Alle Kapitel von THE DEVIL'S TOY CAME FOR REVENGE : Kapitel 41 – Kapitel 50

ERDEM "There's somewhere I need to show you," I said, finding Hendrix in the corridor outside the kitchen after the confrontation with Silas. "I should have shown you weeks ago. I didn't think it was relevant.""Show me what?""The punishment room. Beneath the east wing. It's where Silas spent a considerable portion of his adolescence, under our father's instruction."Hendrix's expression sharpened. "You think there's something there that connects to Liora and Katya.""I don't know. I only know I've avoided the room myself for years, for reasons that have to do with memory I'd rather not revisit. I think, given everything else we've uncovered, avoiding it any longer serves neither of us." "So what are you going to do about Katya's case?""Konstantin will handle it. Silas can be manipulative, reckless, and vindictive, but I don't think he killed Katya."Hendrix's expression remained unconvinced."I know what you're thinking," I said. "Katya"s death isn’t going to disappear while we i

HENDRIXThe transmitter Vera had given me was hidden in the lining of my coat. I used it three days after her ultimatum in the garden, needing more time, needing to buy whatever leverage I could against a deadline that felt increasingly impossible to meet honestly."I still need more time," I said, keeping my voice low, positioned in the far corner of my room. "I gave you one more week as a courtesy. That courtesy remains fixed, Hendrix." "He's not—""Don't." The single word carried more warning than an hour of lecture could have. "Don't finish that sentence with something that sounds like you're defending him.""I'm not defending him. I'm telling you the evidence doesn't support what we originally believed. If I move against him now, based on false certainty, I lose any chance of learning who actually—"The door opened before I could finish.Erdem stood in the doorway, his expression carrying a stillness I immediately recognized as dangerous, his eyes fixed on the small transmitte

HENDRIXAfter the incident of the guard's confession, everything became more complicated.The parking garage beneath the district courthouse should have been secure. Erdem's meeting with a neutral family's representative had been arranged carefully, the location chosen specifically for its distance from both Veyra and Arzan territory.The ambush proved that careful planning meant less than either of us wanted to believe.They came from three directions at once, the concrete pillars offering cover, gunfire erupting the moment Erdem's car rolled to a stop in the assigned space. I was out of the vehicle instantly, my blade already in hand."Down!" Erdem's voice came sharp.This was no longer a surprise to me. I dropped low behind the car's rear panel as bullets sparked off metal above us, Erdem's return fire methodical despite the chaos, each shot placed with the same economical precision I'd witnessed in the warehouse weeks earlier.A shooter emerged from behind the nearest pillar, weap

HENDRIXThey moved me before dawn, two guards escorting me through corridors down a stairwell. The cage waited at the corridor's end — iron bars set into old stone, a space barely large enough to stand upright in."This is the compromise," Konstantin said, his voice carrying none of its usual careful neutrality. "Aleksov's people wanted you dead by dawn. Erdem convinced them a formal cage, visible proof of custody, would satisfy their demand for justice while the investigation continues.""How generous of him."He locked the cage door behind me without further comment, and I sank onto the cold stone floor, wrists still bound.I'd spent days convincing myself that whatever existed between us had become something worth the risk of trusting, only to find, the moment real cost arrived, that his loyalty still remained only to his empire. Hours passed. I lost track of the exact time in the cage's featureless dark, marking passage only by the guard rotation's changing footsteps and the slow

KONSTANTINI found it going through the guard logs for something else entirely, cross-referencing shift assignments against Silas's known movements over the past month. Damir's signature was on half a dozen rotation changes that shouldn't have needed his authorization at all — minor reassignments, guards pulled from one corridor and put somewhere else for an hour, always around times that lined up, a little too neatly, with Silas being somewhere he had no obvious reason to be. I sat with it overnight before I brought it to Erdem, because once I did, there was no walking it back.ERDEM"You've been feeding my brother information," I said, laying the logs out on the desk between us.Damir looked at them for a long moment before he answered, and that pause told me most of what I needed to know."Guard rotations. Nothing more.""Guard rotations that gave him access, repeatedly, to parts of this house he shouldn't have had reason to be in." I kept my voice low, because if I let it