Chapter 825 - 824- Information that She Already Had

Chapter 825: Chapter 824- Information that She Already Had

The forest, dark and wet, was a maze. Trees, tall and ancient, blocked the moonlight. The undergrowth, thick and tangled, grabbed at her legs. Roots, hidden beneath the leaves, tripped her. She fell. Got up. Ran. Fell again. Got up. Ran.

The men, behind her, were faster. Their legs were longer. Their bodies, stronger. They knew the forest. They had scouted the manor before the attack. They knew the paths.

Johana ran blindly. No path. No plan. Just the instinctive flight of a prey animal. Her feet, bare, were cut by roots, by stones, by thorns. The cuts bled. The blood, mixed with the rain, left red footprints on the wet earth.

She burst through the tree line. The forest ended. The ground, suddenly, dropped away.

A cliff.

She stopped. Her feet, sliding on the wet grass, stopped inches from the edge. Below, the river. Black and churning. The water, swollen by the rain, moved fast. The rocks, at the base of the cliff, were sharp and white in the moonlight.

She turned.

The three men emerged from the trees. Naked. Their clothes, discarded in the pursuit. Their cocks, limp and swinging, hung between their legs. Their masks, still on, were dark with rain. Their bodies, scarred and muscled, gleamed with water.

The tall man held a knife. The second man held another. The third man, empty-handed, cracked his knuckles.

"Come on, girl," the tall man said. His voice, breathless from the chase, was almost gentle. Mocking. "We can have just fun, right? We will not kill you."

"Probably," the second man added. "You might just die."

They laughed. The sound, harsh and ugly, echoed off the cliff face.

Johana, standing at the edge, looked at them. Her small body, trembling and soaked, was rigid. Her eyes, pink and gray, were wide. Not with fear. With something else. Something harder. Something that, in a child, was terrifying.

"Who sent you?" she said. Her voice, small and clear, cut through the rain. The question of a child who, despite everything, still believed in answers.

The men looked at each other. The tall man shrugged.

"It does not matter," he said.

They lurched. Forward. Three men, moving as one. The distance, ten feet, closed in two seconds.

Johana turned. And jumped.

The edge of the cliff disappeared beneath her feet. The ground, solid and real, became nothing. Air. Wind. Rain. The sensation of falling, weightless and brief, lasted two seconds. Two seconds that lasted forever.

She looked up. At the cliff. At the men, standing at the edge, looking down. Their arms, raised. Their hands, holding knives.

The blades flew. Through the rain. Through the air. Two knives. Both found their mark. The first, in her shoulder. The blade, sharp and heavy, buried itself in the muscle. The pain, white and blinding, made her scream. The second, in her thigh. The blade, cutting through the meat of her leg, hit bone.

The poison. On the blades. The same necrotic agent. It entered her bloodstream. Immediate. The burn, spreading from the wounds, was unlike anything she had ever felt. Worse than the pain. Worse than the fall. The sensation of her body, her cells, her very being, being dissolved from within.

’Am I going to die?’

The thought, calm and clear, was her last before the water.

The river caught her. The impact, stunning and total, drove the air from her lungs. The cold, shocking and absolute, clamped around her body. The current, strong and relentless, grabbed her. Pulled her under. Spun her. Tumbled her.

The world went dark.

Splash.

The sound, sharp and wet, echoed through the underground room. Through the memory. Through the years.

Johana opened her eyes.

She was not in the river. She was not falling. She was not eight years old. She was sitting on a sofa, in a room beneath the slums, holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold. The cup, ceramic and white, trembled in her hands. The coffee, black and still, reflected her face. A face that was no longer eight. A face that was lined and hard and carried the weight of years that had been lived in the shadow of that night.

Tears fell. From her eyes. Down her cheeks. Into the coffee. The drops, landing on the surface, created ripples. Small, concentric circles that distorted her reflection.

She looked up.

Viktor sat across from her. His mask, removed, was on the table beside him. His face, young and sharp and impossibly calm, looked at her. His violet eyes, glowing faintly, held no judgment. No pity. Just the steady, patient gaze of a man who knew things and was willing to share them at his own pace.

Beside him, the mother-in-law. Still collared. Still in the short skirt. Still marked with the evidence of what had happened in the alley above. She sat, trembling, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the floor. Her thighs, bare and cum-stained, were pressed together. Her breasts, barely contained by the bodice, rose and fell with each rapid breath.

"Must have been a bad dream," Viktor said. His voice was light. Conversational. The voice of a man commenting on the weather.

Johana stared at him. The tears, still falling, blurred her vision. The coffee, cold and forgotten, shook in her hands.

"How do you know all that?" she said. Her voice was raw. The voice of a woman whose past had been excavated and laid bare. "How do you know about that night? How do you know what they did to her? How do you know about the cliff?"

The questions tumbled out. Rapid. Urgent. The questions of a woman who had spent years, decades, burying the memory and had just watched it exhumed by a stranger.

Viktor leaned back. His arms, crossed over his chest, were relaxed. The posture of a man who was about to deliver information and wanted his audience comfortable. Or at least seated.

"The royal family," he said. "As you already know, the Crown Prince Leo had a hand in it."

Johana scoffed. The sound was wet, broken by the tears. "Now you are blaming some little prince. You know he was little at that time. He was a child."

"Even being little, you already know what he had done." Viktor’s voice was steady. Unchanged. "Aren’t you a member of the intelligence guild? You know how these things work. Children of royalty are not children. They are instruments."

Johana bit her lip. The gesture, unconscious, was the same one she’d had since childhood. Her teeth, pressing into the soft flesh, drew a thin line of pain that anchored her.

"I know," she said. Her voice was barely audible. "I know. I also have thought that. The timing. The orders. The way the men operated. It was too coordinated for a simple noble house operation. There was royal backing."

"But why?" Viktor repeated the question she hadn’t asked. "I already know all of this. If you have given this information to me a few years ago, you might have had the chance to bargain. But now..."

He paused. Let the silence work.

"You already have this information on you," he said. "Correct?"