Chapter 228

Isaac turned his gaze toward Siron, still chewing on what it was he’d missed.

A calling that betas couldn’t understand. A new era.

Could it be that this “new era” was to be brought about through the omega? The thought stuck like an unsolved riddle as he studied Siron’s face.

Siron looked utterly defeated, as if he’d run up against a wall too high to climb and was struggling to hold back tears. There were tens of thousands of alphas, but only one omega in existence—Yoon Siron. Out of all those alphas, only one could Imprint with him and escape the deathtrap closing in hour by hour.

That truth, Isaac realized, must sometimes be unbearable despair for Siron. For now, he was cooperating with Isaac to survive, but it was obvious his choice for the Imprint was Baekgyeong. If Isaac were in Siron’s place, he wouldn’t forgive the man who had made him an omega either. And besides, Siron and Baekgyeong had a history so deep and long that Isaac couldn’t even begin to imagine it.

But if Baekgyeong were to die, Siron’s only option would be him—Isaac.

With that thought lingering, Isaac replayed the recording they’d found in the commissioner’s trunk.

“Why the hell did you borrow the car key? That crazy bitch—what the hell did she do?”

The voice of a young man came on immediately, muttering nonstop, spewing hatred toward some woman. As if he’d been ensnared by a wicked witch and foolishly lent her the car keys.

From the context, the “valet” must have been threatened by the “crazy bitch” into handing over the commissioner’s Cadillac keys before stepping away briefly. In that short gap, someone else had slipped in and planted the device. If the valet himself had planted it, he wouldn’t have been babbling like that.

After a short drive the valet stopped the car and handed the wheel to someone else. A moment later another man climbed in, the engine turned over again, and soon the voice of a middle-aged man filled the line as he made a phone call.

“The taste is terrible these days. Even Éclavis isn’t what it used to be. They must’ve switched to cheap butter—the trout dish is ruined.”

Baekgyeong’s brows drew together at the mention of the restaurant. Something about it bothered him.

“He said Éclavis just now, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

Baekgyeong’s eyebrow twitched. After a brief hesitation, he answered.

“Éclavis is where Kim Seontae arranged to meet Joseph Elliott.”

He was referring to a chat log he’d dug up by tracing Kim Seontae’s encrypted messages on the Vile Group server. In one instance, the encryption process had failed, exposing a fragment of conversation with an anonymous counterpart.

“Maybe we can find a lead on Joseph Elliott through that restaurant.”

Isaac nodded. “It’s worth hoping for.”

Feeling that things were falling into place more easily than expected, they turned back to the recording.

The commissioner’s phone partner seemed to be the chief of Linhart precinct. After trading complaints about the restaurant, the commissioner shifted abruptly into something no one expected.

“I still don’t understand. How could that happen? How could the death row inmate’s lawyer just happen to be passing when Langford collapsed? You’re telling me that was coincidence?”

It was enough to seize all three of their attention at once. From the commissioner’s words, they pieced together that at the time of the Langford Bridge collapse, a lawyer had been caught in the accident and killed. That lawyer had been representing the Salvadoran gang boss executed earlier that morning at Somora Prison.

The lawyer’s car yielded a laptop, waterlogged beyond recovery. According to guards who had monitored the meeting through glass, the device had contained not only interview notes with El Calva but also evidence suggesting his innocence: a missing CCTV feed and the identity of a witness who possessed it.

“Innocent?” Siron burst out, his face struck as if by a heavy blow.

“They already executed him.”

Even Isaac and Baekgyeong were silenced by the weight of it.

“Speaking of Langford... you know who Colby James is? What kind of alpha runs around insisting he’ll give interviews? You don’t know? Hmph... no one tells me anything.”

The commissioner rambled, until at last he hit on the very name they had been waiting for.

Baekgyeong grimaced.

“Colby James... that’s Gezar Bazelli, isn’t it? Wasn’t he hiding his identity? And now suddenly he’s doing interviews?”

Both he and Siron turned to Isaac. A tremor passed along Isaac’s lips.

The commissioner went on. After twenty years of living like a dead man on death row, Gezar Bazelli had suddenly reached out, requesting contact with the outside. He had been put in touch with a New York Times journalist.

Given the restrictions on death row inmates—only allowed visits from lawyers and family—it was extraordinary that Gezar had been granted a private interview with a journalist. Impossible, unless the warden himself had arranged it. Yet even that journalist, who had begun assisting Gezar in writing his memoirs, had vanished when the Langford Bridge collapsed.

“It’s coincidence. Just coincidence! Hybris didn’t bring that bridge down. And if they really did, how could we ever pay for that sin? Huh? I don’t want to add more guilt to my ledger. Even silence is a sin! Don’t you understand? So stop—stop saying such monstrous things.”

For the first time the commissioner’s voice cracked with weakness. He begged, childlike, not to add to his sins, and wept. Moments later, his tone would blaze with conviction, declaring that to grasp the world one had to become a ruthless sociopath, that cruelty was our only virtue—then collapse again into sobbing. He cycled between desperate lament and maniacal bravado like a man possessed.

Even after the engine went dead, he kept rambling—gripes about the governor, endless complaints about the warden he clashed with at every turn. At last the call ended, and the recording finished with only his snores filling the air.

Siron, Isaac, and Baekgyeong sat in silence. The commissioner’s words had been shocking in every sense. He was a man consumed by power, yet equally gnawed by guilt and self-loathing. His grief was theatrical, his tears ringing more like a self-indulgent escape than true repentance.

They let the files play on. More revelations surfaced. The commissioner had been keeping improper relationships with teenage girls under the guise of “sponsorship.” As the volume dropped to a low moan of his voice in the background, Siron collapsed face-first onto the table.

“Disgusting. So disgusting I can’t stand it.”

Isaac stopped the playback.

Siron lay there, breath ragged, before finally levering himself up again, looking worn to the bone.

“I can’t do this.”

“What? Can’t do what?”

Baekgyeong, who had been sitting beside him stroking his back, stared in alarm.

“It’s obvious. They brought down Langford Bridge. They’re insane. How are we supposed to even step on Gezar Bazelli’s shadow in this mess?”

“They didn’t say they destroyed it. They said the timing was lucky, everything lined up.”

“There’s no way it was coincidence. You believe that? You think that’s possible?”

It was too perfect: the lawyer and the journalist both visiting Somora Prison the same day, both caught on the bridge at the moment of collapse. Too perfect for coincidence.

“But the method’s insane. Toppling an entire bridge just to kill two people? That makes even less sense.”

Langford Bridge spanned eight kilometers, connecting Baggers City to Camtiva Island. The direct cause of the collapse had been a cargo vessel’s steering error—its stacked containers slammed into a central pier, sending two kilometers of roadway crashing into the sea. The death toll was enormous, the economic losses staggering, and the shipping company now teetered on the edge of ruin.

“As Baekgyeong said, that kind of gamble is too risky. Unless they wanted to make enemies across the whole United States, they wouldn’t have gone for something that extreme.”

“...I suppose you’re right?”

He hadn’t trusted Baekgyeong’s word a whit, yet somehow Isaac’s logic carried weight. Siron’s expression brightened, if only a little.

“Why do you listen to him and not to—?”

Siron cut him off, pressing a palm over Baekgyeong’s mouth.

“Gezar could be executed any day. Shouldn’t we focus on buying time? Release the transcript—make it public that El Calva was executed unjustly.”

“A transcript alone won’t prove El Calva’s innocence. The commissioner never explicitly said he framed him. All it will do is put them on edge. And we can’t exactly announce we’ve been bugging the police commissioner.”

If the commissioner was tied to Hybris, then trying to visit Gezar now, while they had him under such close watch, would risk exposing themselves entirely.