Chapter 98: Swallowing The Snake
ADRIEN’S POV
The quiet in the VIP room stretches until it feels like a heavy weight pressing down on my chest.
The faint, muffled hum of the casino floor below barely penetrates the wood flooring, leaving only the dry click of ivory against the green velvet table to fill the silence between us.
Every second that ticks by makes the tension thicker, turning the small room into a suffocating space of pressure and anticipation.
Yaya leans back in his leather chair, his broad shoulders relaxed as if he has all the time in the world. He watches me with those strange, pale eyes, shifting the dice from one hand to the other with a lazy, practiced flick of his wrist.
The rhythm of the rolling ivory is steady, almost hypnotic, but I refuse to let it lull me into a false sense of security.
"I heard about your habit of not listening to people," Yaya says, his voice cool and smooth, breaking the tense silence. "I just didn’t think it could be this bad."
I let out a low scoff, leaning back against the leather cushion and crossing my arms over my bandaged ribs.
The sharp pull of the tight surgical gauze reminds me of the crash, sending a dull throbbing pain through my chest, but I keep my face expressionless.
I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me wince.
"I only listen to people least likely to have a reason to lie to me," I say, my tone laced with dryness. "And right now, you’re at the very top of the list of people who shouldn’t be trusted."
Yaya doesn’t flinch at my sharp tone. He simply tosses the ivory blocks again. They spin across the green tabletop, rattling against the wooden rim before coming to a rest near the center of the table.
"I haven’t lied to you since you stepped into this room, Adrien," he replies casually, gathering the dice back into his palm with long, pale fingers.
"Then answer the question," I say, leaning forward slightly and resting my forearms on the polished wood edge. "What does Orion have against you?"
Yaya stops shaking his hand for a split second, looking up to meet my gaze. The movement is tiny, almost unnoticeable, but I catch it.
"Just because I said I haven’t lied to you," he says softly, "doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you what you want to know."
Silence descends on the room once more. I sit there, staring across the green table at the man who dragged me from the wreckage of a flipped car, wrapped my cracked ribs, and brought me to an underground gambling den just to play games with ivory dice.
Every instinct in my body is on high alert, analyzing the sharp lines of his face, the pale scar near his temple, and the black ink of the snake biting its own tail on the back of his hand.
He’s playing with me. He brought me into this dark, luxurious room knowing I have no shoes, no weapon, and a body held together by bandages and sheer spite, yet he treats this entire interaction like a casual afternoon chat over tea.
"Why am I here?" I ask again, my voice dropping into a quiet demand. "Why go through all this trouble for me, Yaya?"
He smiles.
It isn’t a normal expression. I’ve spent years surrounded by people who use smiles as weapons. Orion’s smiles are manic, sharp, or deeply calculating, meant to throw everyone off balance or signal a sudden shift in danger.
My stepmother’s smiles were cold and full of hidden expectations, designed to remind me of my place.
Leon’s smiles are small, nervous, and pathetic, the mark of a coward trying to hide his weakness.
But, Yaya’s smile is none of those things. It feels like he is smiling simply to express the physical emotion of smiling, rather than out of any real amusement or warmth. There is no joy in it, no malice, no hidden joke.
Just a polite, empty curve of his lips that feels hollow.
It sets me on edge far more than an open threat would. A man who smiles without feeling is a man who operates purely on logic and execution.
He flicks his wrist, throwing the dice across the table once more. They roll, bounce, and settle into a matching pair.
A set of threes.
"You were taken because of Orion," Yaya says, his pale eyes remaining fixed on mine.
Confusion ripples through my mind. I frown, my eyebrows pulling together as I try to parse the logic behind his words. The headache behind my eyes spikes again, but I force my brain to keep working, pushing past the fog.
"If Orion already has something against you," I ask, my tone sharp, "why would you go through the trouble of taking something that lunatic believes belongs to him? You’re just giving him a reason to come after you harder."
Yaya rests his elbows on the wooden trim, tilting his head slightly to the side like a curious scientist observing an interesting specimen.
"Every action has a reaction, Adrien," he says in that same unhurried cadence. "But the scale of that reaction depends on the subject reacting, rather than the intensity of the action itself."
I fall quiet, letting his words sit in the heavy air while my brain dissects them piece by piece.
He didn’t just grab me off the street on a whim. He waited for Leon to set his desperate, sloppy trap at the church. He let Leon’s hired men run my transport sedan off the road, watching from the shadows while the metal crunched and the tires burned.
And then he stepped into the smoke to pull me out himself. He hijacked a kidnapping that was already in progress.
That means he knew if get kidnapped from the beginning...but how?
He let Leon do the dirty work, took the prize, and left Leon to answer to Orion for a missing captive.
I look at the way Yaya holds himself, the deliberate stillness in his posture, the subtle mark of the Ouroboros on his skin, and the pieces begin to assemble in my head like gears locking into place.
"You didn’t take me to piss off Orion," I say slowly, watching his face for the slightest twitch of emotion. "You took me to test him."