Chapter 48.3
The security manager switched feeds. The tistamp flickered onto the screen, and the hallway outside the garden ca into view.
Lucius appeared on cara imdiately. He was standing near the entrance, checking his watch, then slipping into a conversation with a group of guests. As the footage rolled forward, he was there the entire ti. He was smiling, nodding, talking and enjoying the festivity of the wedding. But he never left.
Iris stood silent. Her sharp stare stayed locked on the screen.
He wasn’t lying, she thought, ’He was here the whole ti. He couldn’t have gone to my room. Then... who did?’
Before the thought could settle, Lucius’s voice sliced through the silence behind her.
"One of you is covering up. Protecting whoever broke into that room," Lucius spoke.
The hotel manager flinched.
"I think we need to involve the police," Iris spoke as she turned around to leave. And Lucius followed her out of the Security room.
They stepped out into the lobby, cool air brushing against their faces. Lucius’s eyes scanned everything as they moved. The reception staff watching them, a guest whispering on the phone. Everyone.
Behind them, rapid footsteps approached.
"Sir! Ma’am! Wait!" the manager called, his voice strained and panicked.
They turned.
The man reached them, breathless and sweating, "Please... don’t report this. I assure you, we will investigate internally. Security lapses during a wedding this size are rare, I swear."
Lucius didn’t blink, "Rare?" he said flatly, "I don’t care."
The manager swallowed hard, "Full compensation— Anything. Whatever was taken. We will compensate."
"And along with that, your stay with us here, will be on the hotel. Not just Room 1002, but your room as well, sir."
At that exact mont, a faint clatter echoed from the far side of the lobby. A staff boy with a silver tray full of glasses had stopped mid-step. His hands were trembling, the glassware rattling faintly.
Lucius’s eyes locked onto him instantly. Too still. Too stiff.
The boy’s gaze had flicked to them the mont he had heard "Room 1002."
Lucius’s pupils narrowed slightly. There it is.
He didn’t react. Didn’t move. Just observed.
The boy shifted his grip on the tray, trying to seem casual. But his shoulders were tight. His stride to stiff.
Lucius turned slightly, pretending to scan the room. But his eyes tracked the boy like a predator.
He knows sothing.
Iris’s voice pulled his attention, "Lucius?"
He didn’t answer imdiately.
His gaze lingered on the boy a second longer before he added, "Stay here. I think we just found our first loose thread."
Lucius moved through the lobby with a calm, casual stride, but his eyes never left the boy.
The staff boy took a sharp right into the corridor leading to the back of the hotel. His pace quickened, almost breaking into a run. The tray clattered as he passed through the service door.
The staff boy had ducked into a service hallway behind the bar, a narrow corridor with no exit, just crates, mop buckets, and silence.
Lucius entered slowly. The door shut behind him with a soft click.
The staff boy spun around. His eyes locked with Lucius’s and widened in terror.
There were no witnesses here. No help.
Just the two of them. And Lucius’s expression was carved from stone.
The boy opened his mouth to speak.
Lucius struck with a speed that didn’t match his calm, he shoved the boy back hard against the wall. The tray clattered to the floor as the air left the boy’s lungs.
Lucius pinned him with one hand on his throat. He didn’t choke him, just pressing enough to remind him how thin the line was between breathing and not.
The boy’s feet scrambled for purchase on the floor.
"I don’t care about you denying it," Lucius said, his voice cold as steel, "Now you are going to tell why. Fast."
"I... I don’t..." the boy stamred, but Lucius had already grabbed the fork from his tray as the boy watched in horror.
Lucius pressed the sharp point right against the boy’s cheekbone. Slowly, deliberately, dragging it up until it rested just beside his eye.
"You ever been stabbed through the eye?" Lucius murmured, "I have. Watched a man lose half his brain through his tear duct. He scread for six seconds. That’s how long it took to die."
The boy began to sob, chest shaking, pants darkening with piss.
"I didn’t do it!" he wailed, "It was that man... He made do it. I don’t know his na, but he was a foreigner."
Lucius didn’t move the knife away, waiting for the man to continue speaking.
"I just helped them"
"I had to help him. He would have killed my family, if I hadn’t," The man was crying at this mont. Between Marcus and Lucius, he was a collateral for no possible reason.
"Was he alone?" Lucius had guessed who the foreigner was. It was either Marcus, or one of his n.
"There was this girl. I helped her into the room. She is also a guest at the hotel," Sniffing, the man replied.
’That is it,’
His fingers slid into his pocket and pulled out the broken acrylic nail. He turned it between his fingers, eyes narrowing, the cogs in his head grinding.
Cassey!
At the wedding. She had grabbed his wrist when he tried to leave early. Her hand was adorned with those long, sharp, glossy nails. He rembered the glittering red tips. Sothing off. One was missing.
He hadn’t paid attention then.
But now...
"It was hers."
Lucius shoved the boy harder into the wall, then stepped back. The boy crumpled to the floor, clutching his head, crying.
Lucius looked down at him with pure disdain.
"You pissed yourself," he said flatly, "And you think that’s bad?"
He crouched beside him. No trace of warmth in his voice.
"If I find out you warned him. If he disappears before I get to him, then you disappear. It’s not a threat. It’s a promise."
He stood up, slipped the knife back into his coat, and stepped over the boy’s trembling form.
As he reached the end of the hallway, he paused, turned back just once.
"Wash your uniform before soone sees the stain," Lucius said, "You stink."
Then he left the staff boy in a puddle of his own fear, face pale, hands shaking. A man who had stared too long into sothing predatory and had barely survived.
Lucius walked out of the corridor and spotted Iris waiting near the elevator, arms crossed, her brow raised.
"Well?" she asked, her voice dry.
But before Lucius could answer, her phone buzzed.
Iris glanced down at the screen and froze.
Grandmother.
Lucius noticed the flicker in her eyes. Her voice, just monts ago sharp, now dipped into sothing softer. Almost... frightened.
"Give a second," she muttered.
Lucius nodded but warned, "Don’t tell her anything. Not yet."
Iris gave the faintest nod and stepped aside, gripping the phone like it might bite.
She accepted the call.
"Grandmother," she said, her voice small despite herself.
"What took you so long?" Ca the biting voice on the other end, "I have called three tis. Are you deaf or just avoiding ?"
"I— I was in the washroom," Iris replied quickly. The mont the words left her mouth, she hated how unsure she sounded.
"Don’t give excuses," her grandmother snapped, "Did you make any progress? Or are you just wasting ti and money in fancy weddings?"
’She knows,’ Iris swallowed, "I have a eting with him tomorrow. A follow-up. I am... close."
"Close is nothing," the old woman hissed, "You don’t win with ’close.’ You win by taking what’s yours. What’s the delay?"
"I... I am considering buying it all, instead of a partnership."
There was silence. Then...
"Even better. Let him na his price. I don’t care how many zeroes are on the cheque. Get him to sign. And once he does..." the voice sharpened, cold and final, "... You empty that place. Every room, every face. Not a single soul left. You understand ?"
"...Yes," Iris whispered.
"Good."
The call ended.
Iris stared at the screen, her knuckles white around the phone.
That voice still rang in her ears — not yelling, but the kind of commanding tone that had broken stronger people than her. Out in the world, Iris Levain was a na people feared.
But here?
Here she was just a little girl under her grandmother’s shadow.
She lowered the phone, chest tight, eyes blinking fast as if to steel herself again. And when she turned—
Lucius was gone.
"Lucius?"
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