Chapter 82: Poisoned Foundation

"You faked your death just to go into hiding and continue your wicked ways?" Prime Minister Ashcroft spat, his voice trembling as he glared down at Adrian with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. "Until when will you stop dragging this kingdom into your madness?"

Adrian Thorn had once been the decorated Field Marshal of the kingdom twenty-five years ago, the most celebrated military commander of his generation and the pride of the Thorn family.

He held the grand armies in the palm of his hand, his influence rivaling that of the king himself. But absolute power bred toxic ambition. It was not enough to command the king’s forces. Adrian began to believe the throne itself belonged to him. The desire for power soon turned into bloodshed when Adrian orchestrated the assassination of the reigning king and later attempted to murder Crown Prince William in a bid to secure the throne for himself. But luck was not on Adrian’s side. The coup collapsed before it could fully bloom.

A high-ranking captain within Adrian’s inner circle, terrified by the sheer scale of the treason being planned, turned informant and delivered the operational schematics directly to Royal Intelligence. Exposed and hunted, Adrian fled the capital with the Royal Police in pursuit. For days, reports of sightings poured in from every corner of the kingdom as authorities closed in on him.

It was during one of those frantic pursuits that his vehicle lost control at high speed, plunging down a ravine and erupting into a towering inferno. By the time emergency crews reached the smoldering wreckage hours later, they found a charred corpse burned beyond recognition. The kingdom buried what they believed was their disgraced former Field Marshal, and the case was officially closed. His younger brother, Thompson Thorn, who claimed he had not been involved in Adrian’s crimes, eventually inherited his position and influence within the military establishment.

Nobody knew that the body recovered from the wreck had been a substitute corpse. Nobody knew that Thompson Thorn had been working alongside his brother from the very beginning, helping him disappear into the shadows while secretly continuing the conspiracy they had started together.

Ashcroft’s weathered face tightened with disgust. "Until when will you continue plotting against the Crown and plunging this kingdom into chaos?" he demanded, his voice echoing through the chamber. "How many lives have been ruined because of your selfish obsession? How much blood has been spilled because you refuse to accept that the throne was never yours?"

Adrian spat a mixture of blood and saliva onto the polished mahogany floor, glaring up at the prime minister with pure, unadulterated venom.

"Never yours?" he snarled. "You dare stand there and say that to me? I went into hiding because this council would rather serve a weak, miserable king than support a man who was willing to do what was necessary to make this kingdom truly powerful!"

Adrian swung his head toward Basil, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and burning with a wild, terrifying conviction. The restraints groaned as his shoulders surged forward.

"Look at them, boy! Look at the weaklings you have been forced to serve! Thompson and I wanted to build a legacy for this kingdom, for our bloodline, for you! The throne has always belonged to us, until the Ashbournes stole it from our family and turned this kingdom into a shadow of what it was meant to be!"

Basil stood motionless, looking down at Adrian with a coldness that almost mirrored Darius’s.

"Can you even hear how insane you sound?" he asked quietly. "The only thing you’ve ever built is deception and chaos. You used every person around you as a tool to fight for your ambitions. And you’re not even smart enough to see it through to the end without getting caught every single time."

"How dare you talk to me like that, you ungrateful bastard!" Adrian roared. A vein bulged along his neck as he strained violently against the heavy cuffs. "The Thorns gave you life! I made you! If your stupid mother hadn’t crawled into my bed like the desperate whore she was, I never would have wasted my seed on her, and I certainly wouldn’t have created the disappointing worthless scum standing in front of me today!"

Adrian suddenly burst into a fit of manic laughter, the sound sharp, broken, and utterly unhinged.

"Hahahaha!" His shoulders shook violently as he threw his head back, cackling like a madman.

"I should have just killed you right after I finished off your pathetic loser of a mother!" His bloodshot eyes gleamed with madness as he fixed Basil with a venomous stare. "Do you have any idea how much effort I went through to hide you within the palace walls? How many risks I took to convince your foolish grandmother to help? Do you know how many people I had to manipulate to just to pull that off?!"

His laughter returned, lower this time, almost delirious. "And this is how you repay me?"

​He yanked against his restraints again, the metal cuffs rattling violently against his wrists. "You wouldn’t even be standing where you are today without me!" Adrian bellowed. "You wouldn’t be a prince! You wouldn’t even be standing before this council! Everything you are exists because of me!" His grin widened into something grotesque.

"And yet you stand there judging me as though you’re any different. You are a fake, Basil. A counterfeit prince built on my design."

Adrian’s head rolled back as another fit of laughter tore out of him. The metallic cuffs rattled against his wrists as his shoulders shook with wild, breathless laughter.

Basil stood rooted to the spot, his entire body rigid. A sickening, icy weight settled in the pit of his stomach. Every sentence Adrian spewed felt like a brutal blade carving deeper into wounds Basil hadn’t even known existed. He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles turned stark white, his nails biting into his palms until the sharp pain was the only thing keeping him grounded.

Every instinct screamed at him to step forward and drive his fist directly into Adrian’s face, shattering those blood-stained teeth right out of his mouth, to wipe that disgusting grin away forever. He fought the urge with everything he had, his jaw grinding so hard that pain shot through the sides of his face, his chest rising and falling in shallow, controlled breaths.

He couldn’t believe that this creature had helped bring him into the world. Just the mere thought of it sent a profound revulsion churning through his chest as he stared down at the disheveled, wild-eyed monster kneeling before him.

This thing is my father?

He looked at Adrian’s weathered face. The deep lines carved around his eyes and jaw made him look drastically older, a ruined shell of a man who looked almost ancient even compared to his grandmother, Nanny Linda. What could his mother have possibly seen in him? It certainly wasn’t love. She must have been another victim of his manipulation and deceit.

Looking at the madness gleaming in Adrian’s bloodshot eyes, Basil didn’t need anyone to tell him the truth. His mother had been manipulated. She had been used and tossed aside the moment her purpose was served.

And then there was the horrifying truth Adrian had so casually thrown at him.

He killed her.

Adrian Thorn hadn’t just used her. He had taken her life the moment she bore his child.

A cold sweat broke out across the back of Basil’s neck as his mind spiraled into complete, suffocating darkness. What about Nanny Linda? Did his grandmother know that the man she helped, the man whose bloodline she protected by secretly swapping innocent infants, was the very monster who murdered her own daughter?

Did Nanny Linda live her entire life believing her child had died from complications during childbirth, completely blind to the fact that she had been serving her daughter’s killer? Or had she known all along and buried the truth to keep Basil alive? At this point, Basil didn’t even know what to believe anymore. The very foundation of his existence was poisoned. The world around him was a toxic web of lies, built upon the corpse of a mother he never knew and orchestrated by a madman who claimed to have created him.

Adrian’s laughter gradually died down into a low, wheezing breath, a sinister, self-satisfied grin fixed firmly on his face.

Basil closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, forcing the violent tremor in his hands to stop. When he opened them, the confusion was gone, replaced by a hollow, lethal quiet. He didn’t look at Adrian. He couldn’t. Looking at him any longer would only make it harder to control himself.

"Somebody please take him out of my sight before I do something I’ll regret," Basil said softly, his voice trembling with a deadly restraint that chilled the entire room. "I wouldn’t want to stain my hands with something as filthy as him."