Chapter 10

He started walking back on the way from where he entered and the girls also followed him silently. They were also skillfully walking knowing that if they get caught the only punishment they will get was death. He took the girls out and some of his men were already waiting for him with vehicles to take all the girls to shelters he arranged for them. Within half an hour, almost twenty girls were gone. Vanished into the night like whispers.

The brothel was still unaware. The guards smoked at the front, laughing, oblivious. The cameras still rolled, but they saw nothing unusual. Agustin had covered every angle. They’d think the girls had escaped on their own — or worse, that they were taken. They wouldn’t suspect him. Not yet. He still had a lot to do here.

He helped the rest of the girls to settle inside the cars safely and instructed his men to safely take them away and no matter what takes them to save the girls they have to do it but even as the last SUV pulled away with the last group of girls safely inside, something gnawed at him. He felt something wrong, terribly wrong as if his work wasn't completed yet.

He felt it in his gut — that one missing shadow. The doors he hadn’t seen. A heartbeat that hadn’t been heard. He went back to the third floor again and stood at the edge of the hallway, staring down a corridor no one had entered all night. It was darker than the rest. He walked a few steps and saw the doors were locked and no voice could be heard on the other side. He placed his ear against a door which belonged to Emma but he couldn't hear anything.

There was pin drop silence.

Quieter. Almost forgotten.

Something was off. There were still two more girls. But no one had told him. One was Emma and the other one wasn't acknowledged even though fate hadn't shown her name. He looked around for Emma but couldn't find her too. He decided to look for her in the main area because he thought maybe she was given to some men for a night or maybe she was escorted already before he reached there.

He went at the rooftop of the building and saw the cars at farther distance. The last black vehicle had vanished into the shadows of the city, filled with trembling girls who, for the first time in years, were breathing the air of freedom. Agustin stood at the rooftop edge of the brothel, watching the red neon flicker below him like the heartbeat of something diseased. The wind bit at his coat, but he didn’t flinch.

The easy part was done.

Now came the reckoning.

He descended the rooftop access stairwell, his boots silent on the steps. Every corner of the building had been studied, mapped and memorized. He knew the number of guards, the location of every hidden camera, and the safe where the owner kept his black-book ledger — names, payments, secrets and what not.

But that wasn’t what he wanted most.

He wanted the man.

The one behind the silk curtains and gold-plated doors. The one who thought he was untouchable. The man who smiled at auctions while girls were sold like jewelry. The same man his fathers once shook hands with, before knowing his true intentions and business but before they could make him taste his own death he fled away from Spain and expanded his filthy business in America.

Agustin came out in the main area and walked through the brothel like a shadow noticing everything and everyone without getting noticed by anyone. Room by room, he passed velvet wallpaper, glittering chandeliers, and crystal ashtrays filled with sins. He moved like the reaper they never saw coming. But their death was looking over their heads like a shadow. The end of their sins was coming near to them with each passing second.

He walked inside the prohibited area before anyone could notice him. The first thing he saw was a staircase going upward while beside it was a door he walked near it and then came— voices. Muffled. Confident. The owner’s office. Agustin stepped forward without hesitation. He kicked the door open with one clean blow.

Inside, the owner sat in a leather chair, swirling cognac in a crystal glass. His face was lined with age and greed — surprised, but not frightened. By his expressions Agustin could assume that he already knew about the absent girls.

“You’re late,” the owner sneered. “I already heard the girls are gone. You think I care? There’ll be more by next week.” he completed his sentence with a smirk and his disgusting teeth on display.

Agustin didn’t respond with words.

He pulled a pistol from inside his coat and fired once — clean, precise — straight into the desk, shattering the drink glass and splinters of wood flying across the man’s face.

“I’m not here to scare you,” Agustin said coolly. “I’m here to erase you.”

The owner’s smirk faded.

It didn’t take long. In a snap he shot the other man who was none other than the man, knocked Innara unconscious and locked her inside the room which belonged to Emma. He was there to inform the owner about her whereabouts but his dead corpse laid there with eyes wide open. In minutes, Agustin had the owner tied with swift movements leaving no chance for him to escape.

He took his phones and destroyed them with all the proof of his presence there, surveillance wiped but in the haste of destroying his phone he didn't Now it was his turn to smirk at the owner who looked scared this time. He aimed the pistol right between in his eyes with a menacing look in his eyes.

"I'll ask just a simple and straight question to you. Answer it and you'll get an easier death. Where's Emma?" He asked him in his no nonsense tone. The owner didn't care about Emma's presence in his brothel so he gave out her information to him.

"She was working with her own will here and she is gone to visit her siblings somewhere nearby." The owner answered him and Agustin was satisfied with his answer but still now done with his queries.

"And what about the another girl?" He asked and this time the owner looked a little hesitant.

"What girl?" He asked trying to feign innocence but Agustin got suspicious of him immediately.

"This girl which has no existence in your records and is missing from three months." Agustin clarified and the owner understood he was talking about Innara who was his special one but no way he'll let her free even if he dies.

"She ran away from here. She escaped with one of my guards and since then no one knew about her." The owner lied smoothly and Agustin also believed him thinking she must have ran away from here for freedom.

He pulled the pistol down and tucked it back in his hostler. He walked towards the owner and pushed a paper weight past his teeth inside his mouth gagging him. The eyes of the owner's widened thinking about the worse he could do to him. Agustin snapped his and fingers. The gasoline came next — cans he had placed hours earlier, hidden behind curtains, under tables, inside closet panels.

Each step was methodical. Each movement, intentional. The smirk on his lips never faltered he looked a mixed version of three of his fathers, cold like Joaquin, cruel like Emiliano and sharp like Alejandro. The owner looked at the grim reaper standing right in front of the him ready to take the soul out of his body. His body trembled at his next action.

He lit the match.

And threw it on the beautiful velvet curtains, with one look at the flames catching the edge of a velvet curtain, he turned and walked out with his hands casually in the pants pockets as if the building wasn't ready to caught fire soon. Watching him walking out of the prohibited area his men also got the signal and one by one they also left the building without making anyone suspicious.

The fire spread like fury — roaring, spitting, swallowing the walls in seconds. Glass cracked. Smoke choked the ceiling. The brothel, once a palace of silent horrors, now groaned like a beast dying in its own belly.

The loud voices of people screaming for help could be heard but they couldn't get out due to the doors being locked from outside, of course they had to die for helping the owner spread his business widely by feeding him money and buying the girls from him.

Agustin stood across the street, watching the building burn. Heat painted his face. Sirens hadn’t arrived yet. People screamed, scattered. But none of them knew what the fire meant. None of them knew what had truly been buried in those walls. And neither did he.

Because behind one locked door on the top floor, hidden from the world and forgotten by all... She was still inside but a baby growing inside her.

Emma who was returning after meeting her siblings and feeding her suddenly felt heat in the environment and when she raised her head she saw a building at a little distance burning with fire spreading in the sky. She took a clear look and her eyes widened immediately after realising it was the same building where the brothel was active and she worked there. She remembered about Innara and immediately started running towards that spot.

The flames twisted higher, curling like serpents into the night sky. Smoke billowed in black clouds, swallowing the stars. Agustin stood motionless across the street, the fire reflected in his eyes like a funeral pyre for every sin that place had housed. His jaw was clenched. He felt the familiar quiet in his chest — the cold silence that always came after a mission.

Until he heard the scream.

It cut through the night like a blade.

"No! She’s inside!" The voice belonged to none other than Emma.

Agustin turned sharply.

A girl had appeared from the alleyway — young, ragged, breathless. Her clothes were torn, hair matted with ash and dust. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in days, but her eyes were wild with something stronger than hunger: fear.

He watched as she stumbled toward the flames, hands outstretched.

"She’s still there!" Emma sobbed out.

"The girl in my room! She was hiding there! Everyone thought she ran—Everyone thought she escaped—" Emma tried to scream out while running but her voice came out with difficulty due to so much smoke around.

Agustin's blood ran cold.

One of his men stepped forward, grabbing Emma by her arms before she could run into the inferno. She kicked and screamed, desperate. “Let me go! She’ll die there!”

Emma thrashed around in that man's arms ready to break away because she couldn't even imagine Innara dying inside there with her unborn child. Agustin was already moving after looking at the chaos and registering her incomplete words.

"Where?" he barked in urgency, striding up to Emma.

"Where exactly?" He felt he didn't have enough time to listen to her.

"Top floor! Last room at the end of the right hallway! She was locked in! She was pregnant—please, please, don’t let her die there—" before Emma could complete her sentence he felt his feet moving as fast as they could.

Pregnant.

Top floor.

His heart skipped. He didn’t wait for another word.

Without hesitation, Agustin sprinted across the street, the heat pushing against him like a wall. His coat caught sparks, his lungs filled with smoke — but he kept running. Flames licked the windows. Wood cracked and shattered around him. The fire was alive now, and it was angry.

He burst through the crumbling entrance, dodging falling beams, the word pregnant was echoing in his mind. How could he make such a mistake something so irresponsible like that. He should have checked twice. He was blaming himself for all the things and today if something happens to Innara he will blame himself for that. His feet didn't halt for a moment and he climbed the stairs as fast as he could.

Scaling the grand staircase two steps at a time. The air inside was thick and choking, a nightmare of fire and ash.

Top floor. Last room. End of the right hallway.

The heat was unbearable. But he didn’t stop.

He couldn’t.

Because someone was still inside.

Someone who hasn’t been saved.

Someone who had been forgotten.

Innara.