CHAPTER 517: BEFORE THE MASK CAME OFF (PART TWO)

After receiving the hotel address, Silas stood by the window for a moment, his eyes following the reflection of the mobile phone screen between his gloved fingers. The autumn sunlight filtering through the glass could not warm the chill lingering in the room. The apartment was too clean, too polished, and frozen like a frame in a picture.

The only sound was the hum of the air purifier in the corner of the room.

Silas’s expression didn’t change. With a slow, precise movement, he locked the screen, slipped the mobile phone into his overcoat pocket, and picked up his keys from the sanitised tray by the door.

Then he stepped out of his apartment.

In the past few days, he had been busy, managing the difficult patient while running a thorough investigation on that silver-haired young man, using Francis’s family’s connections to pull data that others couldn’t even reach.

When he had mentioned that the Du Pont family was somehow tied to Micah Ramsy, his aunt had perked up instantly, curiosity filling her eyes. She had been more than happy to take charge of the job. Even offered to provide an échantillon service on the side. Silas had agreed, handing the job to his aunt, using her offer to dig deeper into the Apha Dominus app and the username that asked for him.

Unfortunately, the BashfulWallFlower account was protected by a professional anti-tracking shield. Not amateur stuff. Military-grade encryption that made it untraceable. There was a reason to assume they were not ordinary people.

Silas had marked them as his top-priority targets he should tackle first.

But the app itself was interesting, connected to underworld forces.

His aunt had suggested something simple. "Use what you have," she had said over the phone. "Leverage. Threats. Make them work for you."

But Silas didn’t like that kind of straightforward method. Putting pressure, cornering the opponent too early, just broke things easily.

He liked to toy with his prey. Let the prey walk willingly into the trap, thinking they were the one in control, thinking they were the predator. Let them smile, gloat, or even pity him until they realised too late that every choice they had made was already his design. At that moment, when their expression shifted, their confidence turned to terror, right before being devoured by him; that was what Silas collected.

It made him feel something close to joy.

Silas sat behind the wheel and drove to the hotel in silence.

When he arrived near the hotel, he glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes early. Good. He hated being late. He hated being early even more.

He parked in a shadowed corner of the lot. Waiting in the lobby was out of the question. Crowds meant sweat, noise, and breathing too close. Through the windshield, he watched the street. The pedestrians were pressed together, moving like a restless swarm. A banner in the distance flapped in the wind, probably some local festival. Music, chatter, loud. Things that Silas had no interest in.

His mind drifted back to that night he was forced to hang out with his two cousins. The night Micah appeared. His aunt still had not sent the information about that silver-haired young man. What kind of skeletons could be hidden in Micah’s closet to take so long for his aunt to uncover?

His gloved fingers tapped on the steering wheel, thoughtful.

Then, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a flash of silver hair. Silas’s head turned sharply to the right. There across the street, a car screeched. A child had been thrown into the road, and before the impact came, a figure lunged forward, grabbing the child and yanking them back onto the pavement. The car shifted past, horns blaring, tyres screeching.

The crowd gasped and hovered, but Silas barely registered. His eyes were fixed on that figure. A girl with long silver hair... Was it that common? Or had it caught his attention because of that young man?

Silas watched as the tall girl sat there, breathless, clutching the child close, comforting the crying boy, her movements natural. Not clumsy. Not frantic.

When people rushed to her, she flinched. She ducked her head, quickly hiding her face with a mask and hat, itching to run away.

Looking at it objectively, this girl was suspicious. She behaved like she was hiding something.

If she were socially awkward, why would she throw herself to rescue the boy?

This type of personality, people with social anxiety, avoided crowded places in the first place, and if it inevitably happened that way, when they found themselves here in a crowd, they would freeze, stay stuck, locked in place, while their mind screamed at them to run. They would not care about what was happening in their surroundings because they were too busy calming themselves.

And if by some miracle they did act, their movements would be shaky, uncoordinated and poor that they would fail before even trying. And if by sheer luck they could rescue the child, they would experience a severe backlash afterwards from the stress. They would collapse, break down, cry, tremble and all.

Not like this girl. She was agile, her reflexes quick and sharp, protecting herself and the child like she had done it thousand times.

She wasn’t timid. She was trained.

The type who wanted to be a hero, even at their own expense. A Saviour complex. White knight tendencies.

Those usually came with extroverted personalities, people who wanted to be seen, who needed approval, and were not necessarily skittish.

And yet the girl behaved like she was uncomfortable with the praise, with the attention.

Contradictory.

Was she delusional? Bipolar? Schizophrenic? Role playing? Dissociative identity disorder? A list of medical diagnoses ran through Silas’s head.

He watched as someone treated her injured hand clumsily, and then she vanished.

Silas looked at his watch. Well, it was time to go.

He walked inside the hotel and met the lawyer, a middle-aged woman.

She handed him the contract folder. He accepted it by the edge of the file, careful not to touch her fingers. He always noticed people’s hands first, the dirt under nails, the small flake of dry skin, the polished, fake brightness of manicured nails.

He pulled a pen from his pocket and flipped through the papers. Everything looked exactly as he had seen before.

He signed the contract without asking questions. There was no need. He already knew the app’s operation from top to bottom.