Tempted Trapped and Too Late to Run novel Chapter 673

Charles went quiet. Whenever his big brother used that tone, it meant business.

If he kept pushing his luck, he’d probably be banned from the Chester family estate for good.

A strange heaviness settled in his chest. It felt foreign. He never cared if everyone over there hated him; honestly, he’d never given them a second thought. He could have killed them all if he’d wanted—if anything, they should be grateful he hadn’t.

Snide remarks, insults, gossip—none of it ever touched him. A butcher doesn’t care what the pigs in the pen are squealing about. He couldn’t remember ever feeling truly angry or hurt because of what someone said.

But right now? He actually felt terrible. Even the flower crown sitting on his head felt like it weighed a ton.

“Hey, bro, you—”

He didn’t get to finish. Suddenly, there was a huge commotion outside.

The manor gates collapsed, flattened under the weight of a dozen cars roaring onto the property.

The cars screeched to a stop just beyond the garden, and Charles instinctively tried to put himself between Clara and the chaos.

Then a man stepped out of one of the black cars—Dylan.

Dylan looked pale, almost sickly. The moment he spotted Clara, he lifted his hand and waved her over.

“Come here.”

Clara peeked out, looked at Dylan for a second, then back at Charles. “Bro, who’s that?”

Being called “bro” in front of everyone gave Charles a weird mix of embarrassment and pride.

Dylan glanced at Clara and immediately noticed something was off. He paused, took a breath, then looked up with a gentle smile. “Clara, come here. Technically, you should be calling me ‘husband.’”

Clara’s eyes were pure and clear. She turned to Charles and asked in a whisper, “Is that true?”

Charles pressed his lips together, not saying a word.

Richard, leaning against a car, crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “So you Chesters ready to give up your Atlantic shipping line? Didn’t your brother warn you?”

But all of a sudden, dozens of guns aimed right at him. The whole place was tense, every second stretched thin.

Dylan reached out and closed his fingers tightly around Clara’s hand.

Clara didn’t pull away. She watched his face for a long moment, hesitated, then finally called out softly, “Husband.”

Richard, standing off to the side, nearly lost his footing.

Dylan’s eyes narrowed sharply. He turned away for a second, clearly wrestling with something inside, then looked back at her and said calmly, “Yeah.”

Watching all of this, Charles was a wreck. He couldn’t care less about the guns pointed at him; what really mattered was Clara. He spoke up, careful and serious, “She was injected with something. It’ll take about a month for her to get better. She needs to rest, no exceptions.”

“She’s got wounds on her neck and wrists—you’ll need to change her bandages often. Oh, and she’s gotten really into playing cards. Play with her if you can.”

“There’s a night market in the Capital, right? Take her there, let her play the claw machines. She loves those.”

The more Charles rambled on, the darker Dylan’s face got.