The silence in the East Wing library wasn't empty; it was heavy, pressurized by a decade of unspoken resentment and the raw, electric hum of the Sovereign Protocol. The air here felt different than the rest of the Thorne mansion. It didn't smell like the sterile, lemon-scented hallways or the artificial floral sweetness of the Garden Gala. It smelled of ancient paper, expensive mahogany oil, and the sharp, coppery tang of Sayaka-san's sudden, frantic arousal.
Hiroki stood in the center of the room, his shadow cast long and jagged across the Persian rug by the moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He watched her. Truly watched her. For ten years, he had been trained to look at his feet, to blend into the wallpaper, to be the "beige wall" that Sayaka-san could ignore while she managed the family's multi-billion dollar empire.
Now, the perspective had shifted. Through the Predator's Eye, the room looked like a tactical map. He could see the frantic pulse in Sayaka-san's neck—a rapid, stuttering beat that betrayed her icy exterior. He could see the way her pupils were dilated, swallowing the dark iris until they were nothing but bottomless pits of shock.
"Hiroki..." she started again, her voice a fragile sliver of its usual authority. She tried to pull the edges of her emerald silk robe together, her fingers trembling so violently they looked like white spiders dancing on a green web. "You... you are out of your mind. I am the Matriarch of this house. I am your guardian. I took you in when you had nothing."
"Grateful," Hiroki whispered. The word didn't just fall; it resonated. With Charm Speech active, the simple syllables felt like a physical weight pressing against the bookshelves. "That's the word you love, isn't it, Sayaka-san? Gratitude."
He took a step forward, the floorboards not even offering a squeak. His presence was becoming a vacuum, sucking the oxygen out of the room.
"I spent ten years being grateful for the scraps," Hiroki continued, his voice dropping into a register that was impossibly smooth, like velvet wrapped around a blade. "Grateful for the room next to the laundry. Grateful for Ryota using my bed as a biohazard site. Grateful for the way you look through me as if I'm a smudge on the glass of your perfect life."
"Stop," she gasped, her back hitting the edge of the massive mahogany desk. The blue light from the monitor behind her—still frozen on a scene of a woman begging for mercy—cast a ghostly, clinical glow over her ivory skin. "I won't... I won't listen to this. I will call Jenkins. I will have you erased from this community before the sun comes up."
She reached for the silver intercom button on the desk, her movement desperate.
[DING!] [SOVEREIGN COMMAND: INTERCEPT.]
Hiroki was faster. He didn't rush; he was simply there. He caught her wrist mid-air. Her skin was hot, slick with a fine sheen of sweat that smelled of spiced musk and terror. The contact sent a jolt through the Sovereign Protocol, a surge of data that Hiroki could feel in his very marrow.
"You're not calling anyone," Hiroki said. He leaned in, his lips inches from her ear. He could smell the expensive wine on her breath and the scent of her own climax—the one he had interrupted. "Because if Jenkins comes in here, what is he going to see, Sayaka-san? Is he going to see the 'Stain on the Family Legacy'? Or is he going to see the 'Goddess of the Archipelago' naked in her husband's chair, finger-fucking herself raw to a video of a boy half her age?"
Sayaka-san's breath hitched, a sharp, broken sound. Her knees buckled slightly, her weight supported only by Hiroki's grip on her wrist and the desk behind her. The shame was there—vivid and red on her cheeks—but beneath it, the Protocol was highlighting something else in a glowing neon purple.
[TARGET AROUSAL: 72%. STATUS: HYPER-RECEPTIVE.]
"How did you... how long have you..." she stammered, her eyes darting to the monitor and back to Hiroki's dark, predatory gaze.
"Long enough to know that the woman who preaches about 'Thorne Dignity' is a liar," Hiroki whispered. "Long enough to know that you're starving. That Harold hasn't touched you in years, has he? He's too busy with stock options and board meetings to notice that his wife is rotting from the inside out."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small, shimmering vial of Sincerity Serum. The liquid inside caught the moonlight, swirling with an iridescent, hypnotic light.
"What is that?" she asked, her voice failing her, turning into a breathy whimper.
"The truth," Hiroki said. "Something you haven't tasted in a very long time."
He popped the cork. The scent that erupted from the vial was intoxicating—a mix of crushed lilies and ozone. He didn't force her. He didn't need to. The Charm Speech was doing the work, vibrating through her bones, making her every instinct scream that she needed to obey the boy she had once called "trash."
"Drink," he commanded.
Her hand rose, trembling, guided more by his will than her own. She took the vial, her eyes locked on his, searching for the ghost of the boy she used to know. She found nothing but the Sovereign. She tipped it back, the liquid sliding down her throat in one smooth, shimmering gulp.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The string quartet outside had finally stopped. The mansion was a tomb. Then, Sayaka-san's eyes rolled back, her spine arching until it looked like it might snap.
The change was visceral. The mask of the "Ice Queen" didn't just crack; it disintegrated. Her face, usually a map of calculated indifference, began to ripple with raw, unfiltered emotion. Her breathing became heavy, a rhythmic sawing in the quiet library.
"I... I hate you," she rasped, but the words carried no weight. Her robe slipped further, exposing the full, heavy swell of her breasts, her nipples tight and dark-cherry in the freezing blue light. "I hate how you look at me. I hate that I want... I want..."
"What do you want, Sayaka-san?" Hiroki asked, his voice a low, teasing hum. He let go of her wrist, knowing she wouldn't run. She couldn't.
She collapsed back into the leather chair, her legs splaying wide in a movement that was utterly devoid of her usual grace. It was a gesture of complete, humiliating vulnerability. Her hand, acting on a hunger she could no longer hide, drifted back toward the heat between her thighs.
"I want you to stop talking," she sobbed, her fingers digging into her own flesh. "I want you to take what I've been rubbing myself raw for. I want you to make me forget that I'm a Thorne. I want you to ruin me, Hiroki. Please... just ruin me."
Hiroki looked down at her—the most powerful woman in the Archipelago, the woman who had made his childhood a "velvet hell"—now begging on her husband's desk. The Sovereign Protocol pulsed in his mind, awarding him points for every shattered shred of her pride.
[DING!] [SUBJUGATION PROGRESS: 45%] [REWARD: SOVEREIGN STAMINA UNLOCKED.]
He reached down, unbuckling the belt of the jeans that had once belonged to Ryota. The denim fell to the floor with a heavy thud. He stood before her, his cock already raging, a thick, heavy weapon that seemed to glow in the blue light of the library.
Sayaka-san's eyes fixed on him, her mouth falling open. She looked like a starving animal that had finally found its prey.
"You called me a stain, Sayaka-san," Hiroki said, his voice dropping to a whisper as he leaned over her, his heat radiating against her sweat-slick skin. "Now, I'm going to make sure you're covered in me. I'm going to make sure that every time you look at this desk, every time you sit in this chair, you feel the weight of your 'charity case' inside you."
He grabbed her hair, yanking her head back until she was staring at the ceiling, her throat a long, exposed line of surrender. He brought the head of his cock to her lips—lips that had only ever spoken words of contempt.
"Open," he commanded.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't cry. She opened her mouth wide, her tongue lolling out in a gesture of pure, broken devotion.
Hiroki was about to thrust, to finally take the revenge he had been building for a decade, when a sound from the hallway made his blood turn to ice.
Click.
The sound of a heavy brass door handle turning. The sound of the library's main entrance—the one behind him—opening.
"Sayaka? Are you in here? I thought I heard voices."
It was Harold. Sayaka-san's husband. The man who owned the desk, the chair, and—on paper—the woman currently begging for his nephew's cock.
Hiroki froze, his cock inches from Sayaka-san's open mouth, the moonlight catching the panic in her eyes as she realized their world was about to end.
The door began to creak open, a sliver of light from the hallway cutting across the floor, moving toward them like a guillotine.
[DING!] [CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED: UNCLE HAROLD.] [SYSTEM OPTION: BLUFF OR DOMINATE?]
Hiroki's hand tightened in Sayaka-san's hair. If Harold walked in now, it was death. Not just social death—actual death. But the Protocol wasn't done with him yet.
[CHOOSE NOW, HOST. 3... 2... 1...]