Chapter 124: What if I let him capture me?

Viktor’s expression didn’t shift much, but she caught the small flicker of hesitation before he answered. "My men took care of it. Like every other body."

Like every other body. Said so plainly, so easily, that it should have settled the matter entirely.

Except Sienna remembered that night with a clarity that still made her stomach turn. She remembered the panic in the air, the police sirens already threading closer through the streets outside the library, Viktor’s grip closing hard around her arm as he pulled her out through a side door before she could fully process what she’d just witnessed.

She remembered voices his men, she was almost certain saying there wasn’t time. No time to clean anything up properly. No time to do this the way it was apparently always done.

And yet the next morning, there had been nothing. No headlines. No police reports. No mention anywhere of a body found in a university library, a scene that should have been impossible to erase so completely, so quickly.

Had Viktor simply had the police paid off? Was it truly that simple that a man like him could make an entire crime scene disappear with nothing more than a phone call and the right amount of money?

She turned it over slowly in her mind, careful not to let any of it show on her face. She didn’t ask the question sitting heaviest on her tongue. She only watched him, quiet, thoughtful, piecing together fragments she wasn’t ready to hand over just yet.

Viktor studied her in the silence that followed, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, and then without warning he pulled her into a hug.

It caught her off guard, though not in the way she might have expected. She wasn’t shocked, exactly. Some part of her had already been bracing for exactly this kind of gesture, the quiet reassurance he seemed to think she needed.

She simply stood there for a moment, laptop still trapped awkwardly between them, letting herself absorb the solid warmth of him, even as her mind kept working steadily in the background, sorting through everything that didn’t quite add up.

"You don’t have to worry," Viktor murmured against the top of her head, his voice low, steady, certain in a way that was clearly meant to comfort her. "I’ll take care of it. Nothing is going to happen to you." A pause, his arms tightening fractionally around her. "I will not allow it."

Before she could gather her thoughts enough to respond, to ask the harder questions crowding at the edges of her mind, about police reports and disappearing bodies and just how deep his reach truly went, the front door opened again, and Aria walked in.

Viktor must have called her on the drive back, Sienna realized. Of everyone he could have summoned to the mansion in the middle of an unfolding crisis, he’d chosen the one person he clearly believed could keep her calm.

"Hey," Aria said softly, crossing the room toward her, her usual bright energy dimmed into something gentler, more careful.

Sienna didn’t say anything. Her mind was already racing too far ahead, cycling through half-formed plans, trying to work out how she was supposed to untangle any of this, get her own answers, her own justice, without anyone else getting hurt in the process.

"Don’t worry," Aria said quietly, stepping in close, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "I’ll take care of her."

She led Sienna gently but firmly toward the staircase, quiet and steady in a way that asked no questions yet, giving her the space to simply breathe for a moment.

Behind them, Viktor was already turning back toward Marcus, voice dropping low again as the two of them fell back into the grim, practical work of preparing for whatever Fabio Fernandez intended to do next.

"If I tip the police in the Middle East with evidence of his crimes, do you think that could make him leave?" Sienna asked, already calculating, her mind several steps ahead before Aria had even settled onto the bed beside her.

"Alright, brief me, girl, I’m lost," Aria said, tucking one leg beneath her, giving Sienna her full attention.

"Okay." Sienna set her laptop down carefully between them, drawing in a breath as she organized the pieces in her head. "Fabio’s son is Julian. And he’s the same guy Viktor killed in the library that night."

Aria’s eyes went wide. "Oh no. This is messed up." She sat up straighter, a thought visibly catching hold behind her eyes. "But wait, could he have been there for you? And maybe my uncle saved you without even knowing it?" Her voice brightened despite the darkness of the conversation, an eager, hopeful lilt creeping in.

"That’s fate, girl. A sign. You two are meant to meet. If he was at that library that late, it means they found you, right?"

That was Aria for her, always finding a way to stitch the good parts together, even out of the wreckage.

"Aria, focus." Sienna pressed her fingers briefly against her temple.

"What fate? We make our own fate. That was a coincidence, or maybe it wasn’t, but that’s not the point right now." She dropped her hand, jaw tightening with the sharper, more practical question underneath everything.

"How do I corner him and get the answers I want, and get rid of him, at the same time?"

She paused, replaying the moment on the mountain in her mind. "This time, when we met again, I didn’t hide. I looked him in the eye. And I think he recognized me. I’m almost sure he did because he actually let us go without a fight, and that only adds to my suspicion."

Her brow furrowed, pieces sliding into place as she thought back through years she rarely let herself revisit.

"Looking back at all those years of them chasing me, they never actually tried to kill me. Just capture me."

"Well, if that’s true," Aria said slowly, "then capturing him and torturing him for answers probably won’t make him talk either."

"What if I let him capture me?" Sienna said, the idea arriving fully formed, startling even herself with how quickly it clicked into place. "That way, no one gets hurt, and I finally get to know what they’re really after."