Chapter 88: The Mastermind’s Board
Noah’s POV
When was the exact moment I launched my revenge against my father and his entire syndicate of criminals?
It started years ago, on a rainy morning when my family’s old butler suddenly appeared in a narrow alleyway while I was walking to school.
Before that morning, I lived under the suffocating delusion that everyone in my birth family had perished in the horrific fire that consumed our estate. I was just a child when the blaze tore through our home.
The only survivors were my old nanny and my family’s private driver. But after my parents’ funeral was over, those two vanished into thin air. I never saw either of them again. Instead, I was dragged away to live under the custody of Bernard.
For months, I stayed in Bernard’s cold, lifeless house, completely isolated and utterly clueless about the truth behind my family’s demise. Then, Bernard brought a small, pale, trembling boy into the house.
Micah.
The very moment I laid eyes on Micah, my entire world shifted. He was small, frail, and terrified of his own shadow. Looking into his wide, innocent eyes, I made a silent, unshakeable vow right then and there: I would survive this nightmare, I would tear Bernard’s empire down stone by stone, and I would do it all to build a world where Micah and I could exist together.
At first, as a naive kid, I wondered why Micah hadn’t been living with Bernard from the start. Why did Bernard suddenly bring him home months after my arrival? Was Micah living with some distant relative before?
A few years after the old butler reconnected with me and began secretly building my underground network, I finally gained the power and resources to dig deep into Micah’s real background. What I uncovered sent a thrilling, electric shock straight through my veins.
It turned out that Bernard and my darling Micah weren’t biologically related at all.
Discovering that singular fact gave me an incredible, dark wave of thrill. The sheer excitement of knowing that Bernard wasn’t Micah’s real father made the thought of slaughtering the old man so much sweeter. It meant that when I finally put a bullet through Bernard’s head, Micah wouldn’t shed a single tear for him. Micah wouldn’t mourn a father because Bernard was never his blood to begin with.
The truth I uncovered was far darker than anything Micah could ever imagine. According to the syndicate files my operatives recovered, Bernard had actually murdered Micah’s real biological father years ago. Micah’s father had been a high-ranking lieutenant in the Phantom group. Bernard executed him in cold blood before turning his sights on my family and burning our estate to the ground.
After murdering Micah’s father, Bernard didn’t keep Micah. He dumped Micah like useless trash at a wretched, filthy orphanage run by a corrupt director who treated the children like animals.
My poor, precious Micah suffered in that horrible, freezing orphanage for months, starving and neglected, before Bernard finally decided to drag him out and bring him to live in his house.
Once we were both living under Bernard’s roof, the contrast in how we were treated was sickeningly obvious. Bernard treated me like his golden prodigy, spoiling me with tutors, expensive clothes, and relentless praise. But he treated Micah like absolute trash, stepping on his dignity every single day and treating him like an unwanted parasite.
For years, I wondered why Bernard harbored such pure, unadulterated hatred for a helpless child. The syndicate records gave me the answer to that, too.
It turned out that Bernard had been deeply, obsessively in love with Micah’s mother years ago. She had been part of his circle, but she grew disgusted with his group cruelty, fled his syndicate, and fell in love with a member of the Phantom group—Micah’s real father. She gave birth to Micah, but tragedy struck during the delivery, and she died right there on the operating table.
That was the exact reason why that bastard Bernard constantly spat the vile label ’Mother Killer’ at Micah. Bernard blamed a helpless, innocent Micah for the death of the only woman he had ever obsessed over.
Bernard had carried out his assignment of executing Micah’s father with ruthless pleasure. He had fully intended to murder Micah next to wipe out the Phantom lieutenant’s bloodline entirely. But when Bernard looked down at the newborn, he saw the mother’s face staring back at him. Micah possessed the exact same eyes, the same soft features, and the same delicate beauty of the woman Bernard loved. He couldn’t bring himself to end Micah’s life. So instead of killing him, he dumped him in an orphanage, and later brought him home just to torture him daily and project his sick, twisted resentment onto him.
Poor, sweet Micah. He has suffered so much at the hands of monsters, completely unaware of the webs woven around him.
He doesn’t realize that in this cruel, filthy world, I am the only person he truly has. I am the only one who protects him, the only one who keeps him safe from the shadows lurking around every corner. I need him to see that. I want him to look at me, to rely on me so completely and intensely that he can’t even lift a single finger without reaching for me first. I want his entire world to shrink until I am the only thing filling his mind, his heart, and his sight.
"What... what is this place, Noah?"
Micah’s voice snapped me out of my deep, dark thoughts. He was standing right beside me in the grand marble hallway, his whole frame trembling like a leaf in a harsh wind. His wide, terrified eyes dragged frantically over the rows of men in black suits who remained bowed deeply before us.
"Why are these people calling you master?" he whimpered, his fingers clutching the hem of his jacket tightly.
He looked so painfully cute with that sheer, helpless terror flushed across his face. Seeing him look to me for safety, seeing his complete vulnerability, made a hot surge of possessive satisfaction bloom deep inside my chest.
"Come with me. I’ll tell you why..." I said softly, reaching out to wrap my fingers securely around his wrist.