He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 317

He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly

Chapter 317

like to tell her today she was wrong. Look at me. I’m the father of entire supply chains. Of ambition, of purpose, of thousands of lives that answer to what I build and fuel every single day. He spread one hand slightly. Tell me. What better figure could a father possibly be?”

I barely registered most of that.

–

What I couldn’t let go of was the rest of it – in love, carrying you the shock of it pressing down on my chest like something physical, overwhelming and dreadful in equal measure. Some small, stubborn corner of doubt tried to survive in me anyway.

My mother killed it completely.

“Your father nonsense,” she said, voice shaking with fury, “is exactly why you would have never been a good father to her. Not then. Not now. Not ever. See

doesn’t need you. Neither do I.

Volkov’s expression cooled instantly.

“Relax, Elena. His voice dropped, stern and even. “You know there’s a limit to how far your temper can push before my patience runs out. None of us want to find out what happens after that. It tends to end badly.”

The warning sat heavy in the air, and I felt the tension climb another full notch, because I believed every word of it.

Then another voice cut through the room entirely.

The only one who’s going to get things bad, DeLuca said, “is you.”

Every eye in the room shifted toward him at once.

But Volkov turned toward DeLuca, entirely unbothered by the threat, like it had barely registered as sound.

“Adrian DeLuca,” he said. “Heir to the DeLuca empire. And one of tonight’s prizes.”

He crossed back to the drink cart, poured himself another, unhurried, like the room wasn’t currently full of people who might kill each other in the next thirty seconds.

the sort that ‘For the longest time,” he continued, my brother and I tried very hard to have you killed. You had the kind of potential that worried me — might have actually taken your father’s empire somewhere new. A problem, until I realized a friend of yours could simply inherit it instead, and render you irrelevant without my having to lift a finger.”

He turned an antique object over in his hand and set it aside, casual, dismissive.

That part, I understand completely. What I’ve never fully understood is why you’ve spent all this time hunting me personally, instead of doing it properly, under your father’s banner, empire against empire. He tilted his head slightly. “It’s bold. I’ll admit I admire that in you. But I have to ask. A faint, cold saule. ‘Is it hunger? Or just plain foolishness?”

I saw DeLuca’s fists clench at his sides, and my stomach dropped with dread.

He didn’t lash out.

You already know the answer, Deluca said, voice low and controlled. “But I won’t leave it to your aging memory to fill in the blankes say it plainly.”

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Chapter 317

A pause. When he continued, his voice had gone tighter, sharper at the edges.

ve hunted you so I could avenge my mother. Tear your soul out of your body. Ruin what’s left of you in a way even your own soul would pity. And then,

filly, rest.

The room went completely still.

Nobody spoke. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting.

Then Volkov broke the silence.

“You think I killed your mother?”

Something about the way he said it didn’t sit right with me, and before I could figure out why, he laughed. Genuinely. Wholeheartedly, the kind of laugh that comes from somewhere real rather than performed for an audience.

“You think I was the one who slaughtered your mother?‘ He shook his head, still laughing, delight written plainly across his face. “I wish. I truly wish that

credit belonged to me.”

He turned to his generals, to Alexandro, something almost giddy in his voice now.

“All this time,” he said, “this boy has been hunting me blindly.”

Laughter rippled through the room, low murmurs of amusement passing between the men surrounding him.

I stared between all of them, confusion and dread tangling together, because none of this made sense unless he was lying, and he did not look like a man who was lying. I’d watched liars all night. I knew exactly what performance looked like by now, and this wasn’t it. His laughter came too easily, too genuinely absorbed in its own surprise, to be anything but real.

I glanced at DeLuca and caught something I’d never once seen on his face before.

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