The room carried the weight of memories, the scent of aged wood mingling with stale tobacco. Lenox stood near the doorway, his posture rigid, hands clasped behind his back. The faint creak of the floorboards beneath his boots was the only sound, punctuating the tense silence as he stared at the frail figure of Alphonse, his adoptive father, slumped in a king-size armchair. Once a towering presence, Alphonse had been a man whose word could bend others to his will, a force of nature who commanded loyalty and fear in equal measure. But now, age had whittled him down, his frame thin and brittle. Still, the sharpness in his voice remained, an echo of the man he once was. “How dare you show your face here?” Alphonse's voice sliced through the air. “After all I’ve done for you? After the life I gave you, you walk in here like this—a weakling?” Lenox’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond. His expression was stoic, carved from stone, his gaze steady and unyielding. Silence was his shiel
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