CHAPTER 481: THE HEIR WHO ACCIDENTALLY JOINED AN AUDITION (PART THREE)

Micah stood in front of the three judges, his demeanour relaxed. Truthfully, he was only attending this audition mostly for fun. Acting had always interested him, though his family was against the idea. He simply wanted to experience the process for himself. It wasn’t every day that the Ramsy Empire held auditions inside its own building. Normally, they would simply sign a top celebrity as their representative and leave the ad production to their partner entertainment agencies.

But this time, they were handling everything themselves, and Micah found that thrilling. And the bonus was that he might even get close to that pretty boy, Ilyas, and use him as his next muse. It was a win-win situation for him.

Across from him sat three people: Evelyn, the director; Harper, the project’s chief assistant; and Alford, the HR manager. Their gazes were locked on him, steady and expectant.

Micah tilted his head, thoughtful. They wanted an expressionless performance, something robotic, to portray an AI simulation made human. It sounded simple, but the more he thought about it, the harder it seemed. How did one act without emotion when everything about being human depended on showing it?

Micah’s mind started to drift. He had been trained for years, and his body had its own agility, flexibility, and control through martial arts. But stiffness? Could he transform his body into something rigid, mechanical, lifeless?

A robot. A hollow thing without emotion. A robot wouldn’t care if someone was in pain or joy. It would only calculate. Cold. Detached. Like... hmm. Silas... wasn’t he just a cold bastard? He was the perfect example. He remembered him from the hospital. The man hadn’t flinched or even blinked, just stared down at Micah with a flat, unreadable gaze as he threw up. That look had been cold like he was beneath him, a dirty ant.

Right, that was it. That was the look of someone who thought himself superior, untouchable. A machine in human skin. Not open disgust, no, that would be too emotional, but a subtle indifference, the kind that made your stomach twist because you realised the person didn’t even think you were worth reacting to.

Right. An AI humanoid would think the same: superior, all-knowing, detached from everyone else.

Micah took a slow breath and began to mimic Silas. His shoulders dropped slightly as he stilled. His spine straightened, his chin lifted a fraction higher, and his eyes locked into the director’s without a blink. His heartbeat slowed as he pushed all traces of emotion out of his face, no warmth, no smirk, no tension. Just cold, detached stillness. His eyes mirrored Silas’s, the same cold indifference he had shown while looking down at Micah in the hospital.

The director’s hands came together in a light clap, breaking the silence. "Good," she said, her tone approving but curious. "Now, show me warmth. Take your time, though. I don’t want something obvious like a goofy smile." Her lips curved slightly, almost teasing. "Consider that a hint. I really like your potential."

Micah blinked and relaxed visibly, a polite smile on his lips. "Thank you."

She gestured toward a side door. "Go on. There is a room over there. Come back once you’ve figured it out. Meanwhile, we’ll see the next participant."

Micah nodded and turned away toward the room where it was quiet and small. He sat on the chair, expression turning thoughtful.

Warmth. She wanted warmth without exaggeration. But how should he show it? Something like smiling would feel too out of character, and too much emotion for someone meant to be expressionless.

He couldn’t just soften his expression, could he? No. Like a smile that would be too obvious, too deliberate. The director wanted something subtle.

Micah leaned back, closing his eyes. Someone robotic and cold like Silas... Even though Micah hated him, he couldn’t deny that he was the perfect model for this role. He couldn’t use the novel content. Words could not convey the feeling. He needed something he had understood himself, feeling it.

Micah’s mind drifted to that night when he had been drunk and beaten by a stranger, when Silas had found him.

That bastard in his apartment had been kind of different from the cold man he had met at the hospital. It was like he had softened a bit toward him. The thought flashed in his mind out of the blue. Yeah. He had carried him alone to his home. How could a germophobe do that?

Why take him to his perfect, sterilised home instead of leaving him to paramedics? If Silas truly wanted to use Micah, if this was all some ploy to manipulate Darcy again, the hospital would’ve been the perfect place for it. There had been no need for anything else. So why home?

Hmm... maybe he had accidentally touched him, and Silas hadn’t recoiled?

The thought jumped into his head.

This must be it, right? Why else would a germophobe suddenly carry him into his house? Maybe he wanted to experiment on him?

Micah stiffened in the chair, his pulse racing.

Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? Why hadn’t he found it strange that, in the novel, Silas never used the fake heir?

Archie manipulated him at the uni to spread gossip and drag Darcy’s name through every forum, monopolising him. Aidan got close to the fake heir, trying to get his hands on Ramsy’s classified data.

Leo... he was too fucked up to care about others, just fixated on Darcy.

But Silas... he kept his distance until the end, until the stem cell transplant, never used him in his schemes. And probably he never thought he would die from that procedure.

That meant something. It had to.

All this time, Micah had thought Darcy was exceptional because he was the protagonist. That was why Silas had tolerated sharing him with others despite his obsessive cleanliness. But that wasn’t it, was it?

No. The setting was wrong.

Micah rubbed the back of his neck, muscles tensing beneath his skin. Micah knew Silas never liked Darcy. He looked at him as a substitute for his first love.

So did he even touch him once without gloves? No... all those R-rated scenes from the novel flashed through his mind...

Micah grimaced, a faint flush of embarrassment and discomfort colouring his face. The explicit scenes he remembered weren’t acts of love. No, when he thought back on them now, they were cold, detached. A twisted way of asserting dominance. Every touch in those Chapters had been sharp, deliberate, more like punishment than intimacy.

The realisation made his heart skip a beat. But before he could grasp the meaning of it, the fleeting feeling passed whole all his analysis and conclusions vanished into thin air. His mind turned blank.

Micah tilted his head and looked at the ceiling in a daze. "What was I thinking?" he mumbled under his breath.