CHAPTER 263: SHE CHOOSE YOU

The world stopped.

The rain, the gunfire, the wind—all sound collapsed into static. My fists froze inches from his face.

Through the comms, Gray’s voice cut in, tight with static:

"Boss. Team Bravo has secured the hostages. Echo holding perimeter. Do you copy?"

"Boss—"

But I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

My attention remained fixed on Caden, on the nonsense he was about to waste my time on.

"Sophia," I repeated, the name tasting foreign and bitter on my tongue. "I don’t understand what you’re talking about," I’d said, the words feeling hollow even to me. This was insane. This was Caden’s venomous, deluded reality.

Caden lay there, half-conscious, blood seeping from his temple, his lip split. And yet... he was smiling. A weak, broken thing, but there all the same. Like he’d already won.

"You really don’t even remember, do you?" he wheezed, coughing red into the wet floor. "You acted like her feelings were nonexistent to you. And I loved her. I loved her more than anything. You were always the golden boy, Adrien ── always. Clara adored you, Sophia loved you. Everyone bowed to you. But she died

because of you, Adrien. Because of your carelessness."

Sophia.

The girl with the quiet laugh and the eyes that saw too much. The one who used to sit on the edge of the fountain at the old estate, sketching the world as if she could fix it with charcoal and paper. The one who used to call me "crown-prince" with a smirk, the only person who ever made the title feel like a joke instead of a burden.

The name staggered me. It didn’t belong here, in the rain, among blood and wreckage. It belonged to sunlight, laughter, a checkered blanket on green grass. For a heartbeat, I saw it — sunlight breaking through the trees, her laugh tangled in the sound of summer. Then it vanished, drowned by the storm.

I stared at him, my fists trembling, my body screaming for rest. "You think I killed her? I wasn’t even there when she died." I said, now recollecting.

"I don’t think. I know." His laugh was a wet, broken sound. "She told me once," he continued, voice weakening but laced with venom, "that she’d risk it just to feel close to you. And then that day... her birthday... the picnic party... the sandwich you brought from your own picnic basket."

The words hung in the air, heavy and accusatory, each syllable a fresh wound. I stared at Caden, the rain washing over us, blurring the edges of the already chaotic scene. A picnic. Sophia’s birthday. A sandwich. It was a child’s memory, a trivial detail, and yet Caden clung to it like a lifeline, weaving it into the fabric of his delusion.

"Sophia can only eat a certain amount of nut but if she takes too much it can lead to serious allergy which can cause death. But you ── Adrien ── you gave her sandwich filled with nuts that killed her. The sandwich your mother, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, made. And yet you call me the monster? If I hadn’t tasted one of the sandwich myself because Clara was hungry and wanted me to finish hers, I wouldn’t have known."

"That’s a lie," I said. "I was there when she made it. My mother used almost no nut butter. You’re twisting this—"

"Bullshit." He laughed, fury raw in the sound. "Your mother never liked her. I knew it. You’re too blind to see the blood that woman’s capable of. And you? You left immediately after personally feeding her the sandwich, all in the name of your mother suddenly fell sick." He coughed again. "you guys actually planned it so well so no one would suspect it was from you the nut came from."

Gunfire flared again at the edge of the yard.

"Echo, two tangos left!"

"Copy that," Gray snapped. "Neutralize and pull out. Do not engage the boss’s line."

I barely heard him. Caden’s words bled through everything.

"And do you want to know what made me more stunned? You left the country the next day —convenient, wasn’t it? All in the name of some stupid studies," he rasped, blood frothing at his mouth. "The poor girl battled for her life for a month Adrien. A month!! I watched the girl I love calling for you. And never for once did you show up."

"You loved her," I hissed, voice raw. "And yet you let her die? You said you tasted it before her and yet you let her eat it?"

This is madness. A rage trap. A sick, twisted foolish reasoning.

Caden choked out a ragged breath, a gurgling sound that was more misery than defiance. His already bruised lips twisted into a grotesque parody of a smile. "Loved her?" he rasped, the words punctuated by another hacking cough. "Loved her? I was devoted to her. She was everything. Everything bright and true in this goddamn world."

"And I warned her," Caden rasped, the effort of speech making him cough up more blood. The rain washed the red streaks away almost instantly. "I told her, ’Don’t touch it, Soph. It’s bad.’ I told her it tasted off. But she looked at you, Adrien, her eyes full of that pathetic, hungry adoration, and she took it anyway. Blinded. She was trying to be normal around you. She hid it. And you—you—shoved it in her face like it was a dare."

"She thought you were finally offering her a piece of yourself because you fed her," he continued, his voice rising to a raw, desperate shout. "She chose your careless gesture over my goddamned warning! She chose your sandwich over my entire existence! So yes—I let her eat it. Because if she was going to be so pathologically blind, so completely infatuated with the thing that would kill her, then maybe she deserved the lesson."

My gut clenched, a cold, sickening realization dawning. His motive wasn’t protection; it was possession. It was a twisted, fatal gambit to force her to choose him, and when she failed, he let her suffer the consequences, pinning the blame for the entire tragedy—including his own inaction—squarely on me.

"Enough," I snapped. "You let her die to prove a point to a girl you claimed to love."

"I let her die to hold you accountable!" Caden screamed, pushing himself onto his knees, his jaw slack with sudden, frantic rage. "She waited for you. She waited while her throat seized up and her body failed! And you were gone, playing the dutiful son, while your mother’s work was turning her organs to sludge! You flew away and left me to watch her beg for a golden boy who wouldn’t even call!"

"Everything is your fault. Yours."

I stared at him, rain soaking through my clothes, my blood mixing with water on the ground as I struggled to breathe through the pain going across my body.

"So. You killed multiple men. Held children hostage. Almost killed my wife. Killed my unborn child. Left my mother vegetative. Tried to ruin my wife’s reputation and mine. Tried to destroy me, held old people hostage, almost killed me... All because of Sophia? That’s your fucking reason?"

Caden’s grin widened, teeth pink with blood. "Yes," he whispered. "That’s exactly why. And I don’t regret it. I hope your precious Isabella dies. And I hope that whore you call a mother never wakes up."

Something inside me snapped.

My breath trembled, a single heartbeat away from breaking into something I couldn’t take back.

The nearest thing my hand found was an iron plank, rusted and cold.

"You—psycho—son—of—a—bitch!" I growled, my anger and pain pouring out with each blow.

The first hit cracked across his shoulder. He screamed.

The second—his ribs. He curled in.

The third—his leg. Then his back. Then his arm.

He tried to crawl. I didn’t let him.

Just as I was about to deliver another hit, strong hands grabbed me, holding me back. Five men pinned me down, pulling me away from Caden’s battered body.

The world tilted. The rain burned against my open wounds. My breathing came ragged, broken.

Through the haze of rage and rain, I looked up.

A man stood beneath a black umbrella, his figure sharp against the storm. The light catching on the polished cufflinks, the hard line of his jaw. His eyes—cold, detached, unreadable—met mine.

The person who contributed in my birthing process...Father.

"Enough," he said.

The word cut through the downpour, low and final.