Chapter 5 It Turns Out He Had Long Been Hiding Feelings for Someone Else
The hollow noise downstairs had returned to its usual fake roar. No one was paying attention to the couple who had just walked out.
Olivia set down her empty glass, her gaze turning cold and sharp again.
In her dark golden slit pupils, the pride of a pureblooded royal was slowly coming back to life.
She watched it all with detached eyes, her heart no longer soft.
The next morning. Skylake District, New York.
Olivia pushed open the door to the luxury apartment on the thirty-eighth floor.
This was the place Clarence had rented under a fake name — the so-called "secret love nest" they had shared for the past year.
Heavy blackout curtains blocked the windows. The air inside felt stale and suffocating.
A pair of handcrafted leather shoes Clarence had taken off yesterday morning sat in the entryway. His financial newspaper was tossed carelessly on the sofa.
Everything looked exactly as she had left it. Only now, it all just seemed fake and pathetic.
Olivia walked straight into the master bedroom and pulled a black canvas suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe.
She had very little to take with her.
The wardrobe was packed with suits Clarence had bought for her based on his own taste — stiff black and grey tones, skirts that fell below the knee, cuts with no femininity whatsoever.
She had worn them for an entire year just to fit his idea of a "sweet, obedient Beta."
Olivia didn't even glance at them. She reached past all that expensive fabric and took out a few sets of her own casual clothes from the bottom drawer.
Then she moved to the study.
This was the room where Olivia had spent most of her time.
Night after night, she had sat here working through the underlying logic of the Bloodline Fusion Serum, typing away until dawn.
And Clarence — he would sometimes walk in with a cup of coffee, lean against the doorframe, and say "you're working hard" in that condescending tone of someone doing you a favor.
Olivia walked to the desk, pulled the backup hard drive from the computer, and tucked a few rare genetics books into the suitcase.
Just as she was about to clear out the bottom drawer of the desk, her fingers brushed against a section of wood that stuck up slightly.
Olivia stopped.
She remembered clearly — Clarence had once given her a stern warning never to touch this drawer.
He said it contained classified documents from Vanguard Threshold Group. The old Olivia had stayed away from it to avoid any suspicion.
But now, her sharp senses picked up something unusual drifting from the gap in the wood.
A faint smell. Sickeningly sweet. Like roses.
Olivia's expression didn't change. She bent her fingers and pried it open with a firm pull.
There were no corporate secrets inside. Just an old dark green velvet box.
The surface was faded — clearly handled often.
Olivia reached in and took it out, then lifted the lid.
Inside lay a bundle of dried, blackened roses, a hairband stained with dark brown blood, and a journal with yellowed edges.
On top of it all was a photograph.
The girl in the photo was beaming, her blonde hair glowing in the sunlight — it was Elodie, from a few years ago, before she had gone abroad.
Olivia picked up the hairband and held it close.
The bloodstains held Elodie's pheromones, extracted and preserved.
It was an old and disturbing method — one typically used only after a partner died unexpectedly, when the one left behind would do this just to hold onto their scent.
Clarence had kept the things Elodie left behind like they were relics of someone dead, locked away in a hidden compartment and treated like something sacred.
In this apartment, where they had lived together. Through every night, Olivia had poured herself into his career. He might have sat at this very desk, pulled open that hidden drawer, and let himself get lost in the "remains" of his first love — mourning a love he never managed to have.
What a devoted man.
Olivia's mouth curved slightly. She tossed the hairband back into the box, pulled out a disinfectant wipe, and cleaned her fingers one by one.
The sound of a keypad unlocking came from the entryway, followed by heavy footsteps.
Clarence walked in.
He looked nothing like his usual self — that sharp, polished heir to a corporate empire.
His right arm was in a thick polymer cast, held up by a sling around his neck.
The top buttons of his tailored shirt had been torn open, the fabric creased everywhere.
His hair was a mess. His eyes were bloodshot. Stubble had broken through along his jaw.
At the castle banquet the night before, he had let jealousy get the better of him and dragged Elodie away by force — and clearly hadn't come out of it well.
The family behind Elodie wasn't about to let a disgraced has-been raise his voice at their precious daughter.
He had been knocked down and stripped of his Alpha dignity over there, so he had come crawling back to this gilded cage, hoping to claw back some sense of control over the most obedient woman he had ever known.
Clarence's gaze cut through the hallway and locked onto the suitcase at Olivia's feet.
"What do you think you're doing?" His voice was rough, barely holding back his irritation.
He strode into the study and reached out with his uninjured left hand to grab Olivia's wrist.
Olivia shifted slightly to the side. His hand caught nothing.
Her eyes were as cold as if she were looking at a piece of trash that couldn't be recycled.
"Are you blind?" She zipped up the suitcase, her voice flat. "I'm packing my things."
Clarence's hand froze in the air. His face went ugly fast.
He stared at Olivia's blank expression, searching for any trace of the meekness and people-pleasing he used to get from her. There was nothing.
"Raymond is just using you!" Clarence spat through gritted teeth, as if trying to tear apart some illusion she had built. "You really think a pureblooded royal sitting at the top of the power chain would actually care about a woman with no background? All he wants is your data. Once the Bloodline Fusion Serum has been squeezed dry, he'll throw you out like trash."
Olivia watched him perform. She said nothing.
When the threat didn't land, Clarence pulled in a breath and softened his tone. He even managed to squeeze something that looked like pain and desperation into his eyes.
"Olivia, stop making a scene." He dropped the act and reached for the hem of her shirt. "What happened last night was my fault. I shouldn't have treated you that way at the banquet, and I shouldn't have said those things. I know I hurt you."
"Stay." His voice grew more sincere. "This is still our home. You can keep doing your research here. You don't have to deal with all that brutal power politics out there. Just stay, and I promise I'll treat you better. I'll make it up to you."
He needed Olivia badly.
Not just for her brilliance — but because right now, he had nothing left.
He needed someone who would never betray him, someone who would always look up to him. A person he could own completely. Someone to patch up the gaping holes in his ego.
"Stay?" Olivia let out a quiet laugh, heavy with contempt. "As your secret lover? Or as the stepping stone you use while you chase after Elodie?"
Clarence's face shifted through shades of grey and white. He rushed to explain. "Elodie is different. Olivia, you have to understand — I'm in a really difficult position right now. I can't afford to lose Elodie. Her family is critical to me. They're the only ones who can help me take back Vanguard Threshold Group."
His eyes took on a frantic edge. "But I do have feelings for you. You and she don't cancel each other out. She gives me power and connections — and you give me stability. If you'd just be a little more understanding, things could go back to how they were before."
He wanted the hundred billion in investment from his first love, and the complete, selfless loyalty from his stand-in.
Olivia looked at Clarence standing in front of her and suddenly felt like the past year had been some kind of absurd joke.
She was done talking.
She picked up the dark green velvet box from the desk and flipped her wrist.
The dried, blackened rose petals, the bloodstained hairband, the yellowed journal, and that insufferable photograph came flying out and hit Clarence square in the chest, then scattered across the floor.
Clarence went silent mid-sentence.
He looked down at Elodie's photo lying at his feet. His pupils shrank. He stood there rigid, like he had been struck by lightning.
That small, ugly secret he had kept — that thing he liked to call devotion — had just been ripped open and left bare under the full light of day.
"Take your precious little keepsakes and get out of my sight." Olivia looked down at him, her voice cutting like ice. "Didn't it ever make you sick, getting worked up over this garbage every night?"
"You—" Clarence went pale. His lips trembled. He wanted to rage at her, wanted to use an Alpha's intimidation to put this woman back in her place.
Olivia's dark golden slit pupils contracted sharply. A trace of cold — like the air deep in a fir forest — seeped out from inside her.
It wasn't a violent, crushing force. Just the natural bloodline pressure of a pureblooded royal.
Clarence's knees buckled. He stumbled back on instinct and slammed into the doorframe. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead immediately. Whatever was left of his Alpha instinct shrank in the face of that absolute, suffocating pressure.
Olivia didn't look at him again.
She grabbed the handle of the suitcase, walked right past Clarence as he slumped, gasping against the doorframe, out of the study, and down the hallway.
Clarence watched her walk away without a single glance back, and a wave of blind panic hit him — the feeling of losing something for good.
Without thinking, he reached out with his uninjured hand and grabbed for the hem of her shirt.
"Olivia! You can't leave!"
Olivia didn't slow down for a second.
She walked to the entryway, pushed open the door, and walked out with her suitcase.
The heavy door swung shut in Clarence's face without any mercy, sealing away every last bit of his resentment, his pleading, and his fake sincerity — locking it all inside that rotting cage.
Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. The top floor of Rockefeller Center. Primal Gleam — a private jewelry house.
The only clients this place accepted were the ultra-elite from the very top of the global power structure. Without an appointment, you couldn't even get through the front door.
Olivia sat in a leather chair in the VIP room, staring out at the Empire State Building through the floor-to-ceiling window.
Half an hour ago, Raymond's head steward had personally driven her here, with just one line: "There's something that belongs to you. You'll need to collect it yourself."
