Chapter 226

Police Commissioner Angus Stone, at first glance, seemed like any ordinary middle-aged man who found comfort in walking his dog, golfing, and fishing. But a few misguided choices had set him at the crossroads of villainy.

In the past, when he served as chief of the Riverland Police Department, Angus had been invited to a luncheon for the support of crime victims. There he happened to meet Jackson Cliff, a wealthy patron. He was a man of refined presence, handsome and charismatic, with an elegance that drew people in.

Not only had they graduated from the same university, they also shared a passion for fishing, and Jackson possessed a depth of knowledge in criminology. Sometimes they would speak for hours on a single theme, and through those conversations Angus felt a kind of human exhilaration, as though he were uplifted simply by being near him.

Was it a mistake to trust him too completely as a friend beyond compare? Or was it Angus’s judgment, dulled by drink, that led him to boast even of his secret taste for teenage girls? One late afternoon, Angus opened his eyes in the arms of a beautiful woman.

He was so drunk that his memories came back only in fragments, but he knew it was after he had engaged in a wild sexual encounter with a call girl. The call girl was a teenage girl provided by a prostitution agency that supplies carefully selected women to satisfy clients' secret sexual preferences.

Overcome with shame, he fled the hotel as if escaping. Days later, he received a videotape delivered to the police station. It contained footage of Angus shyly confessing his feelings for the girl, followed by scenes of him having sex with a minor. The sender was Jackson Cliff, the man he had considered his one and only friend in the world.

Jackson Cliff blackmailed him with the video. Angus, terrified of being cast out by society and abandoned by his family, began carrying out Jackson’s small favors. At first they were unpleasant but not difficult—requests that went no further than releasing men locked up in the holding cells for petty crimes.

But the man’s demands grew like loan shark interest, impossible ever to repay. His requests—no, his orders—steadily escalated, until Angus found himself tasked with destroying evidence of criminals’ crimes. In the meantime, Angus gathered loyal subordinates who were caught in the same trap, men who dirtied their hands in his stead. They tampered with victims’ testimony, twisting and distorting it, contaminating or erasing traces left at crime scenes during the internal review before reports were filed.

Angus felt, at every moment, as if Jackson Cliff had given him only two choices: “yes or no.” At first he believed he could still turn back at any time. But the moment to say no never came. Even when his subordinate Dominic McCarthy, who had begun questioning his actions, was murdered along with his wife, Angus could not refuse Jackson’s demand to erase the evidence.

Wracked with guilt for concealing his subordinate’s death, he secretly protected Dominic’s daughter, Anna. But when her younger brother Lewis lay on the verge of death after a car accident, Angus pulled strings to have him made into an alpha—forcing Anna into yet another pit of despair.

Ten years passed, and Angus rose to the position of Police Commissioner, while his loyal subordinate Shawn Ponce became Chief of the Linhart Precinct. Many things had changed. At some point, Angus began to feel pride in his own monstrousness. He drew his life’s energy from the fresh bodies of young girls. Allied with politicians, journalists, and corrupt power brokers, Angus feared nothing. Those who cursed him lost their tongues; those who raised stones lost their arms. Who, then, would dare curse him or throw a stone?

“El Calva is still thrashing about, even with his execution looming. He’s blaming us even for the death of his own lawyer. Ridiculous, isn’t it? As if we’d be insane enough to bring down a bridge.”

Governor Richard, standing by the window and gazing down at the rain-soaked garden, spoke quietly. He looked worried for his son, who had just grabbed his car keys and rushed outside.

Listening silently, Angus pressed his fingertips hard into his eyes. It was already past two in the morning, and his face was drawn with fatigue. Stifling a yawn, he finally said:

“Was it the lawyer who obtained the CCTV footage that could have proven El Calva’s innocence?”

“Yes. When they recovered the reporter’s waterlogged laptop, it turned up the home-cam footage El Calva had installed in his lover’s house.”

“If the footage existed, then El Calva’s alibi would have been accepted.”

“Thank heavens it didn’t.”

“What happened to the lawyer’s laptop?”

“It’s gone. Destroyed. If the footage had ever gone public, it would have exposed you for fabricating evidence and pinning crimes on an innocent man.”

The way the governor said “you” grated on Angus. To him, it sounded like the governor was shifting all their crimes onto him, absolving himself of responsibility.

“It was fortunate that the Langford Bridge collapse happened when it did. If not for that, the footage would have gone to press. Truly, heaven was on our side.”

That had been four years ago. The Helso State Bureau of Investigation, battered by public outrage over a corruption scandal, had its budget slashed. The fallout left the department for major crimes effectively dismantled, its capacity to respond to organized crime severely weakened.

On top of that, federal changes to immigration policy flooded Helso with undocumented migrants, fueling trafficking and gang violence. Police and administrative power could not reach everywhere; districts of the city fell paralyzed, overrun with drugs and the homeless crisis.

For organized crime, it was an unexpected windfall. Divided along the city’s compass: the east controlled by Mexicans, the west by Belzoras, the south by the Italian mafia, and the north by Salvadorans. A fragile balance held until the Belzoras gangs, absorbing waves of immigrants fleeing persecution from their homeland, upset it completely.

To counter the Belzoras, the Mexican and Salvadoran groups forged a temporary pact. But soon signs of betrayal emerged between them, and collapse began like a foretold script.

When a mysterious fire in a suburban Baggers City home killed the family of a Mexican gang boss, the rift grew irreparably deep. On the day of the funeral, before all his men, the Mexican boss declared open vengeance against the Salvadorans. From then on, they slaughtered each other, rooting out supposed traitors within their own ranks. Countless lives were lost. Even now, long after both sides had weakened, they clung to their cycle of mistrust and revenge.

And at the very heart of all this conflict was Jackson Cliff, pulling strings behind the Belzoras. He had manipulated events to stoke the fire between the gangs. Anonymous tips, planted evidence—it all painted the Salvadorans as guilty. But now, new decisive evidence had surfaced, proving innocence in the very arson that had sparked the war.

Masking his bitterness with a show of humility, Angus asked:

“What about the original CCTV footage?”

“It’s been retrieved. I ordered the witness who held the original copy, as well as El Calva’s lover, to be dealt with. All you need to do is clean up any loose ends. Ah, by now it should already be finished, so you’d better move quickly.”

“...Right now?”

The governor checked his watch.

“The killer should be arriving any moment. He’s on his way here.”

Angus’s face twisted in fury. To summon a murderer to this place? His irritation burst out of him before he could stop it.

“Damn it, calling a killer here? When the shit splashes this far, who’s going to clean it up?”

The governor simply looked at him, his gaze steady. Unlike Angus, who had clawed his way up, the man had lived his whole life as a wealthy politician. He disliked crude, vulgar expressions. And yet, the governor only held his silence, his face betraying a strange sort of lenience.

At that moment, the darkness beyond the window briefly flashed white, and the sound of tires crunching wet gravel cut through the rain. Then came the sound of footsteps in the hallway, breaking the heavy stillness. The door opened. Angus froze in shock at the men who entered.

“Good evening, Governor Brown. Father, it’s been a while.”

It was his son—Ted Stone—stepping in through the open doorway. He bowed politely to both the governor and Angus. The usual insolent swagger was gone, replaced by overly deliberate, polished movements. If not for his bloodied face and the dire situation, Angus might have felt a surge of pride. But not now. Eyes wide, Angus shot to his feet.

“Your face—! Why the hell are you here!”

“Because I killed someone.”

Ted’s eyes gleamed with a reverent light as he answered. Angus stared at his son, stained with blood, as if hearing some grotesque joke. From the day he’d learned to walk, Ted had never once been a good son—but he had never been so lost to reason that he could calmly confess to murder as though remarking on the weather.

“You... you killed someone?”

“It had to be done. And it’s not the first time I’ve killed. So don’t worry about the mental shock—it doesn’t trouble me.”

His words were chosen with care, each measured. But the fevered gleam of mania could not be hidden beneath them. Angus’s lips parted soundlessly before he forced words out:

“What—what happened?”

“A joyous thing. I’ve accepted a new calling in life.”

“A... calling?”

“Something an ordinary beta like you, Father, could never understand.”

Ted’s mouth was fixed in a stiff half-smile, and his eyes glistened with a wet, almost tearful shine. It was like facing a stranger. A chill of horror ran through Angus, and his glare snapped to the young man standing just behind his son.

“Dylan. What’s this about a new calling? What the hell are you talking about?”

“To lay the foundation for a new era soon to come.”

“What the fuck does that mean? ...Wait. Did Jackson order my son to kill?”

Dylan only gazed at him with a mysterious smile, then lifted his chin and answered with arrogance:

“Ted embraced it gladly. It’s a blessing for everyone.”

Angus turned his look of accusation on the governor. The man seemed to know something but kept his lips sealed. The only thing he had offered Angus was the crime scene that needed to be cleaned up. Consumed by rage, Angus grabbed his son and stormed out.

They slipped into the garage, Angus pulling a cigarette from his pocket with trembling hands and lighting it. He had always known his son was a sociopath. But this—this rattled him to the bone, just as much as Ted’s first rape and murder had. Only after dragging smoke into his lungs again and again did his thoughts begin to clear from the storm of fury and fear.

“Don’t get in the car. Wait there.”

He barked the order at his son, then went straight to the shelves and pulled down a folded plastic tarp. He had to cover the seats before the blood soaking his son’s clothes stained the upholstery. He spread the tarp across the passenger seat and the back. But then—a strange unease stopped him cold.

On the drive here, he had brought no one in the passenger seat. From the underground garage at police headquarters to the governor’s house, he had never once stepped out into the rain.

And yet, on the passenger seat’s floor and backrest were streaks hastily wiped of moisture, and small scraps of wet leaves clinging.

Until just moments ago, someone had been sitting there.