Chapter 206: I Can’t Trust Anyone Anymore
Engine exhausts roared and tires screeched as the convoy finally broke free from the chaotic atmosphere of 3rd Street. Guron and Himelda were swept into their transport under heavy guard, while Dorrent, Shadron, Shalen, and Jannah piled into the lead vehicle.
Inside the car, the atmosphere was suffocatingly heavy. Jannah sat pressed against the seat, her body trembling in the wake of the madness she had just witnessed. Her mind was in chaotic ruin. The accusations, the medical report, the mechanic Enock screaming that she wasn’t cursed—everything she had believed about her life, her family, and her tragic, solitary existence was crumbling into dust. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Every single truth she had anchored her soul to for years was twisting into a terrifying lie.
The car pulled over smoothly near the border checkpoint of the upper district.
Shalen quietly unbuckled her seatbelt and pushed her door open. She turned back toward the rear seat, her expression unusually somber as she looked at her boss. "It seems today was not a good day for the investigation, Sir," Shalen said softly, her tone stripped of its usual sharpness. "I will be ready to try again whenever you need me." She then turned her eyes toward Jannah, offering a gentle, quiet wave. "Goodbye, Jannah. Rest well."
Jannah didn’t even have the energy to nod. She kept her eyes fixed on her lap, her knuckles white as she clutched her skirt. Shalen stepped out, the door clicking shut behind her.
As the car resumed its smooth, silent ride toward the Grefo Estate, Shadron—who had been dead silent at the steering wheel ever since they left the bogs—finally broke. He glanced sharply at the rearview mirror, his face pale and tight with confusion.
"Dorrent... what the hell was all of that back there?" Shadron demanded, his voice echoing in the quiet interior. "What is going on? Why is Bellero Boren running around the slums orchestrating ambushes over Jannah? What was Enock talking about? And what is this whole story about her being cursed? Is there something you haven’t told me, man? Because this entire setup is completely strange!"
Dorrent’s arm remained firmly wrapped around Jannah’s waist, pulling her small, rigid frame against his torso despite the way her skin vibrated with tension.
He looked down at the messy waves of her hair, his eyes unreadable. "This girl..." Dorrent delivered flatly, his baritone carrying troubled gravity, "...doesn’t really know who she actually is."
Jannah’s head snapped up. Her eyes, rimmed with red and overflowing with a mixture of anger and panic, glared fiercely into his handsome face. "Since you seem to know me so much better than I know myself, Alpha Grefo," she spat out, her voice cracking with venom, "why don’t you go ahead and tell me?! Stop speaking in riddles like everyone else!"
Dorrent’s hand slid up from her waist, traveling across her ribs until his palm rested over her stomach.
"All of these things... everything that happened, everything Bellero is doing, and everything happening right now..." Dorrent murmured, his voice dropping into a low, raspy vibration against her ear, "...is happening because of your womb, Jannah."
Jannah went still. Her pupils dilating in confusion. "My... my womb?" she asked, her voice dropping into a breathless whisper. "What about my womb?! Every single woman on this planet has one! What makes mine any different?!"
"Because you can give birth to Enigmas," Dorrent delivered flatly.
The words fell into the quiet car like a nuclear explosion.
Jannah’s vision went briefly black. She froze in shock, her lips parting as her brain tried and failed to process the scientific impossibility of what he had just uttered.
Up in the driver’s seat, Shadron’s hands jerked on the steering wheel, the sedan swerving slightly before he straightened the tire line. He stared into the rearview mirror, his eyes wide as saucers. "Are you fucking kidding me right now, Dorrent?!" Shadron gasped out, his voice rising in utter disbelief. "An Enigma?! Her?!"
"Look at the facts, Shadron," Dorrent growled softly, his hand remaining anchored on Jannah’s belly. "Why else do you think the proud, mighty, and ruthless Bellero Boren and his son would spend four years building charity clinics in the mud, trying to force a girl from the slums to become his son’s wife? You think a Mafia God cares about a common gutter-rat if there isn’t a world-dominating reason behind her?"
Shadron went dead silent, his jaw dropping as the terrifying puzzle pieces finally slammed together in his mind.
Meanwhile, Jannah’s entire world was spinning out of control. An Enigma? The rare, legendary, sovereign biological anomaly that could effortlessly dominate and crush every S-tier Alpha on Earth? Me?
Suddenly, a buried, forgotten memory surfaced from the corners of her mind. She recalled a rainy afternoon in their small slum house two years ago—a day when her grandfather Duro had gotten into a fierce, whispered argument near the window with a high-born man she hadn’t recognized at the time. She remembered hiding behind the wooden partition, hearing her grandfather’s shaky voice fiercely rejecting a deal, and distinctly hearing the word Enigma echoing through their cramped room before her grandfather forced the man out. She had asked about it back then, but Duro had brushed it off as a meaningless medical term from his old books.
The sudden, brutal realization hit her like a physical blow. It was true. Her grandfather had known. Her grandfather had carried this terrifying secret to his very grave, keeping her completely in the dark, letting her live every single day of her life believing she was a broken, cursed monster who destroyed everyone she touched!
A wild fury exploded in Jannah’s chest.
"Let go of me!" Jannah shrieked, her control completely shattering. She began to squirm, thrashing her body against Dorrent’s frame, her hands clawing at his wrist to wrench his palm off her stomach. "Get your filthy hands off me! Get away from me!"
Dorrent didn’t let her go. He tightened his hold, pulling her entire body directly into his lap, locking her hips against his thighs so she couldn’t hurt herself against the car door.
"Let me go, you liar!" Jannah wept out loud, tears pouring down her pale cheeks like a torrential downpour. She raised her small fists and began aggressively beating his broad chest, hitting his shoulders, his collarbone, and his jaw with every ounce of her physical strength. "All of you are liars! Every single one of you! You keep me in the dark, you hide everything from me, and you treat me like a nobody! My grandfather treated me like a fool, and you... you stand there acting like you own my life without telling me a single damn thing! I hate you! I hate all of you!"
Dorrent absorbed her desperate, frantic hits without a single grunt of pain. He held her shaking frame firmly against him, his chest expanding as he absorbed her hysterical breakdown.
"I am sorry, Jannah," Dorrent whispered roughly into her hair, his voice laced with a genuine remorse. "I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I only found out about your unique genetic lineage recently myself. I swear to you."
"I don’t believe you!" Jannah sobbed, her small fists slowing down as the emotional exhaustion drained her limbs. She buried her face into his shirt, weeping hysterically as years of tragic deception broke her into pieces. "I can’t trust anyone anymore! Nobody tells me the truth! You’re all just using me! You’re all disgusting liars!"