Clarissa followed, But Freda laughed the loudest. “Goodbye, Lover boy,” Freda said mockingly, blowing a fake kiss in the air. The three women walked out, their heels clicking proudly on the marble floor. Nolan just stood there. Still frozen. Still covered in cake. People whispered. Some laughed. Some felt sorry for him. He could feel every eye in the room staring at him. Some were recording. Some were smiling in pity. But inside Nolan… it felt like something had shattered. His chest felt tight. His eyes burned. His legs felt heavy like stone, but he didn’t move. He didn’t speak. All he could feel… was shame. Big. Loud. Deep shame. And maybe… a little bit of regret. Nolan was still standing in the middle of the restaurant—feeling alone, humiliated, and silent. His face dripped with pink and white cream. His lips were trembling. His hands had gone limp by his side. Then slowly, the soft sound of careful footsteps approached him. It was the head of the jazz band—a slim, polite-looking man with round glasses and a neat black bowtie. His violin hung gently from his shoulder. Behind him, the two ballet dancers came forward as well, their white attires were still glowing under the restaurant lights. “Sir,” the band leader said in a quiet voice. “We are… very sorry about what just happened.” Nolan didn’t answer. He only blinked. The man gave a sad nod. “We didn’t expect that kind of reaction,” he continued. “We thought it would be a romantic performance. Something joyful.” The dancers nodded softly, their faces were full of sympathy. Then came the part Nolan was afraid of. The violinist looked away for a moment, then reached into his suit and pulled out a folded piece of paper—a receipt. With a low, almost embarrassed voice, he said, “Uhm… here’s the balance. For the band… and the dancers. We gave you a discount, like you asked.” He held out the paper carefully, trying not to make it look awkward. Nolan stared at it. He didn’t take it yet. He couldn’t move. His pride was already in pieces—paying for this failure felt like placing a crown on his own humiliation. But he had no choice. Slowly, he took the paper from the man’s hand. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice shaking. The band leader gave a short nod, then quietly turned and walked away. The dancers followed him. Nolan looked down at the bill in his hand. His eyes were cloudy. He wiped some of the cream from his eyelid and looked at his reflection in the shiny surface of the piano nearby. He didn’t recognize himself. Covered in cake… standing alone… watched by strangers… laughed at by woman he once loved. And then… A question slowly formed in his heart. A question that cut deeper than the embarrassment. What did I do to deserve this? What crime had he committed? Was love a sin? Was showing emotions now a weakness? Why did it always end like this—for him? Why did it always feel like the universe was playing a cruel joke on him?
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TUNNELS OF BLOOD
The tunnels breathed like the belly of some buried beast.Steel rails gleamed faintly in the half-light, oil dripping like tears from the pipes above. Each echo stretched too long, each drop too loud, as if the earth itself conspired to betray them.Nolan’s boots struck quietly on the tracks.Over his shoulder, Alex sagged like a dying flame, his head lolling, his breaths shallow. The Phantom King’s mask dripped with blood not his own, its black crown painted in crimson streaks. In these depths, he was not a man. He was an omen.Alex stirred, his voice was nothing more than air.“...Thorne… chains… window…”Nolan’s jaw tightened. The boy’s eyes fluttered open, pupils wide, unfocused. But there was something wrong — they dilated at every flicker of stress, like a trigger waiting to be pulled. Nolan pressed two fingers to his wrist-rig. The scans confirmed his fear.A kill switch.“They wired you,” Nolan muttered under his breath. “They turned your mind into their bomb.”Alex groaned, t
BLOOD CROWN
Nolan stayed silent, circling through the machines.Four men advanced. Their boots thudded softly against the floor.The fight erupted in a storm of suppressed fire. Bullets hissed like wasps, ripping through old cloth and wood. Nolan fired back, two down in seconds. His magazine clicked empty.Now it was steel and bone.A pipe whistled toward his head. He ducked, crowbar smashing ribs, the sound cracking like kindling. Another lunged with a knife, slashing his shoulder. Nolan twisted, caught the man’s wrist, and drove the blade into his thigh before crushing his skull against iron.Hands grabbed him, tried to strangle him with wire. He slammed the crowbar backward, breaking teeth, then rammed his attacker’s head into the loom. Blood spattered the gears.By the time the dust settled, only two bodies still twitched. The rest lay broken, silent in pools of blood.Nolan’s chest heaved. His mask dripped crimson.And still, the handler had not moved.At last, the man stepped forward. His v
THE WAREHOUSE PRISON
Three Days LaterThe Phantom King vanished into the fog of Bullwick, his silhouette was swallowed by the night.In the days that followed, whispers spread like wildfire. Of the alley massacre. Of men painted into crowns of blood. Of a masked figure who killed like a ghost conductor.Lena Petrova received fragments of coded transmissions, each leading closer to DominionLink’s warehouses. Mael Vox drank himself deeper into fear, waiting for the Syndicate’s revenge.Rust-colored fog hung low over the canals, swallowing the old industrial quarter in a suffocating haze. Dead factories leaned against each other like drunkards, their windows black with soot, their roofs sagging with rust. The Phantom King walked among them as if through a graveyard, mask reflecting faint pulses of light from the small scanner in his hand.Each pulse matched the rhythm of a faint RF signal — the one he had hunted for three days. Each flicker was a heartbeat guiding him closer.And then it appeared.The wareh
VIRELLA'S WRATH IN THE MARBLE WALLS
Chapter 162: Virella’s Wrath in Marble HallsThe mansion sat on the cliffside like a crown of glass and marble, its white facades gleaming faintly under the wash of moonlight. Below, the ocean churned restlessly, waves striking against black stone as though trying to claw their way up to the fortress above. Within, all was silence and wealth—corridors lined with statues looted from fallen empires, chandeliers dripping with crystal light, walls hung with canvases worth more than most men’s lives.And at the heart of it all sat Virella.She reclined in a velvet armchair of blood-red, one long leg crossed over the other, her hand cradling a delicate crystal glass filled with a dark Burgundy vintage.The light from her massive curved television flickered across her sharp features, giving her an almost spectral glow. Onscreen, a playlet unfolded—an avant-garde performance from a secretive troupe she patronized. Masked actors twisted and bowed across a minimalist stage, their dialogue ci
THE PHANTOM KING'S DANCE OF SHADOWS
The glow of the code still lingered on Nolan’s mask when he stood at the doorway, pistol heavy in his hand, crowbar strapped across his back. Beyond the steel frame, footsteps echoed in the damp alley — steady, deliberate, the rhythm of trained killers closing in. Six, maybe seven. Possibly syndicate scouts.The Phantom King tilted his head, listening to their cadence like a conductor listening to the first stirrings of an orchestra. They thought themselves hunters, but they had already stepped onto his stage.The room behind him was silent except for the hum of his system, the unfinished Orchestra Key still pulsing in its rhythm. The glow of shifting code spilled faintly across the walls like ghostly graffiti, marking this place as more than a hideout. It was a crucible — and tonight it would be baptized in blood.The syndicate weren't tired of tracking him down, and he was not tired of killing them.He exhaled once, a slow measured breath. Then he killed the lights.Nolan moved lik
ORCHESTRA OF SHADOWS — THE GHOST ALGORITHM
The blood still clung to Nolan’s sleeves, but his mind was already elsewhere. The docks were silent, yet the binary words burned on his screen like a brand. With that message that said, "We are listening." He knew the fight had only shifted battlegrounds. Steel was finished. Now, the war moved into code.The room was silent except for the hum of machines. Rows of screens glowed with shifting light, casting Nolan’s mask in ghostly reflection. His fingers moved quickly, striking the keyboard like drumbeats. Every line of code he wrote was a blade, every command a strike against an unseen enemy.The docks were behind him now, but their echoes had not faded. Blood on steel, fog on skin, the sharp memory of Mael Vox’s blade tearing through flesh. Yet Nolan knew the Syndicate’s war was not only fought in alleys and container yards. There was another battlefield, one far colder, one made of numbers and shadows.Steel broke bones. But code—code broke empires.He leaned back for a moment, let
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