The air in the executive office didn't just turn cold; it became a vacuum, a hollow space where every breath felt like a betrayal. Bai Qi clutched the ruined silk shirt in his hand, his knuckles white and trembling. The silence that followed the reading of Shen's message was a roar in his ears, a cacophony of shattered pride and visceral loathing.
To Bai Qi, the world was built on a singular, rigid hierarchy: he was the Monarch, and Shu Yao was his. He had believed, with a stubborn, arrogant certainty, that Shu Yao was a sanctuary—a clean, untouched thing in a world of filth. But the evidence in his hand was a desecration. The "Assistant" was no longer pure. The property he thought he owned had been plundered by the one man he hated most.
Shu Yao looked up at Bai Qi's back. He saw the way the Monarch's broad shoulders heaved, the rhythmic, violent trembling of a man losing his grip on reality. An alarm began to scream in Shu Yao's system, a primal instinct for survival that made his blood run cold. He didn't know what was in that box, but he knew the scent of a storm.
Bai Qi turned. The movement was so sudden, so jagged, that Shu Yao flinched, his body recoiling before his mind could process the image.
"Explain this!" Bai Qi barked, his voice a jagged blade that sliced through the heavy silence.
Shu Yao's gaze dropped to the item in Bai Qi's hand. His heart stopped. The German red rug beneath him seemed to shift like quicksand. His fingers clawed at the fibers, searching for an anything, but his mind was a chaotic landscape of shame and panic.
The shirt. The shirt of his nightmare. How had it reached this desk? How had the someone delivered the evidence of his ruin directly into Bai qi office?
Bai Qi stepped forward, the distance between them evaporating in a single, predatory stride. He wanted answers, but more than that, he wanted to bleed the truth out of the boy who had dared to keep a secret this dark.
"I am asking you a question, Shu Yao!" Bai Qi's voice trembled with a lethal frustration. "Explain. This. Now."
Shu Yao had no words. His shame was a physical weight, a stone in his throat that prevented even a whisper of a defense. His eyes, already a river of damp sorrow, couldn't meet the obsidian fire in Bai Qi's gaze.
Bai Qi didn't care about the tears. He didn't care about the fragile state of the boy's mind. He saw only the betrayal. He saw only the shadow of Shen Haoxuan standing over his property.
With a snarl of disgust, Bai Qi threw the shirt. It hit Shu Yao with a soft, sickening thud, the ruined silk draping over him like a piece of his own failures. Shu Yao gasped, the fabric smelling of old gasoline and the lingering scent of his own terror.
Bai Qi crouched down, his proximity suffocating. The anger rolling off him was a tangible force, a heat that threatened to incinerate the air between them. Within him, something had snapped—the fragile tether that kept his darker impulses at bay was gone.
"How?" Bai Qi hissed, grabbing Shu Yao by the lapels of his suit jacket. "How did you let someone like him... someone of the same gender... touch you? How did you let him do this to you?"
Shu Yao's hands flew up, his fingers brushing against Bai Qi's, begging for mercy he knew wouldn't come. He shook his head violently, a sob breaking from his chest as he tried to find his voice.
"Sir... please... listen to me," Shu Yao pleaded, but the words were drowned out by the Monarch's fury.
Bai Qi didn't listen. He spun Shu Yao around with a rough, commanding motion. In a heartbeat, the power dynamic shifted from a confrontation to a violation. Shu Yao was pinned against the fine German rug, the material hard against his back, with Bai Qi looming over him, a silhouette of absolute, manic dominance.
"I thought you and uncle George were having some pathetic little tryst," Bai Qi growled, his face inches from Shu Yao's. "I thought you and him being something. But him? That pathetic rival who dares to call me his blood? You did something dirty with him and you never said a word?"
"I wanted to tell you!" Shu Yao cried, his voice cracking. "I was afraid! I didn't want you to hate me!"
"Afraid?" Bai Qi mocked, his laughter a cold, hollow sound.
"Or were you too busy falling for it? Did he fuck you so hard that you forgot who you belong to? Did you keep quiet because you wanted to remember what it felt like to be taken by him?"
The accusation was a final blow to Shu Yao's shattered heart. He tried to speak, to explain the violence of that night, the way he had been hunted and broken. But Bai Qi was no longer the man who had looked after him in the hospital. He was a creature of pure possession, a man who had decided that if Shu Yao was ruined, then Bai Qi would be the one to complete the destruction.
"What did he do to you that night, Shu Yao?" Bai Qi leaned in, his eyes wide and glazed with a terrifying, manic light. "Did he do things like this?"
Shu Yao's pupils dilated in a new kind of terror. He shook his head, a silent, frantic prayer for the nightmare to end. But it was too late. The leash was off.
Bai Qi reached out and gripped the front of Shu Yao's shirt. With a single, violent pull, the fabric tore. The sound of rending cotton was like a gunshot in the silent office.
Shu Yao's eyes flew open, his breath hitching as the trauma of the first night overlapped with the horror of the present. The only man he had ever loved, the man he had worshipped in the pages of his secret journal, was now doing the very thing he had feared most.
"Did he do it like this?" Bai Qi barked, his voice echoing off the high ceilings. He pinned Shu Yao's hands above his head, his strength absolute. "You need to know who you really belong to. Every place he touched... it was my property first."
Shu Yao's mind began to fracture. He was gasping for air, the oxygen in the room replaced by the scent of Bai Qi's rage and the salt of his own tears. He pleaded, he begged, his voice a raw, agonizing sound of a soul being crushed.
"Sir, please! Stop it! I didn't do it on purpose! I'm sorry... Forgive me I didn't tell you!"
Bai Qi wasn't listening. He was too deep in the fire of his own resentment. He leaned forward, his weight pinning Shu Yao against the rug. He reached for the silk tie around Shu Yao's neck, yanking it free and using it to bind the boy's wrists together with a savage, practiced efficiency.
"Is this what he did?" Bai Qi mocked, his hand sliding underneath the shredded remains of Shu Yao's shirt. He rubbed the boy's skin with a violent, possessive force, marking him as if trying to erase the ghost of Shen's touch with his own.
Shu Yao screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. It wasn't just the physical pain; it was the betrayal. The "Monarch" was gone, replaced by a monster of his own making.
"Look what you made me do," Bai Qi whispered, his voice thick with a twisted, agonizing logic.
He didn't wait for a response. He lunged forward, his lips crashing against Shu Yao's in a kiss that was a war, not an embrace. It was rough, punishing, and fueled by a desperation that Bai Qi refused to name.
In his mind, this was the only way to reclaim what was lost. He had spent years telling himself he wasn't like this—that he wasn't a man who could be driven to such "ugliness." But as he felt Shu Yao tremble beneath him, as he felt the broken rhythm of the boy's heart, he realized that he had been lying to himself all along.
The mahogany office had become a tomb of silence, the vast space swallowing the sounds of a tragedy in the making.
Bai Qi had descended into a state of clinical mania, his mind a fractured glass of rage and possessiveness. He didn't see a person beneath him; he saw a desecrated asset, a piece of his own soul that had been plundered by a rival.
He reached down, his fingers tangling violently into Shu Yao's hair. With a sharp, sudden yank, he forced Shu Yao's head back, undoing the neat strands until the boy's throat was exposed, a pale marble offering to a vengeful god.
Shu Yao's breath hitched, a series of ragged, terrified hitches that clawed at the air. He tried to twist away, his fingers scraping uselessly against the thick pile of the German red rug, but every movement only served to tighten the Monarch's grip.
Bai Qi's eyes were no longer obsidian; they were voids, swallowing the light of the room. He worked with a mechanical, terrifying efficiency, his movements stripped of any tenderness. As he unzipped his trousers, the sound of the metal teeth was like a serrated blade in the quiet.
"Is this what he did?" Bai Qi barked, his voice a low, vibrating snarl that vibrated through Shu Yao's very bones. "Was he so deliciously good that you moaned for him? Did you arch for him like this?"
Shu Yao's world was a kaleidoscope of pain and mahogany. He felt the cold air hit his skin, followed by the crushing weight of the man he had worshipped. He was drowning in a sea of loathing—loathing for Shen, loathing for his own secrets, and a soul-deep horror at the man Bai Qi had become.
"Stop... stop it, please," Shu Yao whispered, the words trembling and thin. "Please... let me go... Bai Qi, please."
But the name only fueled the fire. Bai Qi lunged forward, a hissed breath escaping his clenched teeth as he forced the reality of his possession onto the boy.
Shu Yao's body reacted with a violent, involuntary arch, his spine curving against the rug as a surge of visceral pain erupted through his system. He felt as though he were being torn apart from the inside out, his status being burned away in the furnace of the Monarch's resentment.
As Bai Qi moved with a punishing, relentless rhythm, a flash of memory struck him like a physical blow. He remembered the day after his engagement. He remembered Shu Yao walking into the office with downcast eyes and a swollen, bruised lower lip.
At the time, he had felt a flicker of annoyance, an assumption of some clumsy accident. But now, with the ruined shirt and Shen's letter haunting the air, the truth crystallized into a blinding, white-hot fury.
"That day," Bai Qi growled, his hands gripping Shu Yao's hips so violently that his fingerprints began to bloom like dark flowers on the pale skin. "It wasn't a girl. It wasn't an accident. It was a man. A man was fucking my property, and you just stood there and let it happen!"
Shu Yao shook his head desperately, his body pressed so hard into the rug. He was crying, but the sound was no longer human. It was the static of a broken radio, a series of incoherent, jagged moans that spoke of a heart being ground into dust.
"I... I wanted... to tell..."
"Shut the fuck up!" Bai Qi commanded, his voice a roar that shook the very foundations of Shu Yao's world.
Bai Qi was a maniac released from his leash. He didn't want to admit that someone like Shen—that "pathetic rival"—could have touched what belonged to him. Every thrust was a declaration of war, an attempt to erase the ghost of another man's touch with the brutality of his own.
He grabbed Shu Yao's legs, hoisting them up to deepen the violation, his weight crushing the smaller boy into the floorboards. Shu Yao felt the oxygen leave his lungs, his ribs—still tender from the hospital—groaning under the pressure. He was a fragment of a person, a collection of broken parts held together by the sheer force of Bai Qi's obsession.