This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 195

Chapter 195 He’s Quiet

Alfred said, “But he didn’t say anything.”

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“Relax,” George told him. “That’s just how he is. Someone could drop dead right in front of him and he wouldn’t so much as blink. The world could be ending and it still wouldn’t take priority over whatever he’s already planned. He maps out every single step. It’s honestly unsettling.

“If he wasn’t interested in what I said, he would’ve walked off long before I finished talking.”

As far as Maya’s little situation went, Edric’s agreement was all it took. Everything else would fall into place.

“I want to go home and see my sister,” Alfred said.

Home, in this context, meant the Clark residence.

“No problem, I can take you back.” George reached over and messed up Alfred’s hair.

Alfred’s head snapped sideways before the hand could make full contact. The movement was small, but the refusal behind it was unmistakable.

He then proceeded to smooth his hair back into order with painstaking, methodical care, looking for all the world like a cat performing a very serious grooming ritual.

He couldn’t show up in front of Maya looking like he’d been dragged through a hedge.

“What about you?” George withdrew his hand, the attempted hair–ruffling foiled, and turned to Toby. A gleam of mischief lit his eyes. “You’re heading back too, I’d guess. Because you look…”

He let out a soft laugh, his eyes bright with amusement. “Really, genuinely impatient, Toby.

“Grandpa’s not going to bite. Is the anxiety really necessary?”

His tone was breezy and unbothered. “I finally get why Edric went out of his way to call you out. You about her a lot more than you’re letting on.”

care

Toby glanced at him with cool, flat eyes. “Instead of worrying about my perfectly manageable feelings, you should probably deal with those useless friends of yours before they become a real problem. Sooner or later, they’re going to drag you down with them.”

George blinked. Then a wide, unclouded smile spread across his face. “I don’t think that’ll happen.

“We’ve known each other for a long time.”

He really could be remarkably naive sometimes.

As if a long history automatically means complete and total trustworthiness.

“We’ll see who’s right in the end.” Toby’s smile had a cold, quiet edge to it

Chapter 195 ftes Quict

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Edric changed out of his lab coat and stood with his head bowed, adjusting the shirt beneath it. His lashes were lowered, and his eyes held nothing, like he was staring through a thin veil of fog at something that wasn’t quite there.

To

say

George’s words had left zero impression on him would’ve been a Tre.

The two missing stretches of his childhood had never stopped gnawing at him.

The first was when he was eight.

He’d been dropped onto an island, put through the same brutal culling every child in the family had to

survive.

He had a vague impression of waking up afterward, and someone telling him that everyone else was dead. That he was the only one left standing.

He’d won.

But he had no memory of what had actually happened.

That stretch of time felt like someone had pressed an eraser hard against it and dragged it across, leaving only smeared, illegible traces behind. In the aftermath, he’d felt hollow and adrift for a long time, like something essential had been scooped out of him.

The second was when he was nine.

It was the one and only time in his early childhood that he’d been taken out for a trip into the outside world, allowed contact with anything beyond the walls he’d grown up inside.

Though the word “trip” was generous, since it had started as a kidnapping.

He’d survived that too.

But that stretch of memory was just as empty as the first.

There was no one he could tell.

Both experiences had left him wandering through a long, colorless stretch of his life.

Trapped inside a fog he couldn’t navigate out of, unable to see where he’d come from or where he was supposed to be heading.

As a small child, he hadn’t had the tools to hold himself together. His emotions had fractured easily and often.

As he grew older, he built something quieter in their place. Composure. Restraint. A particular brand of warmth that kept everyone at a comfortable, managed distance.

He learned to keep his face perfectly still, no matter who was standing in front of him.

But only he knew the truth beneath all of it.

That the warmth was hollow. That the composure was built on nothing. That underneath the stillness was

Chapter 196 te’s Quict

a vast, churning darkness he himself couldn’t fully see the edges of

He’d found many people over the years who resembled the girl in that photograph.

Not one of them had been her.

When he was being honest with himself, maybe she wasn’t anything remarkable. Maybe she was just one face among many in a memory he’d never be able to retrieve.

Maybe she was nobody in particular.

Still…

Every path his thoughts took, no matter how long or winding, always arrived at the same destination.

He wanted to meet her.

***

After nearly a month living at Philbert’s mansion, Maya had arrived at a full, visceral understanding of what people meant when they whispered about families like this one.

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