His Gentle Voice, His Cruel Thoughts Chapter 07
I stayed in the studio for five days.
During those five days, Alder never called me once. He didn’t even send a single text message.
He couldn’t even be bothered to keep up the pretense as long as I didn’t stand in front of him.
To him, my running away from home was just a childish tantrum. He believed that within three days, I would meekly return to the villa to cook his meals.
It wasn’t until the third day that Randall told me someone was quietly tracking down my address.
I didn’t have to guess. It was obviously Alder who had finally started looking for me.
Of course, it wasn’t because he loved me.
His completely unguarded inner thoughts had long proven that his current actions had nothing to do with love. It was simply because something he had grown used to controlling had suddenly slipped out of his control.
He was like an arrogant aristocrat who never bothered to look twice at a vase in the corner. But the moment the vase vanished, he would instinctively frown and search for it.
It wasn’t because he found the vase precious, but simply because he believed it belonged in the corner, collecting dust.
On the fourth day, Alder came to me in person.
I opened the door to find him standing in the hallway, holding a premium fruit basket. He stepped inside and casually swept his gaze across his surroundings.
His thoughts carried an undisguised disgust.
[The proud Luna of the Noirwood pack, running away to a slum and subjecting herself to such misery.]
His gaze flickered over my easel and scattered paint tubes on the floor, and finally landed on the narrow single mattress pushed against the wall.
[Did she actually sleep here? She’s just bringing this on herself.]
But instead of losing his temper outright, he casually set the fruit basket on the desk and maintained a bare minimum of patience on his face.
When he talked to me, he sounded like a parent humoring a difficult child.
“Are you done throwing a fit, Maeve? Come back to the villa with me.”
There wasn’t a shred of concern in his voice, only arrogance as if to say, “I came all this way to bring you home, so know your place and when to stop.”
Standing in front of my easel, I didn’t stop or turn around to look at him. “I’ll leave when I finish this piece.”
“How much longer is that going to take?” he snapped and irritably tugged at his tie.
“I’m
not sure.”
He stepped up behind me and stared at the painting on the canvas-the nearly completed “Lost Lustrum” piece.
A flicker of doubt flashed through his thoughts. [The colors and brushwork… Why does this style feel so similar to
“Moonfall on Leviathan”?]
He had studied the materials. To secure the exclusive license, he and Danika had spent days analyzing every piece of artwork produced by “Stardust”.
But he immediately dismissed the absurd thought with a mental cold laugh.
[How is that even possible? There’s no way Maeve could produce a masterpiece of that caliber. At best, she’s just a copycat mimicking someone else’s work.]
As if he had no choice but to compromise, he rubbed his temples and glanced at his watch. “Fine. I’ll send a canto pick you up tomorrow.”
At the door, he looked at me one last time, and his thoughts followed.
[Playing hard to get is one thing, but pushing it this far is just getting ridiculous. She’s such a pain in the ass.]
That night, he sent another text. There were no long-winded paragraphs of concern, only his usual crumbs of charity.
“We haven’t had a proper dinner at the house for the past few days, Maeve. It’s been quite cold around here.
“That’s enough now. Pack your stuff and come home tomorrow.”
