Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Four
Aht’s finger hovered again, then settled on the last photograph pinned to the board.
He didn’t touch it at first. He had just stared.
The girl in the picture couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her hair was pulled back too tightly, her expression caught sowhere between confusion and defiance as she trained. Beneath it were older photos of the sa face but at thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen. The changes were subtle at first, then undeniable. The soft roundness of childhood giving way to sharp edges. Awareness. Control.
And then it stopped.
There were no adult photos of her, he confird.
Aht’s gaze shifted sideways, scanning the rest of the board again, just to be sure. Other won had tilines too. Childhood photos followed by gaps, then adulthood. So showed faces hardened by ti, others hollowed by it. Two in particular had full progressions; girlhood to womanhood... each stage docunted like a record that never let go.
However, Asli’s ended before it reached that point.
Aht exhaled slowly, sothing cold settling in his chest.
Markus stepped closer, following the line of Aht’s stare to the pictures above the one he identified as Asli’s. He studied the sequence too, his brow furrowing as the pattern revealed itself. Then his eyes stopped at the sa place Aht’s had.
"If all these won were victims," Markus said quietly, "then Asli must have been one too."
Aht didn’t respond.
Markus continued, gesturing toward the board. "No wonder he adopted her. But how did he choose them? There has to be sothing they all share. If we dig into their lives, we might understand why her story stopped here." His finger tapped the final image. "Why this is where hers ends."
Aht finally turned to him, his expression hard, unreadable.
"Do you think I care about her?"
Markus blinked, caught off guard. "What do you an by that?"
"She tried to kill ," Aht said flatly. "Whatever she was before doesn’t change that and certainly not after seeing her on this board."
Markus shook his head once. "She was wrong for that. No one’s denying it. But this..." he motioned toward the board, "... this could explain everything. She’s on the wall, Aht. She has more photos than all of them. They tracked her entire life, except adulthood. Why?"
"I said I don’t care," Aht snapped.
Markus didn’t back away. "You do care. You still have feelings for her. If you didn’t, you’d push this aside and help figure it out."
Aht let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Feelings? We were sleeping together. That was all we ever did. That ended the mont she pulled a gun on and fired."
He turned back to the board, anger bleeding into sothing darker.
"Look at this," Aht continued, voice rising despite himself. "Anyone can see it. She was kidnapped at first. Then sohow she beca his daughter. That alone tells you what kind of blood runs in her veins. Why didn’t he choose any of the others? Why only her? And why stop docunting her life once she beca an adult?"
He stabbed a finger toward the empty space where more photos should have been.
"Because she proved herself. Because she beca exactly what he wanted."
Markus frowned. "That’s an assumption."
"No, it’s a pattern," Aht shot back. "Top assassins call her the Lady Boss for a reason. She kills without hesitation. Imagine if you hadn’t pulled out of that warehouse I’d be dead. How then does she have her own warehouse? Who knows what she’s hiding there? She is probably heading one whole warehouse! She is involved. She built a na. She beca visible. How do you think she beca a celebrity in the outside world? To draw attention. To draw clients to him and to protect his empire."
Markus opened his mouth, but Aht was already pacing now, words spilling faster.
"She shot because she thought I was coming for the Villa. To silence before I could uncover anything. Her adult photos aren’t here because she graduated. She wasn’t a product anymore, she beca a perfect daughter. That’s why Marco loves her."
"You’re wrong," Markus said, more firmly now. "Marco doesn’t love anyone like that. What father would want his daughter involved in this?"
Aht stopped and looked at him. Really looked at him.
"If you and I were born into this," he said quietly, "do you think we would’ve walked away? We already kill. We already destroy lives. How sure are you that every person who’s died by our orders deserved it?"
Markus didn’t answer.
"We follow footsteps," Aht continued. "So paths are just darker than others. Asli is his successor. Maybe she even planned to replace him. Midnight Reaper didn’t appear from nowhere. She could’ve built it to take over everything."
His eyes widened slightly, a realization hitting him mid-thought.
"That’s why she ca running when I blackmailed her," he said. "She was afraid. Afraid I’d expose her n. Afraid Marco would find out she was moving without his approval. The Villa wasn’t just territory for her, it was her inheritance."
Markus stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Calm down."
But Aht wasn’t listening anymore.
"She thought I was after it," he went on, jaw tight. "So she tried to eliminate . That’s as simple as it is"
Silence fell between them.
Markus looked back at the board, at the faces frozen in ti. He felt the anger, and the disappointnt but he also felt sothing else, sothing that refused to align neatly with Aht’s conclusion.
Asli had been alone. Truly alone. Cole. Matilda. Her nanny and Matilda’s mother.
That was all.
Still, Aht could be right. People stayed in this world because they wanted to. Because power felt better than escape. With Asli’s reputation, no one would be shocked if she were exactly what Aht believed her to be.
So why did it feel wrong?
Why were her adult photos missing?
Why were there more images of her than of anyone else?
And most importantly, what had Marco intended for her in the beginning... and what had changed?
The answers were sowhere in this warehouse. And none of them felt like they would bring peace.
Boots stopped behind them.
"Sorry to interrupt," one of the n said, his voice low, careful, as if volu itself felt wrong in this room. "All the won are secured. The vans are loaded and the dics are with them."
Aht nodded once, yet did not turn around.
Markus exhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate. He glanced at the notice board again, at the faces, the gaps, the patterns that he refused to accept as coincidence or by random selection.
"Good," Markus said. Then, sharper, more focused, "Now listen carefully."
The man straightened.
"Everything in this room goes with us," Markus continued. "The caras. The monitors. The drives. The files. The board. Every photo, every label, every scrap of paper. Nothing gets left behind."
"Yes, boss."
"And that’s not all," Markus added. His gaze flicked toward the doorway, toward the rest of the warehouse beyond it. "Sweep the other rooms again. If it looks useless, take it anyway. If it looks insignificant, take two of it. I don’t want Marco’s people coming back to ashes and finding a single clue we missed."
The man hesitated. "That’s a lot of material."
"I know," Markus said. "That’s the point."
The man nodded and turned, already barking orders down the corridor.
Aht finally looked at Markus. There was no confusion in his eyes, only a hard, settled resolve.
"This digging," he said, voice low and tight, "tell you’re not doing it to clear her."
Markus didn’t hesitate. "I think it shows us how Marco chose his pieces, and why so of them never made it out."
Aht’s mouth pulled into sothing sharp. "If you’re looking for innocence," he said flatly, "you won’t find it there. She isn’t innocent."
"I’m not," Markus replied. "I’m only looking for truth."
Aht’s jaw tightened. "I’m not here to sort victims from accomplices." His gaze flicked back to the board, to the pictures that had already burned themselves into his mind. "This ends the sa way regardless. Marco and his n. Every other person tied to this is going down with him."
Markus stepped closer, lowering his voice. "And I’m not stopping at burning the surface. Not when this place tells us how the bastard is built."
Aht’s eyes flicked once, sharp and sudden, as if sothing had crossed his mind without permission.
For a brief mont, the warehouse faded. The board. The faces. The noise beyond the walls. All of it slipped away, replaced by the echo of a gunshot that had co from Asli, from a direction he hadn’t guarded against.
He didn’t dwell on it. He never did.
But when his focus returned, there was sothing colder in his gaze, sothing tighter around the edges, as though whatever had surfaced had been locked back down with force.
He let out a slow breath through his nose. "Dig if you want," he continued coldly. "I’m tearing him and his daughter down."
Aht’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak anymore. He took one last look at the board, and at the missing years.
They turned together and walked out, leaving the room behind as the n ca for everything they instructed them to pack.
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