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Chapter 9
We didn’t leave Vyrtham.
Instead, Justin brought me to a military residential compound deep within the city. He had already arranged for my mom to stay there
too.
The moment I stepped inside, I saw my mother sitting at a square table, her face streaked with tears.
Beside her sat an elderly man in full military uniform, his expression thunderous with rage.
Justin and I exchanged a look, then quickened our pace and walked in.
“Mom.”
“Uncle Roy.”
My mom’s face turned pale the second she saw me soaked to the skin.
“What happened to you?!”
I didn’t dare tell her the truth. I gently took her hand and soothed her with a lie.
“I’m fine. Someone poured water out of a window while I was walking through an alley. Just bad timing.”
Justin glanced at me but said nothing, playing along. Instead, he turned to the older man and asked quietly, “Roy, what’s going on?”
Roy shot him a glare. “You’re asking me? Such a scum in Vyrtham, and you didn’t even think to give
me a heads–up?!”
He was clearly fuming.
With that, he brushed past Justin and walked right up
to me.
“Girl, your mother told me everything.
“Don’t worry. This happened in my city. I’ll personally see that justice is done.”
“You and your mom–stay here. Don’t go anywhere. Go clean up and change clothes. From now on, this is your home.‘
Instinctively, I looked toward my mom.
She quickly took me by the arm, led me to one of the rooms, and started digging through a suitcase for fresh clothes.
”
As she worked, she explained in a low voice, “He’s some kind of commander. I didn’t mean to stir things up–I was just chatting. I’d told him about your father. He got so worked up, said he’d make sure we got justice.”
I could see the guilt on her face.
I patted her shoulder reassuringly, took the clothes, and went into the bathroom.
After I changed, I found Justin and got straight to the point.
“Who exactly is Roy?”
Justin leaned back, arms crossed. “Same rank as my grandfather. His family’s got multiple first–class military honors. In Vyrtham, if he stomps his foot too hard, the whole city shakes.”
I blinked, stunned.
Justin caught the gleam in my eye and chuckled. “Look, if you’ve got solid evidence in your father’s case, then yeah… you can trust Roy. He’s allergic to injustice. He doesn’t let anything slide.”
Taking his advice to heart, I placed both a USB drive and a voice recorder on Roy’s desk the next day.
I didn’t know if the USB held enough proof of Veyne’s crimes, but the recording–captured inside the car that night–was the real
weapon.
Sylvia had no idea I’d been carrying a recorder the entire time.
I hadn’t planned to use it on her. At the time, I’d prepared it for Veyne–just in case he caught me extracting data and forced a
confrontation.
Ironically, it wasn’t Veyne I needed to protect myself from… it was her.
When the audio ended, Roy was shaking with fury.
“Unbelievable! In broad daylight, under the rule of law, and these people are still threatening, attacking, even pushing someone to suicide?!”
Justin returned with his laptop and plugged in the USB drive. He spent three full days combing through the files.
But there was nothing useful.
Exhausted, his hand slipped on the mouse and accidentally opened an auto–backup folder from a messaging app.
Inside, we found it.
A money transfer from an overseas account to the family of the girl–the witness.
Thinking of her, I immediately asked Justin to go with me to her home.
But when we got there, the house was empty.
She and her entire family had moved away–too afraid of Veyne to stay.
Disappointed, we turned to leave.
But as we stepped into the alley…
We ran right into him.
Veyne.
He looked thinner. His sharp edges dulled. There was a hollow, worn–down exhaustion about him that hadn’t been there before.
But when his eyes landed on me, a flicker of something–something real–lit up inside them.
“Eleanor?” His voice caught. “I knew it. I knew you weren’t dead.”
Chapter 9
