Kain's Moonlight Prison

When Kane's fingertips touched the cufflinks, Mila clearly saw his knuckles suddenly tighten.

The black obsidian, which was shining coldly in the display cabinet, suddenly seemed to have a temperature in his palm, and even the wear on the edge seemed to be softer.

"Thank you." His voice didn't show any emotion, but in the instant he turned around, his gaze swept across Mira's jeans stained with paint.

That gaze was very gentle, but it felt like a feather scratching her skin, making her inexplicably think of that tracking gaze in the snow last night.

"Wait a moment." Mila suddenly spoke, her voice more steady than she had expected. "Were you the person at the alley entrance last night?"

Kain's footsteps stopped.

The morning light shone through the skylight of the gallery, casting a patchwork of light and shadow on his shoulder. The lines of his profile were as cold and rigid as a sculpture, and only the mole behind his ear slightly shone in the light.

"Miss Mira," he turned around, with a faint smile on his lips, but that smile didn't reach his eyes, "I think you've mistaken someone. I was in the office all night last night."

"Really?" Mira took a half step forward, and her gaze fell on the crack on his left glove. "What's the deal with that crack on your glove?"

The air seemed to have solidified.

Lily huddled behind the display rack, even holding her breath.

The men in suits simultaneously reached for their waists, even though there were no obvious weapons there, but the sense of oppression came like a tide.

Kain slowly took off his left glove.

Three parallel scratches were visible under the gauze, and the edges of the wounds were a healthy pink, obviously healing rapidly. The shape surprisingly matched the blade arc of the paper knife in her drawer.

"I was cut by a shredder while dealing with documents." He spoke in a flat tone, as if he were talking about something very ordinary, "It seems that my assistant needs a new machine."

Mira stared intently at that wound.

She clearly remembered that she didn't have a chance to swing that knife last night - he turned and ran away so fast that even her attempt to raise her hand seemed superfluous.

"Does Mr. Kane often deal with documents late at night?" she asked, her gaze involuntarily wandering to his cuff, where the shirt was as neat as new, but couldn't hide the tight lines of his forearm muscles, "especially on... the night of the full moon."

Kain's pupils suddenly contracted for a moment.

Although it was only a fraction of a second, Mira captured it - that flash of silver-gray, which was exactly the same as the look she glimpsed in the thick fog at the alley entrance last night.

He suddenly laughed, and that laughter was low and had a strange penetrating power: "Is Miss Mira very interested in my schedule? Or are you more interested in that 'intruder' last night?"

He took a step forward, and the distance between the two instantly shrank to less than half a meter. A refreshing pine scent mixed with a faint smell of disinfectant rushed over, and the pine needle scent mixed with the bloody smell in the snow last night, like two drops of ink falling into clear water, slowly spreading and overlapping.

Mira's heart skipped a beat, and when she instinctively stepped back, her lower back bumped into a bronze sculpture.

The cold touch of metal made her suddenly wake up - the man in front of her was Kane, a capital tycoon who could shake Wall Street, not the injured person who fled in disarray last night.

"I'm just curious." She steadied her breath, and her fingertips quietly clenched the base of the sculpture behind her, "After all, someone left bloodstains at the entrance of the gallery, and as the person in charge, I need to confirm safety."

Kain's gaze fell on her tightly clenched hand holding the sculpture, and he suddenly pointed to a painting in the corner of the gallery.

That was Mira's new work that she hung up the day before yesterday. On the canvas, she used silver-gray paint to paint twisted lines, which looked like the shadows of trees blown by the wind under the moonlight.

"That painting is quite good."

He said, casually as if he were commenting on the weather, "Silver-gray is used very boldly, especially here—" His fingertip pointed to the lower right corner of the canvas, where there was a very light shade of silver-gray, almost blending into the white of the background, "It looks just like the fur of some kind of animal."

Mira's blood seemed to freeze instantly.

That streak of color was accidentally smeared on the canvas when she was cleaning up the scene last night - at that time, she thought it was dust from the alley, until just now she found that it was actually a small handful of extremely fine fibers, which would shine with a silver-gray luster under the light, exactly the same as what she saw in that man's hair.

How could he know?

"Does Mr. Kain also have an interest in art?" Mira's voice sounded a bit unsteady, but her gaze was firmly fixed on his eyes.

In those deep, unfathomable black eyes, there was now a calmness, as if the silver-gray moment earlier was just her illusion.

"I have a slight understanding." Kain withdrew his hand and put on his gloves again. When his fingertips slid over the crack in the gloves, his movements paused for a moment. "Regarding what happened last night, my assistant will contact you to compensate for all the losses of the gallery, including... your overtime fee for working all night."

He turned around and walked towards the door, his black coat sweeping the ground, raising a gentle breeze.

Mira suddenly noticed that on the back of his neck, in the area not covered by his collar, there was a small patch of skin that was slightly darker in color, like a faint mark left by something. Its shape vaguely resembled the scratches on the inside walls of the cage in her memory.

"Wait!" Mila blurted out, "There's something on your hair..."

Kain stopped in his tracks and slightly turned his head. The morning light just fell on his dark brown hair, which was so clean that there wasn't even a trace of gray fluff or any impurities.

"What?" He raised his eyebrows.

Mira opened her mouth, but she couldn't say anything.

The illusion just now was so real that she could almost smell the chilly scent mixed with snow and blood.

When the black car left Gallery Street, Mira was still standing at the entrance.

Lily leaned over, her voice trembling, "Sister Mira, that's Kain... Was he just hinting at investing in our gallery?"

Mira didn't hear what Lily said.

She stared at the tire tracks on the ground, which were gradually drying in the morning light, and suddenly remembered the cufflinks in Kain's palm just now - besides the engraving of K·C, there seemed to be a very shallow claw mark on the inside, as if it had been repeatedly scraped by something sharp. The shape was exactly the same as the claw marks she saw in the photos of the dungeon in the secret room.

My phone in my pocket vibrated, and there was a text message from an unknown number, with only one photo: a night view of the office on the top floor of the Rockefeller Center, with a full moon reflected on the floor-to-ceiling windows. There seemed to be something white on the window sill. When I zoomed in, it looked like a small bunch of silver-gray fluff.

The sender's note is: K·C.

Mira suddenly looked up, looking at the direction where the car disappeared, her heart felt as if it was being tightly squeezed by something. She suddenly realized that Kane wasn't here to get back his cufflinks.

He is here to remind her that their entanglement has just begun.