Chapter 72

The door clicked behind Makizal as he stepped inside the safe house, its stale air thick with the odor of sleeplessness and fear. Emilio was already on the sofa, folded into himself like a frightened animal. His eyes were red, half-swollen, his hands trembling against his knees.

Makizal crossed the room slowly, calm, sipping the coffee he had bought moments earlier. Its warmth contrasted sharply with the coldness settling between them.

He sat down across from him and let the silence stretch.

“Tell me, Emilio,” he finally murmured, voice deceptively gentle, “why is it that apart from Malaya… no one has visited you? No friends? No family?”

Emilio swallowed. “I… I don’t have.”

Makizal tilted his head. “Of course you don’t. Men like you prefer to be discreet and abuse women. Right?”

The words struck with a blunt, cutting weight. Emilio flinched but said nothing.

Makizal took another sip before leaning forward. “I already know why you protected Doctor Marz. But I need clarity on one last thing.”

He pulled a photo from the inner pocket of his jacket—Evelyn, captured in the hospital hallway, unaware of the camera.

“Do you know this woman?”

Emilio took the photo with shaking fingers. “That’s Evelyn Hazel. The patient who was… mis-examined. I told you everything.”

“Did you?” Makizal asked, the softness fading. “Tell me what Doctor Marz told you about her.”

“Nothing,” Emilio whispered. “Only that there had been a mistake.”

The room went heavy. Makizal’s eyes darkened.

Emilio recognized that look—the same look that came moments before a fist or a boot.

Desperation cracked through his voice. “Please… I said everything. You can ask Doctor Marz—”

“I could have,” Makizal cut sharply, “if he weren’t dead.”

Silence collapsed over them.

“What?” The single word was ripped from Emilio’s chest. He recoiled, collapsing further into the chair, gripping his head with both hands. Dr. Marz is dead? The world seemed to stop, the last safety net torn away.

“I forgot you are cut off from the world,” Makizal observed, devoid of sympathy. He stood, hands sinking deep into his pockets, and walked over to the window. He moved the edge of a blind a fraction of an inch and began scanning the perimeter outside, his attention feigned.

Emilio, in that moment, understood the finality of his confinement. His turn had come. He had already mentally prepared, but the confirmation still hit like a physical blow.

“Are you sure that’s all Doctor Marz told you?” Makizal asked again, his back still turned, his voice now merely conversational, intensifying the tension.

Emilio desperately searched for a crumb of mitigation. “At the hospital, there’s a system; everyone has a role. Marz was the one who made the wrong insemination.”

Makizal turned back, his expression flat. “So, you didn’t know that Evelyn is an accomplice of Dr. Marz?”

“What? No, I mean… she didn’t even know Dr. Marz well; she was new to the program. She was a victim, not—”

“But it was Dr. Marz who inseminated her.”

“Yes, but I had a chance to speak with her. She had no friendship whatsoever with him. She was —” He hesitated. “a victim.”

“Good,” Makizal returned to him, slow steps echoing like the ticking of a countdown.

“Because either way,” he said, lowering himself onto the seat opposite him, “that’s ancient history. And you, too, will soon be spoken of in the past tense.”

Emilio’s lips parted in terror. “You’re… going to kill me, aren’t you?”

Makizal chuckled—a cold, humorless sound. “Kill you? No. Killing you outright would be the greatest mercy.”

He took out a second photo. It was a strained, professional portrait of a man, eyes darting away from the camera. Dr. Guyuan. Makizal placed it squarely on the table next to Evelyn’s.

Emilio’s eyes widened. “Is he also dead?”

“No. He is also under house arrest, just like you.” Makizal took another slow sip of coffee, savoring the control. His voice dropped, becoming razor-sharp. “When I began my investigation, I wondered the same thing you just did: why not kill both of you and clean up? Then I told myself: ‘But you told us you made a mistake, that if you had known this woman was not consenting, you wouldn’t have done it.’ So, I met with Dr. Guyuan, as agreed with Polo, after meeting her… and I stumbled upon this.”

He handed Emilio a tablet. It was heavy, cold, and a sickening dread washed over Emilio as he took it.

“What’s on it?” Emilio’s voice was barely audible.

“Just look.”

Emilio’s thumb shakily clicked the video. From the first second, the flickering, grainy footage confirmed his worst fears: that night, Dr. Guyuan, high and arrogant, had filmed their depraved sexual acts.

The more Emilio watched, the more horrifyingly clear it became. The girl in the video, a young doctor herself, was not consenting. Her body language was one of exhaustion and profound distress. She repeatedly pushed away the intimate parts they took turns forcing on her, her face contorted in pain and revulsion, until she finally broke and vomited. But even then, they had given her no break. Consenting or not, high or sober, no human being deserved this.

Makizal’s voice was a low, chilling whisper directly in his ear. “When a woman says ‘please, I can’t take it anymore’ and you continue as if it’s funny because you’re high, that doesn’t justify anything. You knew. And the truth is, at that moment, you didn’t care.”

Emilio slammed the tablet down and put his face in his hands, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Deep, sincere tears began to escape—the raw, belated remorse of a man finally confronted with his moral rot. A fact is a fact, and the video was the definitive, unarguable document of his cruelty.

Makizal had met the young woman, the victim in the video. Her life, once promising, had become a field of ruins, forcing her to abandon her practice for intense therapy. She was not one of those who had consented; her only sin was being beautiful and having parents who had gone into crushing debt to pay for her education. Dr. Guyuan had used blackmail and his influence to silence her. Makizal offered her a standard agreement to keep quiet and forget. But when she had torn up and eaten the non-disclosure agreement, Makizal understood she had nothing left to lose. The only thing preventing her from taking vengeance was the lack of proof.

At last, Makizal had the video she needed. And many others. So, he made a deal.

“Here is what will happen,” Makizal whispered, his words dripping with calculated malice. “First, police officers will knock on your door. Afterward, you will be read your rights. Then, you will have the freedom to go to trial and risk media exposure, or to cooperate, testify against Guyuan, and disappear quietly as an accomplice.”

Emilio looked up, his face defeated, the fight entirely gone.

“Once in prison,” Makizal continued, leaning back, the victor, “I will make sure everyone knows why both of you and all those arrested are there. You will suffer again and again. Until the day you finally hang yourself.” Makizal offered a predatory smile. “Because either way, you are already a dead man, Dr. Emilio Wallace.”

Makizal stood up, his eyes sweeping over Emilio one last time with utter disgust. Emilio lowered his head, accepting his fate. So this is how it was going to end, he thought—not with a bullet, but with a slow, agonizing descent into the very hell he created.

When Makizal left, he glanced at the anonymous walls of the safe house, then picked up his phone and made the call, the weariness of the executioner finally audible in his voice.

“You can intervene.”

Moments later, Makizal watched as two unmarked police vehicles arrived and parked. A handful of officers got out and walked toward the house. A detective in a dark suit approached Makizal.

“Make sure this remains discreet,” Makizal instructed.

“With a supporting video and the other doctor already confessing to his part, we don’t need long investigations. I think he will cooperate.”

“I gave you everything.”

Makizal saw Emilio led out in handcuffs, his body language defeated and broken. Makizal had given the victim her only wish: that her tormentor pay for what he had done to her.

As the cars drove away, Makizal stared at the empty road.

Who was he, really?

A criminal who, at the same time, cooperated with the police without fear.
A chameleon with several facets.
A cold-blooded executioner for Williams, but also the vengeful hand of justice for the defenseless.

Everyone in the underworld had a particular image of him. In the end, maybe Makizal was just a profoundly misunderstood man.

Like Mr. Assanago, this was Emilio’s fate. The dark cloud of Niran Kai continued to spread, consuming all those trapped beneath its shadow.

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