Bait for a Gentleman novel Chapter 141

"You didn't plan on discussing it with me, so this is just a notification?" Audrina knitted her brows.

Sebastian replied, "You can interpret it that way if you want."

Hearing this, she wasn't too pleased. She broke free from his embrace and scooted a half-inch toward the other end of the sofa, hiding the waist he had just been massaging behind her back. "What do you mean, a notification? If you notify me, I just have to move?"

"And why on earth should I move in anyway?" She turned her face away. "What am I to you?"

Silence fell over the living room for a few seconds.

Sebastian leaned back against the sofa cushions, his fingers resting on his knee, tapping rhythmically.

His gaze landed on Audrina's deeply furrowed brow, and his thin lips curled up slightly. "What do you want to be to me?"

At some unnoticeable moment, her relationship with Sebastian had already quietly shifted.

It was just that Audrina was only now realizing it in hindsight.

Back then, when he offered to be her lover, she had laid out a few rules: he couldn't control her, he couldn't throw tantrums, and he couldn't fall in love with her.

Only the last rule she hadn't taken seriously, nor had she planned on testing it.

But as for the first two, she had completely forgotten when they were broken.

Moreover, the rules of the game had been rewritten, and the current dynamic was entirely under Sebastian's control.

Her upper hand had been completely dismantled.

Audrina couldn't be bothered to argue with him right now. "Forget it, pretend I didn't ask."

Her attitude remained stubborn. "Anyway, you act so arrogantly and unreasonably. Waldo already sensed something today and dropped hints at the dinner table. The old man's health is failing, so why would I move in with you at a critical time like this? To unlock new positions with you every day?"

The corners of Sebastian's lips slowly curled up.

He had a soft spot for this docile yet wild side of hers, but for once, he didn't retort.

After a long while, he finally delivered his closing statement: "Even when you lose, you do it so reluctantly."

Audrina opened her mouth but found she had nothing to say.

Mainly because she couldn't win an argument against him anyway.

Audrina stared at those lines of text and asked, "Could Zachary be the mastermind?"

Knowing the truth but failing to warn them—this fact alone was enough to make anyone suspicious of just how deeply he was involved in this mess.

"There is no direct evidence right now," Sebastian said. "The middleman's confession only proves that he knew about it, but it's not enough to convict him in a court of law."

Audrina set the file back on the table and looked up. "Then why did he get engaged to me?"

She couldn't understand why Zachary would go through such a massive loop, watching someone short Monroe Industries only to spend a fortune bailing it out later.

Sebastian told her, "Waldo forced him. Back then, Zachary even took a beating with the Family Cane over this. Mr. Sutton and your father were old friends, as you know."

Audrina quickly came to a conclusion. "So Waldo knew about this all along. He forced Zachary into an engagement with me, hoping we would eventually marry, just to make up for Zachary's cold indifference?"

She kept her head down. After saying this, her mind was buzzing. Her eyelashes trembled slightly as she gently bit the inside of her lip.

Regardless of the truth, the small corner of the answer that had been revealed was already profoundly ironic.

Seeing that Audrina had crumpled the corners of the papers and her shoulders were shaking slightly, Sebastian reached out and held her hand.