“Dora……”
“……”
“Did you…… find her……?”
“What?”
Achim, who hadn’t said a word until now, asked back in a low voice, and Martina’s shoulders gave a violent flinch. Achim watched her with thinly veiled contempt, then asked,
“What do you mean. Wasn’t it you who told Wolfgang?”
At that, Martina looked up at Achim with wide, startled eyes — then dropped her gaze again and shook her head.
One of Achim’s eyebrows slanted upward. Martina hadn’t been the one to call him?
When Wolfgang had appeared out of nowhere the night before, Achim had briefly wondered if he’d come because of the Warehouse Keeper’s screaming — but he’d dismissed that possibility the moment he’d come back to his senses. The warehouse was dozens of meters away even from where the Butler’s quarters were located; he was certain the Warehouse Keeper’s dying screams couldn’t have reached that far.
If Martina hadn’t told him, then what reason did Wolfgang have to visit at that hour? And not Wolfgang alone — but with Michael as well. Michael would have been in the main building, no less……
Just as a nagging suspicion was beginning to rear its head again, Martina bit down on her lower lip, eyes brimming with tears, then released it and whispered in a small voice,
“It’s not…… too late, right……?”
“……”
“Dora……”
“She’s dead.”
At the blunt words, Martina’s head snapped up.
Achim met her eyes, and there was no particular shift in his expression. He held her gaze with a blank face.
“You’re the one who killed her. Dora.”
It was a lie — but Martina had no way of knowing that. If anything, it was for the better. Achim wanted his lie to wound her, and thankfully, she looked as though she’d been struck — shaking her head in denial.
The image of Dora rose in his mind unbidden, and that pitiful face made the sight of Martina before him feel utterly repulsive. Achim twisted one corner of his mouth up.
“So live with the guilt.”
At the words Achim added, Martina’s face took on the look of a prisoner who had just been handed a death sentence.
Achim was already pressing down the nausea clawing up his throat and reaching to close the door when a short, quiet sound escaped him — ah.
“Martina.”
Martina only blinked, her eyes full to the brim with tears, but Achim was unmoved.
“This is a request…… no. A warning.”
“……”
“Stay out of my sight. From now on — as much as possible, as far as possible, desperately — avoid me.”
“……”
“If something like this ever happens again……”
Achim lifted his downcast eyes and sharpened them to a point.
“I’ll kill you.”
Even if it costs me my place here.
At that, Martina couldn’t answer, couldn’t nod. She wanted to — but Achim’s ice-cold eyes had frozen her solid where she stood.
When Martina remained rooted and rigid, Achim — with something almost like reluctance — slid the OTF knife that had slipped down to his wrist back into its place, and slammed the door shut.
“……Fuck.”
Achim leaned his back against the door and bit down on the curse. The entire time he’d faced Martina, the image of what he’d seen the night before — Dora — had surfaced with horrifying vividness, again and again.
As if trying to calm himself, Achim leaned against the door and stared up at the empty air above him — and only after a long while did he finally move.
He settled against the headboard, pulled the notebook he’d tucked beneath the pillow, and at that exact moment the phone on his nightstand buzzed. Achim held the notebook in one hand and picked up the phone with the other.
He pressed the answer button, and after the characteristic delay that came with a cheap device, Linus’s voice came through.
[Babe. Why the Butler?]
Achim skipped the answer and pressed the corner of the notebook between his brows.
The night before, after returning to his quarters and before sleeping, he’d left Linus a message asking him to look into Wolfgang.
As expected, Linus’s voice carried both worry and suspicion in equal measure.
When Achim said nothing, Linus held the silence equally — then spoke first.
[Something happened again, didn’t it?]
Linus was perceptive in proportion to his instincts, and his instincts were sharp.
He’d been given clear advice to be careful — and yet within only a few hours, Achim had gone and caused another incident. Even by his own conscience, the words wouldn’t come out.
Achim kept his uncharacteristic silence, and after a moment, a soft snicker came through from the other end of the line.
[Hey, babe. What’s with you — this doesn’t suit you at all.]
Achim let out a sigh loud enough for Linus to hear, and Linus laughed outright.
[You went and did it again, didn’t you, Achim. Hopeless, honestly. If my 250,000 euros disappear because of you, you’re taking responsibility for me. Got it? Why aren’t you answering? Hm? Answer me, babe.]
It was one of the most unbearable demands Achim could imagine — and he couldn’t bring himself to agree even as empty words. He exhaled another long, deep sigh without a word. Then Linus swallowed a laugh and called his name.
[That estate really is suspicious, it seems. Either that, or you have some kind of talent for sniffing out exactly those kinds of people.]
“……What do you mean?”
[That Butler — Wolfgang. He’s excessively clean too.]
Just as Achim opened his mouth to ask further, Linus got there a beat ahead of him.
[A different kind of clean from Michael Bernhardt, though. I mentioned before that it was strange how someone who moves money at his level had a background that was too clean, didn’t I?]
“You did.”
[Wolfgang Appel. This man — the Butler at Michael Bernhardt’s estate — his past is completely spotless in the most literal sense of the word. I’m not talking about his career history or criminal record. Remarkably, from exactly the age of forty-five, there is no record whatsoever of him anywhere before that point.]
“……”
[Doesn’t that feel familiar?]
The moment Achim’s eyes lifted, Linus spoke — as though he’d read the thought.
[You and me. It’s similar to us — the ones who wiped their records clean.]
At that, Achim murmured, is that so.
A series of events at the age of twenty had forced Achim to give up the Mercenary life — and thanks to Linus’s remarkable abilities, he had been able to be reborn.
The fact that he had been a Mercenary didn’t necessarily mean he’d had to erase every trace of that period. But Achim’s retirement had been involuntary — not a choice he had made — and that was precisely where the reason lay.
There had been no options available to him, and erasing the trail had been purely a matter of survival.
And even that hadn’t been enough to put his mind at ease — so he had gone further, wiping everything clean from birth all the way to his twentieth year, leaving nothing behind. As though his birth registration had been filed on some arbitrary day at age twenty.
All of it had been illegal, of course. But Linus possessed a brilliance and an ability that defied comparison, and for Achim’s sake, he had willingly navigated server after server with complete freedom, rewriting his identity from the ground up.
That had been eight years ago now.
[Oh — babe.]
Achim had drifted into his thoughts for a moment and hadn’t yet replied.
[This is a little interesting.]
There was a creak of a chair from the other end of the line — as though Linus had just pulled himself away from his backrest.
“What is?”
Achim asked, turning up the call volume, and Linus let out a low, curious hum through his nose.
[This man — the point when his record suddenly appeared out of nowhere overlaps with the point when he entered that place.]
“That place, meaning……”
[Michael Bernhardt’s estate.]
“……”
