Chapter 344: The Bait
The living room of the Spires villa was no longer peaceful. Monique’s message, still displayed on Rei’s phone screen, was being passed from hand to hand like a bomb no one dared to hold for too long.
Victoria read it last, her eyes quickly scanning the lines, then she gently set it back on the coffee table.
"She wants to see you alone. On her territory." She stood up and already started pacing. "That’s pure Monique."
"Like, literally at Hector’s place? In his villa? What the hell is she playing at?" Dahlia added, arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the screen as if staring at it long enough might change the content. "It’s not just risky, it’s straight-up suicidal to go there."
Nash still hadn’t spoken. He was sitting with one elbow on his knee, spinning his phone between his fingers without looking at it, more focused on what he was hearing than on what he was holding.
That was when the living room door opened, letting in Aiko, Miko, Kai and Hina, all four returning from an improvised training session in the villa’s backyard. They stopped dead when they saw the tense atmosphere.
"What’s up," Kai said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the bottom of her t-shirt, "looks like someone died."
"Not yet," Rei answered.
Aiko stepped closer, frowning.
"Rei? What’s going on?"
Rei hesitated for a second, then held the phone out again, this time toward her teammates. Miko took it, adjusting her glasses to read better, and her face visibly paled as she went through the message.
"... Oh no... It’s her... it’s Monique," she said in a blank voice, holding the screen out to Aiko and Kai who leaned in at the same time.
Hina, who hadn’t seen the message yet, immediately felt the change in the room’s atmosphere. She took a step back, her arms tightening around herself.
"Monique? She wants to take us back," she murmured. "That’s it, right? She figured out we escaped and she wants to punish us."
"We don’t know yet," Nash said. "She just says she wants to talk to Rei."
"Talk," Kai repeated with a bitter laugh. "Yeah, right. Monique never talks for nothing. If she’s contacting Rei directly, it means she has something in mind. She knows, I’m sure of it."
Miko took a step back and sat heavily on the arm of a sofa, her hands trembling slightly.
"We should refuse. Straight up. We don’t even answer, we block the number, and we pray she forgets about us. If you go... They’re going to capture you. I swear, that’s what’s going to happen."
"That will never work," Rei said, shaking her head. "You know perfectly well Monique never lets go. If we ignore her, and she really didn’t know, it’ll just raise suspicion. They have no way of verifying our position."
Hina dropped into an armchair, knees pulled up against her voluptuous chest, eyes fixed on the floor.
"Do you really believe that, Reicchi? We’re still supposed to be under Harlan’s surveillance," she said softly. "Apex thinks we’re nicely stored away, waiting to be sold. They don’t even know we’re here, in this villa. If Monique starts asking questions... it means they’ve noticed something! What if one of the guards talked? What if Harlan betrayed our Butt-Savior?"
"It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re starting to suspect something," Aiko finished, her voice tense. "We actually don’t know anything. Maybe the best thing is to write back? At least get her to say a bit more."
Victoria stopped pacing and turned toward the group, one hand on her hip.
"Maybe we should just stop everything," she said. "Dump it all to the public right now. They can’t do anything legal anymore, so if we make the announcement they..."
"No." Nash lifted his head, stopping the spinning of his phone. "If we force things now, we lose all the advantage we’ve built these past weeks."
Rei narrowed her eyes.
"What advantage exactly? Monique wants to trap me, Nash. She’s probably going to take all of us back, or worse."
"She wants to try," Nash said, standing up and approaching the coffee table. "But think for two seconds. Hector still thinks he holds all the cards. He thinks you’re still his pawns, that Harlan is watching you, that everything is running as before. I know it’s hard to believe, but Harlan is a complete idiot. He would panic and warn me if Hector tried something, and he already handed us our trump card anyway."
Dahlia leaned slightly forward, interested.
"You’re talking about that story you’ve been teasing us with forever but keeping secret? The one we got through Harlan?"
"Exactly," Victoria confirmed, taking over the conversation herself and sitting back down next to Dahlia. "We have a bomb in our hands, something that, far more than protecting us, is going to destroy Hector for good. The problem is that a bomb, if you detonate it too early, or without enough proof, just makes noise. It doesn’t destroy anything."
Nash nodded.
"Exactly that. We need enough material for it to be irrefutable. Not just an accusation they can brush aside with a wave of the hand."
Kai crossed her arms, skeptical.
"So what, we let Rei go throw herself into the wolf’s mouth to buy time?"
"We let Monique believe she still has the advantage," Victoria answered in her place, her voice calm and composed again. "She’s a manipulator. She needs to feel like she’s controlling the situation to feel safe. We give her that impression. That’s how you trap a predator."
"Rei accepts the meeting," Nash continued. "She plays along, she listens to what Monique has to offer, she brings the information back. We have nothing to lose by listening. We have everything to lose by acting in the dark."
Rei stayed silent for a moment, digesting the proposal. One part of her — the strategic part that had always guided her as captain — understood the logic perfectly. Another part, deeper and more personal, already felt anxiety knotting her stomach at the idea of being alone face to face with Monique, on Hector’s territory.
"Okay," she said finally, her voice firm despite everything. "I’ll go."
"Rei—" Aiko started, worried.
"I’ll go," Rei repeated, louder this time. "If it can get us closer to the end of all this, I’ll do it."
Nash nodded, satisfied, before pulling his phone out of his pocket.
"Alright," he said, scrolling through his contacts. "While we’re at it, might as well check the other front."
He dialed a number and put the device to his ear, activating the speaker so everyone could follow.
The tone rang twice before Saya’s voice answered, hesitant.
"H-Hello? Nash?"
"Yeah, it’s me." He stayed standing, leaning against the back of the sofa. "What’s new on your side? Still nothing to report?"
There was a silence on the other end of the line. A silence a little too long to be meaningless.
"Actually..." Saya began, her voice already trembling. "There’s something I should have told you earlier."
Victoria stood up immediately, approaching the phone, arms already crossed.
"Continue," he said.
"Jinzo called me." Saya was speaking fast now, as if going faster could soften the news. "This morning. Like, very early. The plan worked, he completely bought the story we prepared. I made him believe I wanted to get revenge on all of you, that I needed a way to approach Apex from the inside to get information and take you down. He was almost excited to help me."
"And you were planning on telling us this when exactly?" Victoria snapped, her voice rising a notch.
"M—Ma’am?!" Saya stammered, her voice cracking slightly. "I-I didn’t know how to reach you! I don’t have your numbers saved, Jinzo’s call didn’t last, I couldn’t just... I didn’t want to panic for nothing before having more information, I—"
"That’s a pathetic excuse, Saya," Victoria cut her off, crossing her arms over her chest. "You have a precise objective on this mission. Radio silence is exactly the kind of mistake that can be bad for your health. What don’t you understand about ’the way you die is in my hands’?"
A horrified silence fell over the living room. Aiko and Miko exchanged a nervous look. Even Kai, usually hard to impress, tensed slightly.
"I... I understand, Ma’am, I’m sorry, really... Forgive me... Forgive me..." Saya’s voice was now openly trembling, broken, almost on the verge of tears. "It only happened like two hours ago, I was going to call you, I swear, I just wanted to check first that it was serious and not just Jinzo trying to mess with me for revenge—"
Nash raised a hand toward Victoria, signaling her to let the girl breathe.
"Where does it stand, concretely?" he asked.
Saya took a trembling breath before answering, her voice still unstable.
"He offered to put me in contact with someone. Someone who manages the massage parlors in the Spires." She hesitated, as if the words cost her. "He said this person could... take care of my wish."
"Your wish," Victoria repeated, one eyebrow raised, suspicious.
"I told Jinzo I was looking for a way into Apex’s circle," Saya explained, even faster, as if in a hurry to dump everything before Victoria interrupted her again. "Like planned. To infiltrate, like Nash asked me to. Jinzo thinks I just want to get a bit of power back, to get revenge on all of you my own way. He bit right away, he was even happy to help me, like too happy."
Nash stayed silent for a moment, his gaze fixed on a vague point, assembling the pieces. Then, slowly, a discreet smile stretched his lips.
"But of course," he murmured, almost to himself.
"What?" Dahlia asked, leaning forward.
"Nothing, I was just thinking out loud." He brought his attention back to the phone. "Saya, that’s good work. Really. Tonight, when you meet this contact, you specify one detail: that you plan on bringing me with you. Tell them I insisted on accompanying you from the moment you enter."
There was a blank on the other end of the line.
"Wait," Saya said, clearly lost. "You? Like... I accept their invitation and I have to bring you with me?"
"Exactly," Nash confirmed.
"O-Okay," Saya said, still a little shaky. "I’ll say it tonight. Promise."
"Good," Nash said. "You call us back as soon as it’s done. No matter the hour."
"Y-Yes, sir."
The line cut. Nash put his phone back in his pocket, still lost in his thoughts for a moment.
That was when Hina, still curled up in her armchair, suddenly straightened up, a flicker of worry crossing her face.
"Wait wait wait," she said, raising a hand. "This... girl is really going to go alone to Hector’s people? Like, where they do horrible things to girls?"
"That’s the plan, yes," Nash answered without turning around.
"Butt-bandit," Hina said, shaking her head, "you’re throwing a girl alone into the wolf’s mouth, are you sure that’s a good idea?"
A small nervous laugh ran through the group despite the tension. Nash didn’t even flinch.
"She won’t be alone for very long," he said. "I think the doors will be wide open for me."
"Yeah but still," Hina insisted, her arms tightening around her knees, her tone half-worried, half-teasing. "I don’t like this story. That’s where Reicchi and this girl are going to have to like... pretend to be prostitutes... with horrible men."
Nash gave her a confident smirk.
"The only horrible guy you’re going to run into in there will be me."
Rei blinked, completely lost.