The door to Lucas’s elite midline suite slid open with a soft, mechanical hiss, cutting through the high-vaulted silence of the corridor.
A moment later, Harry McGuire stepped inside the threshold.
His frame was stiff, his movements heavily restricted by the tightly bound medical dressings beneath his fresh shirt.
But with a dull, persistent effort, he dragged his two large, heavy suitcases behind him.
The small plastic wheels rattled noisily and unevenly across the polished imported floorboards, the sound echoing sharply off the minimalist walls.
Andrew, who had been comfortably seated at Lucas’s desk by the book nook, slowly looked up at the commotion.
And so did Lucas, whom was prancing around in the kitchen, cooking up a storm.
Andrew’s dark hazel eyes immediately landed on Harry’s battered form.
A slow, deeply satisfied grin spread across his handsome face, his fingers tapping a lazy rhythm against the book on his lap.
“Ah, there you are,” Andrew murmured, his voice smooth and laced with a toxic kind of amusement.
“Where on earth has a patient like you been wandering off to? I expected my new Vice President to report on duty hours ago.”
Harry rolled his silver eyes behind his lenses, his jaw tightening as he continued dragging the suitcases further into the room before finally letting them drop near the entrance hall.
“Can’t you see?” Harry hissed, his voice raspy but dripping with a heavy, unadulterated sarcasm.
“I’m doing exactly as the contract implied, Mayfair. I’m listening to my master and doing exactly as I am told like a good little subordinate.”
Andrew merely laughed, the sound rich and utterly unbothered by the venom in the room.
He set the book down on the desk.
“You always make my protection sound so incredibly tragic, Harry.”
Harry ignored the comment completely, adjusting the collar of his turtle neck shirt.
The deep purple bruises along his jaw and cheek had been mostly cleaned and dressed by the infirmary nurse earlier, though the swelling remained impossible to completely hide from the light.
Andrew stood up, his tall, immaculate figure stepping into the center of the room to examine Harry with a slow, critical motion.
“Your face looks significantly better now with all the blood cleaned off it. You still manage to look so handsome even in such a battered form.”
Harry let out a sharp, bitter huff.
He reached up, roughly removing his dark sunglasses, and pointed a trembling finger directly toward the deep, localized bruise circling his left eye socket.
“Does it really, Andrew? Does it look great to you?”
Andrew leaned back against the edge of the mahogany desk, crossing his arms.
“Just keep the sunglasses on when we go out, and you’ll be perfectly fine.”
Harry stared at him, his silver eyes flashing with a sudden, localized vulnerability.
Then, with a slow, defensive motion, he put the glasses back on, hiding his eyes behind the dark tint.
“My mother will know something is wrong the absolute second she looks at me,” Harry muttered, his voice dropping into a rare, quiet register.
“And she cannot see me like this. Not ever.”
For a brief, agonizing second, the defensive armor around Harry’s posture softened entirely.
The constant, defensive thoughts of academy politics faded, replaced by the heavy faces of his family.
His mother, his daughter, Lolleta—innocent, small, and tucked away behind the stone walls of the McGuire mansion and his little sister Noelle.
They mean the world to him and they were the people who didn’t need to see the physical cost of his survival in this place.
Harry looked up at Andrew, his tone losing its sharp edge, turning into something resembling a plea.
“—and as much as I don’t want to say this… because I miss my daughter more than anything… can we please postpone fetching her today? Can we just do it another time, when these marks are completely gone and I’m properly healed up?”
Andrew considered the request, his eyes narrowing into thin slits as he calculated the timeline.
For once, he didn’t immediately launch an aggressive argument or dismiss the Harry’s physical limitations.
“Well… I suppose I can do that for you, Harry, you know I would do anything for you.” Andrew hummed, stepping closer until his shadow touched the first suitcase.
“But… just know that the more time you waste lingering in this suite, it the more the moment something unfortunate happens to her over there… then your brother Lloyd will be a dead man by the very next morning.”
The sharp, victorious smile on Andrew’s face returned with a terrifying clarity.
Harry’s brow furrowed instantly, a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Andrew? And this isn’t the first time you’ve dropped that specific threat on my face. What the hell do you know about my family’s house that I don’t?” You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
He took two frantic steps forward, completely ignoring the sharp sting in his fractured ribs.
His arms folded tightly across his chest, his eyes burning through his sunglasses.
Andrew remained perfectly stationary.
Calm.
Far too calm for the weight of the words hanging in the air.
“Mhm. I’m not entirely sure that you’ll be happy to hear this particular update from me, but–…” Andrew shrugged his shoulders casually, as if discussing a minor fluctuation in the academy’s tuition rates.
“I planted a few high-tier spies inside your father’s estate years ago, back when I was still hunting for your exact whereabouts. And it has recently come to my discovery that–…”
Harry’s stomach sank into a deep, freezing void.
Andrew’s precise, clinical tone alone was enough to tell him that whatever truth was about to follow would completely dismantle his world.
“…—your brother Lloyd has actually turned your little sister into his little wife,” Andrew delivered, his voice lowering into a dark, effortless whisper.
“If you know what I mean, Harry.”
The entire room seemed to freeze on its axis.
The low hum of the suite’s automated climate control faded into an oppressive silence.
Andrew’s expression darkened by a fraction of a degree, his eyes fixed on Harry’s twisting features.
“And of course, the distinguished Bishop Gerald McGuire knows all about it,” Andrew added, his smile turning cruel.
“In fact… your holy father is directly involved in keeping the secret within the family bloodline. Isn’t that diligent of him as the head of the house?”
Harry felt his pulse begin to pound like a war drum in his ears, a loud, rushing sound that blurred his vision.
Every single muscle in his battered body tensed until his joints popped.
“And right now,”
Andrew whispered, leaning in just an inch closer, “your sick brother is eyeing our little Lolleta for the exact same arrangement.”
“WHAT?!”
The shock that rolled through Harry was massive and palpable.
One moment he was standing rigid, trying to process the structural horror of his home—the next, every ounce of his restraint shattered.
With a violent, uncoordinated movement, he threw his arms out, kicking blindly.
One heavy suitcase toppled over with a loud crash; the other slid across the floor, slamming hard against the base of the sofa.
And Lucas startled looking towards them, he had been silently eavesdropping the entire time.
Harry stormed directly toward Andrew, his entire body shaking with a wild, feral fury that completely eclipsed his physical pain.
He grabbed the lapels of Andrew’s elite uniform, his nails digging into the expensive fabric.
“And you’re only fucking telling me this now?!” Harry roared, his voice cracking into a raw, desperate scream.
“You knew this was happening inside that house, and you did absolutely nothing to stop it?!”
Andrew simply looked down at him, his dark eyes wide with an unbothered, clinical detachment.
He didn’t break the grip on his coat.
“Oh, come on, Harry,” Andrew murmured, his tone annoyingly reasonable, as if he were explaining a simple legal clause to a child.
“You should have opened your own eyes and ears three years ago, rather than being completely self-absorbed in your own little world of pity and exile.”
Harry clenched his fists tighter, his knuckles straining his palms.
But Andrew remained calm as he continued to purr his thoughts out loud.
“And besides what was a Mayfair heir—an outsider explicitly not welcome across the McGuire threshold—supposed to do about your family’s internal filth?” Andrew continued, his voice smooth and cold.
“And as much as I yearn to taste the McGuire blood, I needed a proper, legal justification to satiate my amusement when I finally chop off one of your family members’ heads.”
“And with Lloyd attempting to do all of that to our sweet Lolleta?… Well, that would have been a perfect justification enough for me to board the execution game….. Well at the very least, that’s what I think.”
Harry’s jaw tightened until his teeth felt like they would shatter.
Every word out of the Andrew’s mouth made his blood boil hotter.
“But then wouldn’t that be too late?!”
Harry screamed, tears of pure, unadulterated panic stinging the corners of his eyes behind the dark lenses.
“He would have already long harmed Lolleta by then! She’s just a child, you sick monster!”
It wasn’t the defensive fear for his own survival or his own skin—it was the terrifying, blind terror of a father who realized his child was sleeping in a den of wolves.
Andrew watched the raw agony on Harry’s face with a quiet, appreciative interest.
“So what if he did?”
The room suddenly went even more cold, with Harry’s mouth agape with disbelief from what he just heard.
“I mean I would have given her absolute justice after the fact anyway.”
Harry looked as though his veins might burst.
“And besides,” Andrew added, his voice dropping into that smooth, chilling highline register that made him a monster, “a little sacrifice such as that for the absolute sake of her father’s ultimate amusement wouldn’t truly hurt our little Lolleta in the long run would it?. I suppose it would only make me love her even more and protect her earnestly when I take her away from your family mansion.”
The words were the final straw.
Any remaining string of patience or strategy Harry possessed snapped instantly into a million jagged pieces.
‘Sick bastard.’ Lucas thought, his scowl evident on his lips.
“You sick, twisted bastard!!”
With a primal yell, Harry shoved Andrew’s shoulder with everything he had left in his body.
The heavy executive chair shifted slightly across the floorboards, the wheels groaning under the sudden impact.
Andrew didn’t even bother retaliating or throwing a fist.
Instead, he simply stood back and watched with a lazy, regular amusement as Harry turned away, storming frantically around the suite to gather his scattered belongings.
Harry’s movements were rushed, chaotic, and completely frantic.
He grabbed his phone from the table, shoved his wallet into his pocket, and adjusted his sunglasses with trembling, uncoordinated fingers.
His mind was already miles away from Room 402.
It was already racing down the southern highway toward the McGuire estate.
He needed to get to Lolleta.
Immediately.
Every second wasted in this room was a second his daughter spent near Lloyd.
Andrew observed the chaotic scene for a few moments longer before finally straightening his waistcoat and stepping away from the desk.
His dark amusement hadn’t faded in the slightest; if anything, the scene was playing out exactly as he had written it.
“Wait for me,” Andrew called out calmly as he walked toward the hallway.
“Bob will drive us there. You won’t even make it past the front gates alone in that state.”
Harry didn’t answer.
He didn’t care about the terms anymore.
He was already slamming his palm against the door control, his shadow moving fast toward the exit.
And for perhaps the very first time since setting foot inside the structural hell of St.
Jude’s Academy—for the first time since meeting Andrew Mayfair—Harry genuinely, desperately hoped the Mayfair Prince wasn’t telling the absolute truth.
******
St Jude’s security Protocol: Outbound Gate Authorization “` [Suite 402] ──► [Lower Garage: Asset Transport] ──► [District Gate 3]
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Driver: Bob (Level 5)
Destination: McGuire Estate
Clearance: Andrew Mayfair
Target Priority: Lolleta (Secure) “` Like it ?