For the first ti since entering the room, genuine anger flickered across Stan’s eyes. His gaze moved to them
From their posture, equipnt, and formation, he could already tell they were private security.
And honestly...
He couldn’t completely suppress the frustration rising inside him.
"If you’d done your jobs properly," Stan said quietly, his voice calm but carrying unmistakable pressure, "if you’d stayed with your client the way protection details are supposed to, none of this would’ve happened."
His gaze swept across them.
"She hired you to keep her safe."
None of the guards spoke.
Not a single one.
Because deep down, they knew he was right.
The guilt on their faces went far beyond wounded pride.
If Alia died, this wouldn’t simply beco a failed assignnt.
It would destroy their company.
No one trusted a protection firm that lost the very person they were supposed to protect.
Their reputation, careers, and future contracts all depended on whether the woman currently lying on that stretcher survived.
And yet...
There was still a defense they couldn’t quite bring themselves to say aloud beneath Stan’s gaze.
Alia had told them nothing.
She had slipped out of her hotel without informing anyone, leaving behind no explanation and no warning signs whatsoever.
The first indication that sothing was wrong had been a sudden ergency alarm trigger from Alia herself, and by then, it had already been too late.
The situation had been made even more complicated by Alia’s severe aversion toward n.
Because of that, she refused to accept male bodyguards entirely.
The security company had been forced to assemble an all-female protection detail by pulling won from several different units and departnts.
On paper, the arrangent worked.
In reality, it created a team that had never properly trained together.
Their coordination was inconsistent.
Their technical support capabilities were incomplete.
And when Alia’s distress signal had first activated, none of them had possessed the equipnt or expertise necessary to imdiately trace it themselves.
They’d been forced to relay the ergency signal back to headquarters and wait for the location analysis to be completed remotely.
Headquarters had responded efficiently.
But even efficiency still cost ti.
Ti they couldn’t afford to lose.
A properly equipped and synchronized protection unit would’ve located Alia within minutes.
Instead, nearly an hour had passed before they finally received confird tracking data.
By then, they had learned that Alia had sohow traveled from her hotel in Velaris City all the way to this abandoned building in Inksea.
The team had spent most of the journey driving half-blind, repeatedly losing and reacquiring fragnts of the signal.
In the end, they had only managed to pinpoint the exact building after Alia triggered her ergency alarm a second ti.
So no one argued with Stan.
Because they knew they had failed.
Worse still...
After arriving, they had imdiately treated him, the man who had actually saved Alia, as the primary threat.
While he had been the only person calm enough to call for dical assistance.
The irony stung badly enough that several of the guards couldn’t even et Stan’s eyes anymore.
A few genuinely looked as though they wished the ground would simply open beneath them and swallow them whole.
anwhile, the paradics finished stabilizing Alia and loaded her into the ambulance with practiced efficiency.
As they prepared to leave, one of the guards approached Stan and asked for the hospital details. Stan gave her everything he knew, the na of the hospital affiliated with the ambulance service, its location, and every detail that might help them coordinate once they arrived.
By now, Stan had already pieced together part of the situation.
These guards, like Alia herself, were almost certainly foreigners who had flown into the city because of the talent show.
It explained quite a lot.
The foreign security company.
Their unfamiliarity with local ergency systems.
The delay in tracing Alia’s signal.
Their reliance on headquarters for technical support.
All of it fit together logically.
And yet...
Even with those explanations, sothing about the entire situation still refused to settle properly in Stan’s mind.
There was a missing piece sowhere.
A woman like Alia wasn’t ordinary.
She was a Warner Bros. shareholder.
A company director.
A woman important enough to travel with a private protection detail.
Soone like that didn’t casually slip away from her hotel alone, in a foreign city, without informing anyone.
Not without a reason.
And the n tonight hadn’t targeted her randomly either.
Their actions had been coordinated.
Planned.
Which ant Alia herself had likely been the true objective from the very beginning.
Stan stood silently as the ambulance doors shut.
Monts later, the vehicle pulled away into the evening, sirens echoing faintly through the streets as flashing red and blue lights disappeared into the distance.
But Stan’s thoughts remained unsettled.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever had drawn Alia out alone tonight...
Whatever had caused those n to target her...
Was connected to the sa thing that had carved such a deep, instinctive fear of n into her.
The sa fear that had made her recoil from sothing as harmless as a simple question on a hotel staircase.
The sa fear that had made her insist on an all-female security detail.
The sa fear that had nearly cost her life tonight.
There was a story underneath all of this.
Sothing ugly.
Sothing serious.
And Stan had the distinct feeling that tonight, he had only glimpsed the very edge of it.
The police arrived shortly after the ambulance departed, and to the surprise of the Vanguard guards, they handled Stan with considerably more caution and respect than anyone in the room had expected.
The officers clearly recognized him.
The female guards understood why a mont later.
They themselves had accompanied Alia to the talent show the previous evening and had personally witnessed Stan’s standing there. At the ti, they hadn’t fully grasped the extent of his influence.
Now they did.
Stan was far more influential than they had initially assud.
The lead officer, a calm, asured man who looked more interested in establishing facts than making quick arrests, chose to gather statents before detaining anyone.
He turned toward the guards first.
"Walk through everything," he said. "From the beginning."
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