Chapter 58

The meeting was held in the hushed, secure confines of Miss Kai’s private corporate suite, high above the city. The evening light was soft, filtered through sheer blinds, giving the room an amber, serious tone.

Adeline arrived exactly at the hour Miss Kai had requested. She carried no suitcase, only a folder under her arm and the weight of everything she had discovered.

Miss Kai and her husband were already seated. This time, Adeline had insisted he be present. She needed both of them for what was coming.

Adeline spoke with quiet professionalism, but each word struck the room like a blade. She explained Williams’s dissociation, the trauma, and the dominance of the fabricated identity. But she kept Williams’s horrible desire for self-justice, and everything she had gone through, a secret. All she needed was for Miss Kai to understand the danger and the urgency, being the only direct relative capable of making decisions on Williams’ behalf.

Miss Kai listened, her customary poise visibly shaken as she leaned heavily on the polished mahogany table. Her husband sat beside her; his face etched with growing alarm. When Adeline finished, expecting argument or denial, Miss Kai nodded, a profound sorrow clouding her eyes, carrying guilt, grief, and recognition.

She recalled the night the hospital was handed over to her daughter and the condition attached to it. Perhaps that was why she had been so cautious in giving excess responsibility to Williams.

“I accept,” Kai said. “All of it. Whatever you need to proceed.”

Adeline was genuinely startled by the immediate surrender. The reason, however, was already in the building.

The door opened, and Romaric entered. He was pale, moving with a careful, injured stiffness, evidence of his desperate escape and survival. He was alive but marked. His unexpected presence delivered the missing piece of the puzzle and explained Kai’s sudden compliance.

Romaric omitted nothing. He described the infiltration, the scandal looming at the hospital, Makizal’s takeover, Williams’s calculated ruthlessness, and the near-fatal mission failure that had decimated their team. As he spoke, the intellectual dilemma Adeline had presented transformed into a visceral, life-or-death crisis.

Yes, he had managed to escape and had initially sought refuge with Miss Kai for safety, but it was only a matter of time before Makizal found him.

Miss Kai noticed the leather-bound photo album Adeline held.

“What is that?”

She took it, the fragile pages smelling faintly of dust and time. A gasp escaped her as she looked at the faces of the cruel administration.

“The director… who tried to shield them,” Kai murmured as a wave of forgotten guilt washed over her.

“Miss Kai, do you know the people responsible for what happened to Williams?”

Miss Kai shook her head. “No, I don’t. The administration was my only mode of communication, and Williams would not speak.”

Adeline gently retrieved the album and handed it to the grim-faced Romaric. “Can you run a deep search on what became of these people?” She pointed to the faces circled in the forensic report’s signature red: the ringleaders of the abuse. She paused on a specific, bright, young face. “And her. Esther Dara.”

Romaric concentrated, the name Esther Dara striking a familiar, dissonant chord, though the connection remained elusive. His eyes, sharp and trained, traced the red circles. “Tomorrow morning,” he said at last. “I’ll contact a trusted friend of mine. He will dig into it.”

Adeline nodded.

The plan was set. The external threat was neutralized, and now the internal threat, Williams herself, was the target.

Evening bled into night, and the city divided itself into stories: quiet homes, sleepless rooms, and minds unraveling in different corners of its vastness.

Romaric was not the only one hunting for information.

Yada, too, was picking up threads, tracking Kannika’s adopted sister.

And Rouffie’s parents, panicked by the sanction crushing their son, had already pulled strings at the police department.

Meanwhile, Yada had returned home exhausted. She showered, dressed in an oversized shirt, and collapsed into bed. She was not asleep for two minutes before her phone buzzed.

A message from Evelyn.

I will no longer be requiring your services. I will handle the abortion myself. Thanks.

Yada sat up sharply. She tried to call immediately, but the number was disconnected.

A cold grip settled in her stomach.

Something was wrong.

Very, very wrong. She had no idea where Evelyn lived. The only person who could help her was Kannika. And Kannika was still unconscious.

As Yada searched for answers, somewhere in a cramped apartment across the city, while two children laughed over plates of food and their mother hummed by the stove, a door was locked at the end of the hallway.

Inside the bathroom, Oswald, the disgraced journalist, was sinking further into the cool, hard porcelain reality of the tiny room. He stared at his reflection, the man in the glass unrecognizable: gaunt, sunken-eyed, the shame of his job loss a corrosive acid eating through his self-worth.

He sat on the closed toilet, elbows on his knees, a gun in his hand.

The metal was heavy, too heavy for its size. But it felt right in his palm, like a long-awaited truth.

He stared at it with the blank intensity of a man who had been broken, ground down, and abandoned by the world he once served.

And Dr. Niran Williams was the one responsible for his downfall.

This time, she was returning in a blaze of glory, poised to play the savior of humanity in front of every camera in the city. And he, Oswald, had lost the one thing he had dedicated his life to: his freedom of speech.

He had spent years exposing smaller men, but the day he targeted Williams, the sanction had been immediate and complete.

He remembered the day he was fired.

He remembered asking his director:

“Was it her?”

The director’s silence was the only confirmation he needed.

There was no way he would endure her face on screens, respected, applauded, and protected by the entire country. While at the same time, he drowned in debt and humiliation, unemployable and forced to depend on his wife’s diminishing patience and salary.

No way. Tomorrow, she would stand before cameras again, saving a child, being hailed as a hero.

Tomorrow, she would bask in glory.

Tomorrow, he would destroy her.

He lifted the weapon, testing its familiar, satisfying weight. If karma were slow, he would become its creator. Tomorrow, on the live broadcast, he would aim straight for her heart. He would ensure her last gaze was one of terror, just as he intended to tell her exactly what it felt like to lose everything to her indifference.

His rage, fueled by depression, isolation, and cheap alcohol, had curdled into a singular, murderous delusion. His friends and colleagues, terrified of losing their own prestige, had abandoned him, only hardening his resolve.

He whispered to himself, voice shaky but determined:

“You will lose what your money can’t buy.”

And this was life. A luxury out of cost.

Yes. He deserved this justice.

He was the victim.

Not her.

NOT HER.

A gentle tap on the door finally broke the violent spiral of his thoughts.

“Honey? Dinner is getting cold. Please come eat.” His wife’s voice was the last tether to the world he intended to destroy.

Oswald closed his hand around the gun.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, karma would be fast, and the taste cold but delicious.

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