"So you're saying... my father saw you two smuggling. And then you killed everyone," Paul said flatly.
"Yeah—yeah, but it wasn't like that," Aldo replied. "If those products had reached the officials, we were the ones who would've died. It was us or him."
"To save your future, you destroyed mine."
"Your father... Samuel Vaxlar. We tried to negotiate with him," Aldo leaned back. "But he was asking for more than we could afford. I gave him a warning, but he said he had pictures. Records. He had us in a corner."
"But why the others?" Paul's head tilted.
"Because he said everyone knows. He told us that even if we killed him, his wife would leak the information. Samuel was greedy."
"He wasn't," Paul's words were hesitant. "My father wasn't like that at all. He was..."
"Samuel was backstabbing his own company," Aldo pressed more. "And when he discovered the bigger deal, he got even greedier. We knew Samuel well. We knew he'd keep asking for more the more we gave him. He was a businessman, just like us."
"No. No. No—"
Paul's palm came up over his face. His shoulders drew inward, his whole frame collapsing slowly around the weight of it.
"He wasn't that type of person. He was a good, honest man. We didn't need any extra money. We were happy. We were... we were stable."
Aldo and George watched the boy mumble into his hands. They exchanged a quick glance, then looked toward the one-way glass. They knew the people outside were watching.
Then, the mumbling stopped. Paul's fingers parted slowly, just enough for his eyes to peer through the gaps.
"You are lying."
"No, I—"
"You're lying!" Paul's voice cracked, echoing off the steel walls.
Aldo's mouth closed. His eyes wide watching the boy shake violently.
Slowly, Paul's hands parted, falling onto the table with a dull thud.
"This is the only truth," George said. "Either accept it or not. Your father was a man who made wrong choices. He died and took his wife and son with him, leaving you behind.
Paul's head snapped toward George. "Who gave you the order?"
George didn't reply.
"I asked..." Paul's hand shot across the table and seized Aldo's wrist. He yanked it forward and drove the blade into his palm.
"Who gave you the order? You didn't kill a family just because you thought one man was a problem. You didn't have the spine for that. There was someone else, wasn't there?"
Aldo gritted his teeth as pain surged through him.
"You asked for someone else's permission," Paul whispered close to Aldo's ear. "Who was it?"
Paul twisted the knife, the wound widening with a wet, sickening squelch.
"Ten years ago, you were just a nobody. You didn't have the audacity to kill a child. Someone promised to make your future better."
Paul began to drag the knife out, millimeter by millimeter. "Give me the name."
"I don't... I don't know!" Aldo gasped.
Paul didn't stop. He kept dragging the blade through torn flesh.
"Give. Me. The. Name."
"I'm telling the truth! I don't know who he was! I never got a name!" Aldo screamed. "I just remember his face! I only ever saw the face!"
Paul stopped. The only sound was the rhythmic drip of blood hitting the floor. He let go of the knife; the blade stayed put in the table, sticking right in the wound.
He stood up and walked over to the corner shelves. He grabbed a thick notebook and a pen from the files.
Back at his seat, Paul flipped to a blank page. A drop of blood from his sleeve soaked into the paper.
"Describe him."
Aldo looked at George, then back at Paul. His mouth opened then closed.
"And remember," Paul leaned forward. "If I sense a lie—if a single detail is made up—it's gonna be bad for both of you."
Aldo swallowed hard and nodded. "He... he was…"
Julian pressed his head against the glass, squinting to see what Paul was sketching.
"I think he got it." He glanced at Sara. "His next target. Phew... I thought he was going to kill them for sure."
"He will," Sara muttered. "Once the sketch is finished."
She had seen Paul work. He wasn't the type to leave loose ends.
"Yeah," Julian sighed. "You're probably right."
Sara didn't look away from the glass. Even with the barrier between them, even though she could no longer hear his voice, she felt closer to him than she ever had in two years.
This was the first time she had seen him without the filter of the "normal" world.
This was the real Paul. The one hiding behind the calm masks and the deflected conversations. Was this what Simon wanted her to see?
"I was wondering something," Julian said, turning to Simon. "How do you know Tyler?"
"Tyler?" Simon asked.
"The guy who brought Aldo in at the last second."
"Viper?"
"Yeah, yeah. Who is he?"
"We were a team once," Simon said, his voice flat. "After a mission on Neomar, the team was disbanded. I was sent to Philip. Viper was sent back to Neomar."
"I thought he looked familiar."
"Did you talk to him?" Simon asked sharply.
"Yeah..." Julian rubbed the back of his neck.
"Just a brief exchange. Nothing much."
Simon nodded. "Keep your distance from him."
"Yeah. He felt off. Not a guy I want to mess with."
Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall.
Sara and Julian turned at the same time.
Philip Grayson stood at the threshold, his face pale, his eyes fixed on the interrogation room glass.
"Stop this." He walked toward them.
"Paul is almost done," Simon said. "He's about to—"
"This case is closed." Philip's voice cut clean inside the room. "We're done here."
Simon didn't argue. He gave a single nod. "Open the door."
Julian moved for the handle and twisted. It didn't open. He tried again, putting his weight into it.
"It's locked."
None of it reached Paul.
The room had narrowed to the size of the table in front of him. Aldo had gone quiet. His eyes moved between Philip's silhouette behind the glass and the boy with the pen, but Paul didn't look up.
His hand moved on its own. Like it already knew what it was drawing before his mind caught up.
He wasn't working from Aldo's description anymore. The description had stopped mattering several lines ago. He was pulling something up from somewhere deeper than memory, somewhere he hadn't been able to reach before tonight, and his hand was following it down.
The door hit the wall.
Julian came through first, crossing the room fast, reaching for Paul's shoulder.
Paul didn't move.
The pen slipped from his fingers. It rolled through the blood pooled at the edge of the table and stopped.
Paul leaned forward.
The sketch looked back at him.
High cheekbones. Thin lips. Eyes that had once looked at him with warmth.
"Uncle?"
The word lingered like a ghost, the last, thin thread to a childhood already burning away.
Paul entered the bedroom. The air hung heavy. He sat on the edge of the bed, his mouth opening, then snapping shut.
Why did you do it?
Why did he do it?
His hands flew up, slamming against his ears, pressing until his heartbeat was the loudest thing he could hear. He squeezed his eyes shut.
2012.
A sun-drenched street. Tree shadows striped the pavement in slow motion. A five-year-old boy. His hand nestled in a bigger one, warm and secure.
"Still don't like home?"
The boy's fingers tightened around his uncle's hand.
Stop.
"What about school? You said you made a friend."
"She's nice," the boy whispered.
"Nice?" The man grinned. "You like her?"
The boy shook his head, cheeks burning red.
The man chuckled softly.
Stop it.
The man effortlessly scooped the boy up, settling him on his hip. A hand ruffling his messy hair. The touch of someone who planned on sticking around.
"So? Wanna go say hi?"
"Yeah... but..." The boy rested his head on the man's shoulder.
He felt the shoulder support him. He felt safe.
I said stop!
Paul felt it too.
He wanted to stay on that street.
He wanted to go back to being five years old, held tight, knowing nothing. The hand in his hair had been real. The shoulder had been real. The safety, real.
He had loved this man.
Stop—
The man who held him on that street had looked at his family and made a choice.
And I don't know…
He got out of bed. His reflection was waiting in the closet mirror. He forced himself to look.
A face pieced together from wreckage, held together by obsession of emptiness.