Chapter 90: The Sins We Choose
Micah’s POV
Father... No. Bernard Miller killed my father?
He didn’t just kill my biological father—he murdered Noah’s father too.
The ground beneath me felt like it had completely vanished. A sudden, violent wave of nausea surged through my throat, and before my brain could even register what was happening, my knees buckled. I crashed hard onto the cold floor, the sharp impact jarring straight up my spine, but I barely felt the physical pain. I slammed both of my hands over my mouth, suffocating the ragged sob that threatened to tear out of my chest.
There was no way. No... no way in hell this could be true.
Shut up, Micah! Just shut up! I screamed at myself internally, squeezing my eyes shut as tears flooded my vision, blurring the world.
How could I possibly lie to myself? How could I try to pretend it wasn’t true when the evidence was staring me right in the face? The documents, the photos, the criminal records—it was all laid out.
"H-how is this even possible?" I muttered into my palms, my voice sounding weak, and utterly broken. I slowly dragged my trembling hands down across my face, letting them drop uselessly to my sides as I stared up at the ceiling.
A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the room. After listening to every single detail Noah had revealed about Bernard, everything finally clicked into place. All the confusing, terrifying pieces of Noah’s behavior that had tormented me for years suddenly made terrifying sense. His suffocating protectiveness. His obsessive, unyielding gaze. The cold, calculated distant look in his eyes whenever Bernard was near.
I had been such an absolute fool. All these years, I had genuinely believed that Noah enjoyed being Bernard’s golden boy. I thought he was proud to be the favorite, the prized ward, the perfect heir. I thought he looked down on me from a high pedestal while I groveled at the bottom. But it had all been an act. Noah had been faking every smile, every polite nod, and every bit of obedience while quietly sharpening a blade in the dark.
And then there was me. Pathetic, miserable Micah.
I spent my entire childhood begging for a single scrap of warmth from Bernard. I cried myself to sleep in cold rooms, wondering what I had done wrong, wondering why my own father looked at me with such pure, venomous disgust. I had blamed myself for years. And now I knew the truth. He didn’t hate me because I was a difficult child. He hated me because I was the living, breathing proof of the woman who rejected him, and because he had butchered my real family before throwing me into a filthy orphanage.
He called me a ’mother killer’ to break my spirit, when he was the monster who destroyed everything I ever was.
"Are you saying... are you saying Bernard also kidnapped Sunny?" I asked, my voice cracking as I forced my head up.
Noah was standing near the steel door, quietly receiving a tray from one of his men in black suits.
He walked back toward the low glass table in the center of the room, carefully setting down a tray that held a steaming mug of milk tea for me and a plain black coffee for himself.
"He did," Noah replied calmly. "Bernard didn’t plan it on his own, though. He’s simply following direct orders from the higher-ups in his criminal syndicate. Sunny was targeted for them to start their sinister plan."
He reached down, picked up the mug of warm milk tea, and extended it toward me.
My body felt like heavy. My muscles burned with exhaustion, but I managed to drag myself up off the floor and stagger over to him on trembling legs. My fingers shivered so violently that the tea sloshed against the rim of the mug as I took it from his hand. The heat radiating through the ceramic was the only thing grounding me to reality.
"If he has Sunny... if Bernard really has her, we have to call Raven right now," I said hastily, as I thought of her tear-stained face in the parking lot. "We have to tell her what’s going on. She’s out of her mind with worry, Noah. She’s probably losing her mind at the club right now—"
"You must not tell anyone about what I’ve told you today," Noah interrupted, his voice dropping to a low warning.
I flinched as if he had physically struck me. I lowered my head instantly, staring down into the swirling pale brown surface of the milk tea, my heart hammering against my ribs.
He was right. I was in no position to argue. If word got out that Noah knew about the syndicate, Bernard would pull the trigger on everything before Noah could strike back.
"I won’t," I whispered softly, giving him a small, obedient nod. "I won’t say a word."
Noah took a slow sip of his black coffee, his dark eyes never leaving my face over the rim of his glass.
"You’re not curious about your real father, are you?" he asked quietly.
I turned my face away from him, looking toward the dark corners of the room. The question felt strange, almost foreign. My real father? How could I feel anything for a man who was nothing more than a blank shadow in my mind?
"I was just young when he died," I admitted, my voice flat, stripped of all lingering emotion. "I don’t remember his voice. I don’t remember his hands. I don’t remember a single thing. All through my life, I grew up thinking that monster Bernard was my father. I don’t even know what my real father looked like."
A soft, heavy sigh escaped Noah’s lips. He set his coffee cup down on the table with a quiet click.
"Then I’ll get revenge on our behalf," Noah said simply, as if he were talking about the weather.
Revenge. The word hung heavy in the air between us. I looked at my reflection in the tea mug. Even if a part of me screamed for Bernard to pay for every tear I had ever shed, how was I supposed to help? What could I possibly do? I was weak. I was fragile. I had no power, no money, and no weapons. I was just Micah—the boy who got hurt while everyone else played dangerous games around him.
"And when it’s all over," Noah added, stepping closer to me, "I’ll transfer every single asset your biological father left behind directly to you. Since you are his only surviving heir, it belongs to you anyway."