Chapter 20

Zavier stood straight, calm restored, and turned away.

"Envíen el cuerpo al muelle. Que las ratas confiesen sus pecados." He said tossing the blade on the table beside them.

(Translation: Send the body to the docks. Let the rats confess his sins.)

Then he walked to a screen and tapped it. A satellite image of Madrid loaded slowly. He zoomed in - to the apartment block. His eyes were on Agustín and Innara like a hungry lion hunting for his prey. His predatory gaze and unmatchable mind were focused on them and one golden opportunity, she will be caged in his golden cage.

"Tarde o temprano, la niña saldrá a la luz del sol y cuando lo haga... le recordaré a quién pertenece ahora." he murmured, eyes narrowing not even interested in her.

(Translation: Sooner or later, the girl will step into sunlight and when she does... I will remind her who she belongs to now.)

He glanced at Niccolo again.

"Envía un señuelo. Que Agustín crea que está persiguiendo sombras mientras yo consigo lo que quiero." Zavier added coldly. (Translation: Send in a decoy. Let Agustín think he's chasing shadows while I get what I want.)

Niccolo gave a stiff nod and vanished immediately into the dark to work upon his orders. Zavier remained there, eyes fixed on the glowing screen. He was determined to ruin the Fernandez family and rule over Spain too. That will bring more power to his hands, more authority, more terror and less humanity. His reflection stared back at him.

Not a man.

But a storm waiting to fall again.

_____________

Somewhere in the dark, unknown to everyone there was someone who was watching everything like a shadow. He was keeping his eyes on each and every move of everyone as if they were the pawns and he was the player, he was enjoying every bit of the game everyone was playing with each other. He likes to see people fighting for having the upper hand but he is the one who always has the upper hand. He was the one who started the game in which everyone was trapped.

Inside, the glow of the fireplace reflected off black marble floors, casting golden shadows across a room cloaked in both elegance and secrecy. A man stood alone before the massive floor-to-ceiling window, his back turned to the fire, watching the dark corner with the stillness of someone used to storms - both around him and within.

He stood there dressed in a three-piece black suit, he exuded control. Every inch of him was composed - but behind his silver-ringed fingers, behind the smooth scotch in his hand, behind the silence - lay the cold fire of possession. On a sleek monitor to his left, paused in crisp resolution, was Innara. Her face, tired but alive, captured in a still from Madrid's security footage. Her hand rested gently on her swollen belly.

A flick of his hand. The screen split - showing Agustín's private jet logs, the ashes of the New York brothel, and encrypted communications from Zavier's estate. All pieces of a puzzle he had already put together. As per the game which he created or like everyone fell into a trap which didn't mean for them. The room was a mirror of himself - cold, immaculate, and dangerous in its silence.

He walked out in another room completely different from the previous one. Glass walls overlooked the sleeping city below, skyscrapers blinking under the night sky. Inside, the only light came from a crystal desk lamp casting shadows across leather-bound books, hand-drawn maps, and a portrait: faded, old, and clearly handled too many times.

In it was a younger girl - no more than eighteen - with wide, startled eyes. Innara.

The man sat and leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, studying the grain of her face in the portrait like it was a puzzle only he could solve. His suit was crisp, not a thread out of place, and his expression? Composed. Controlled. But underneath - rage brewed. Suddenly there was a knock at the door.

"Enter." he said, his voice deep and measured. A suited man stepped in, clearly nervous.

"Sir, just as you predicted - Zavier's begun moving. Surveillance confirms he's mobilizing his private network in Madrid. But he's unaware of her full condition... or of your-"

"I know." the man cut in, not looking away from the portrait.

He didn't react immediately. He stood, slow and deliberate, and walked to the bar cart. Pouring a small glass of dark rum, he spoke without turning around.

"Do you know what I hate more than failure?" He asked the man making him gulp in fear.

"No, sir." He replied honestly and scared.

A moment passed.

Then finally, he turned.

His face - half-lit by the lamp light - was hauntingly cold, aged not by time, but by choices. His eyes, sharp and calculating, held a storm of secrets... but one emotion cut through everything else like a scar.

Hatred.

"Interference." He sipped.

"Zavier has always been a bleeding heart wrapped in a wolf's skin. While Agustín saves what he thinks is broken. But they both don't realize..." He turned, eyes glinting.

"Some things aren't broken. Some things were made in the fire." He said with a ting of annoyance in his voice.

He walked toward a table where newspaper clippings were spread - headlines about the brothel burning, about a private jet leaving New York, about "anonymous rescues."

"She wasn't meant to survive, let alone resurface." he said, almost musing now.

"And yet here she is. Carrying a child under Agustín's roof. She survived. Even after what I did... And now she's with him." he said, more to himself than to the other man.

His gaze lowered to her potrait.

"She doesn't know the child is mine. The poor thing couldn't even have figured out after warming so many beds that to whom the child belongs." He said with an evil glint in his eyes.

Silence.

He looked down at a newer photo - grainy surveillance from Madrid, barely clear enough to make out Innara's figure in a window.

His voice lowered.

"Does she even remember whose chains first cut her skin? Or has he made her forget?" That man said looked up at the other one.

"I want answers. Not eyes. Not guns. Answers. What she remembers. What she'd told him. And if she hasn't said anything yet...We'll make sure she never gets the chance." He smiled faintly like a maniac.

"And if Agustín finds out we're close?" The man hesitated and said.

That man turned back to the portrait, brushing his fingers over Innara's face with unsettling coldness.

"Then he'll learn what it feels like to lose something he never really had." He set the glass down, untouched now.

"She's a memory I buried," the man whispered, leaning in close to the portrait.

"A child who was never supposed to grow up. A witness to rot. A symbol of failure. And now she's carrying a child in my city. She should've died. And Agustín... should've never touched what belonged to me." The man said venomously and his jaw clenched tight with hatred.

"Sir..." the man hesitated to put his words.

"Should I initiate contact? Or warn Agustín?" The man suggested and he let out a slow breath, then smirked faintly - the kind of smirk that chilled bone.

"No. Let Zavier play his part. Let Agustín believe he's her savior." He stepped closer to the portrait , picking the glass up.

"They're all just pieces in a game they don't realize I designed." He said and chugged down all contents of the glass in a go.

After a few hours, he was sitting on a chair waiting for some reports which he asked his men to prepare before dawn. The screens glowed brighter now as the sun began to rise over Madrid and Seville.

The unknown man sat in the black leather chair at the center of the command room - still, unblinking. His eyes flicked between two monitors. One showed Zavier, pacing restlessly inside a dimly lit warehouse near the outskirts of Andalusia. The other displayed Agustín's family estate, calm as ever - but he knew it was only a matter of time before someone made the wrong move.

"Report," he said again, voice calm but cold.

"Zavier was seen making contact with a known associate of the now-defunct East European ring," the analyst replied. "He's agitated, sir. He knows Agustín took something - but not what."

"He's always been impulsive," the man murmured. "Wounded pride makes him reckless."

Another feed zoomed in on Agustín's youngest father, walking through the vineyard near the estate. Behind him, too far to be noticed, a drone tracked every footstep. The man leaned forward, examining the reflection of his face in the screen.

"Do they suspect anything?" he asked.

"No. Not a single one. We've been inside their systems for months - bank logs, travel routes, guard rotations. They're still blind."

The man gave a slow nod, but there was no victory in his expression.

"Good," he said. "Because I need them to stay blind... until I decide otherwise."

He pressed a button on the armrest. The camera switched to a hidden view of Innara, seated in the corner of a quiet café in central Madrid, Agustín by her side - the curve of her belly hidden under soft layers, her eyes no longer hollow, but wary. Brave.

He stared at her longer than the others. Longer than anything else.

"You think you're safe now, little dove," he whispered to the screen. "But this world never forgets who you belong to."

Another operative approached cautiously, holding a tablet.

"Sir... there's something else."

"What?"

"The apartment. The one Agustín took her to... It's been reinforced. New locks, surveillance blockers. He's hiding her even from his own family."

A pause.

Then a dangerous smirk curled at the corner of the man's mouth.

"Of course he is. Because deep down... he knows I'm watching."

He rose from the chair, walking toward the window at the far end of the hall. Outside, nothing but snow-draped mountains. Silence.

"Zavier will go after him first," he said. "His pride demands it."

"And what about Innara, sir?"

The man turned slightly, his voice soft but chilling.

"She'll come back to me. Not because I force her..." He smiled faintly. "But because she'll realize no one else knows how to love a ruin like I do."

He stepped into the shadows - leaving behind screens still filled with faces who had no idea they were already part of a war.

A war he started.

And one only he knew how to end.

"Now what should we do sir?" The man asked him which made a bone chilling smirk to come upon his lips.

"Disappear Innara from Agustín's life and let him think that Zavier took her." He ordered and got a nod from his man.

"Should we bring her here?" The man asked but he shook his head in denial.

"No. I can't risk my reputation by bringing her here." He said scary him his chin with a form precision.

"Then where, sir?" The man asked which made him turn towards the table where a map resided.

"Hide her somewhere in Mexico. I have strong connections which would help you hiding her there without Zavier's acknowledgement." The man said and his even glinted with pure evil intensions.

"Okay sir." The man nodded firmly and turned his fellow gesturing them to come with him.

"Stop." The man commanded halting their steps in the mid way and they turned around instantly.

"Kill that baby." The man instructed which made a chill ran down those men's spine.

How cruel this man could be that he was ready to kill his own unborn child.

"Yes sir." Nonetheless one of them said ready to work upon his instructions and they started marching out of that room.

Ready to take that little unborn baby's life.

The man stood their gazing at Innara portrait with an unreadable expression but obsession was quite clear in his eyes.