Se connecterInside the folder were hundreds of photographs, documents, and recorded conversations, all revealing a truth far more horrifying than I could have ever imagined.
One of the photos that shocked me the most showed Gavin and Selina talking to a man whose face was hidden in shadow. A note beneath the photo read: "This man is the owner of a company that has been trying to ruin Gavin’s father’s business. They are working together to bring the company down for their own personal gain." "Gavin’s father is a highly successful businessman," the investigator explained. "But over the past few years, his business has declined drastically. This didn’t happen because of market competition—it happened because Gavin and Selina were deliberately sabotaging it from the inside. They wanted to take over the entire fortune of Gavin’s family." I was stunned. "So… everything they did wasn’t just about love? They only wanted the money?" "Exactly," the investigator replied. "Selina was even already married before she met Gavin. Her husband is someone connected to an underground financial syndicate. All of this is part of a grand plan to seize control of the family’s wealth." Even worse, inside the folder were the results of a DNA test proving that the child Selina was carrying… was not Gavin’s. "This can’t be," I whispered, my eyes welling up with tears. "Gavin said it was his child. He said he was so happy to finally have an heir." "It was all an act," the investigator said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. "Selina said that on purpose to tie Gavin to her. And she succeeded. Gavin was even willing to throw you away and destroy his relationship with his own family for that woman." Suddenly, the café door swung open violently. A man rushed in with hurried steps. His face was pale, and his eyes were filled with panic. It was Gavin’s father. "Aria!" he exclaimed the moment he saw me. "Thank goodness I found you. I need to speak with you. There are things you must know about Gavin and Selina." Gavin’s father sat down across from me, breathing heavily as if he had just run a long distance. His face, which usually held such a stern expression, now looked weary and sorrowful. "I have been searching for you everywhere," he said. "Ever since you left the house, I haven’t known what to do. I feel guilty for failing to protect you from the wickedness of my own son." "Sir, what is really going on? How could Gavin turn out to be this terrible?" I asked, still taken aback by his sudden appearance. Gavin’s father let out a long, heavy sigh. "This is all my fault. Back when Gavin was a child, I was too busy with my business and never gave him the attention he needed. He grew up feeling insecure and desperate to prove himself. That was when he met Selina." He paused for a moment, as if gathering the strength to continue his story. "Selina is someone who knows exactly how to exploit people’s weaknesses. She knew precisely what to say and do to make Gavin completely obsessed with her. She taught him how to manipulate others, how to lie, and how to take whatever they wanted without caring about anyone else’s feelings." "What are they planning to do next?" I asked, a sense of worry beginning to creep into my heart. "I don’t know for certain," Gavin’s father replied. "But I heard that they are planning to sell off all the family’s assets and move abroad. They intend to spend all that money for their own personal use." He looked at me with eyes full of hope. "Aria, I know Gavin has hurt you deeply. But I beg you, please help me stop them. We have to prevent them from destroying everything. I will give you all the evidence I have, and I will cover every cost that is needed. I only want to restore my family’s good name and ensure that they receive the punishment they deserve." I looked at Gavin’s father as he pleaded with me. Even though he was the father of the man who had ruined my life, I could not refuse his request. I knew that if I did nothing, they would continue to hurt other people just to satisfy their own greed. "Very well," I said finally. "I will help you. But I want everything to go according to plan. I don’t want anyone to know that we are working together." Gavin’s father nodded with immense gratitude. "Thank you, Aria. I will never forget this kindness of yours." After that meeting, I went home feeling different than before. I no longer felt like a helpless victim. I felt like someone who was going to expose all the lies and make sure that justice was served.The bedroom was filled with the scent of cardboard boxes and packing tape, the universal aroma of a life about to shift. But amidst the standard chaos of a high school graduate preparing for university, one wall remained a sanctuary of obsession. It was a mosaic of shadows: hundreds of newspaper clippings, some yellowed by time, others crisp and freshly printed.Every headline bore the same name. Budi Cahyadi.Lina stood before the collage, her eyes tracking the trajectory of a monster. There he was in his fifties, shaking hands with ministers; there he was in his sixties, receiving a "Man of the Year" award. In the most recent photo, he was an aging lion, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, his face a mask of impenetrable arrogance."The scholarship letters arrived today," a voice said from the doorway.Lina didn’t turn. She knew the sound of Maria’s footsteps—they had grown heavier over the years, weary with the burden of what she knew her daughter was becoming."I know, Ibu. Faculty of L
The atmosphere in Lina’s bedroom was suffocating, thick with the dust of unearthed secrets. Maria sat on the edge of the mattress, her frame appearing smaller, more fragile than Lina had ever seen. Between them lay the note—that yellowed, tear-stained scrap of paper—pulsing with the energy of a live wire."Sit down, Lina," Maria said, her voice weighted with a decade of suppressed truth. "Please. My legs can no longer carry the height of this lie."Lina sat, though her body remained as rigid as stone. Her eyes were fixed on the word. "Tell me everything, Ibu. No more metaphors about wind and seeds. I want the truth. Plain and cold."Maria took a shuddering breath, her fingers twisting the hem of her apron. "I don't know her name, Lina. I don't know where she came from or where the wind took her after that night. All I saw was a shadow. A woman standing in the mouth of the alleyway, drenched to the bone, watching me take you inside. She looked like a ghost that had forgotten how to hau
The house felt too quiet since Papa Hendra had passed away. The silence wasn’t just an absence of noise; it was a heavy, suffocating blanket that settled in the corners of the rooms. Twelve-year-old Lina sat on the floor of the hallway, staring at the high shelf of the linen closet.Ibu Maria was still at the school, likely grading papers to avoid coming home to the emptiness. Lina, however, was restless. The "Wind Seed" story that had once enchanted her now felt like a thin, tattered veil. She was old enough to know that seeds don't just fly; they are planted, or they are dropped."There’s something up there," she whispered to the shadows. "Something Ibu doesn't want me to see."She dragged a heavy wooden chair from the kitchen, balanced a footstool on top of it, and climbed. Her fingers brushed against a stack of mothball-scented blankets. Shoving them aside, her hand struck something hard and cold.A wooden box. Small, dark, and locked.Lina scrambled down, her heart drumming a fra
The Jakarta sun was a fierce, golden weight, but under the shade of the mango tree in Maria’s backyard, the world felt cool and manageable. Five-year-old Lina was knee-deep in a patch of loose soil, her small hands caked in mud. She was a whirlwind of motion—bright-eyed, chaotic, and possessing a laugh that sounded like silver bells ringing through the house."Ibu, look! I found a worm! Is he the king of the garden?" Lina held up a wriggling earthworm with the pride of a conqueror.Maria looked up from her trowel, brushing a stray hair from her forehead with the back of her wrist. "He might be, Lina. But kings need their castles. Why don’t you tuck him back into the 'basement' of that marigold?""Okay!" Lina carefully patted the dirt. She worked with an intensity that Maria found both beautiful and terrifying. Every time she looked at Lina, she saw the "defiant spark" that the mysterious note had mentioned. It was there in the way she tilted her chin, in the way she asked *why* a hund
The rain had retreated to a rhythmic dripping from the roof gutters, but the air inside the kitchen remained charged with the electricity of the storm. Maria hadn’t slept. She sat at the wooden table, her hands wrapped around a ceramic mug of coffee that had long since gone cold.Her eyes, however, were fixed on the plastic laundry basket resting on the counter. It was lined with three layers of her softest yellow towels. Inside, the infant lay as still as a doll, her chest rising and falling in the deep, heavy sleep of the exhausted.Beside the mug lay the scrap of paper. The ink was jagged, bleeding into the fibers where droplets—too thick to be mere rain—had smeared the letters."Lina," Maria whispered. The name felt strange on her tongue, yet it carried a weight that seemed to anchor the room. "Lina. You have a name. You aren't just a ghost."The floorboards groaned in the hallway. Hendra walked in, his sarong tied loosely at his waist, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He stopped
The echo of the doorbell was still vibrating in the humid air when Sari reached the mouth of the narrow alleyway across the street. She pressed her body against the rough, damp brick, her breath coming in ragged stabs."Don't look back," she whispered to herself, her fingernails digging into her palms. "If you look back, you’ll run to her. If you run to her, you kill her."Across the street, the porch light of the cream-colored house flickered. The door creaked open, throwing a long, rectangular slice of yellow light across the wet pavement. Maria stepped out, clutching her robe tightly against the morning chill.Sari watched, her heart stopping in her chest."Hello?" Maria’s voice drifted through the quiet street. "Is someone there? It’s nearly four in the morning..."Maria took a step forward, her gaze scanning the empty road. Then, her eyes dropped to the woven mat. She froze. A sharp, audible gasp escaped her lips—a sound of pure shock that carried clearly to Sari’s hiding place.
The months that followed the final victory over Rico and the dismantling of the criminal network were unlike any time I had ever known. The frantic pace of danger, investigation, and running for our lives finally slowed down, allowing life to settle into a rhythm that was not just normal, but beaut
We decided not to hand Raka over to the police. Instead, we made a deal with him. He would help us infiltrate Rico’s organization and save his family, and in return, we would make sure he got legal protection and a reduced sentence for his betrayal. Raka told us everything he knew about Rico. He w
We stayed hidden behind the rocks, trying to come up with a plan. The men were getting closer, searching every corner of the cave, and we knew that it was only a matter of time before they found us. "We need to do something," I whispered to Dimas and Ardi. "We can’t just stay here and wait for the
I stared at the letter in disbelief, my hands shaking so hard I could barely hold the paper. It said that Lina’s birth father, a man named Budi Santoso, had recently returned to the country after working abroad for many years. He claimed that he had never given his consent for Lina to be adopted, a







