Page 234 of Eternal
“That same night the girl vanished, a shipment left the vineyard. Destination: a Vegas restaurant. One night only, exclusive dinner. The owner?” I slid a photo forward. “A chef. You know the type, Michelin stars, TV shows, high-society praise. But he disappeared years ago, he went quiet after whispers started.”
Nikolai frowned. “Disappeared how?”
“Voluntarily. He retreated from the spotlight, no legal accusations.”
I took a slow breath. This was the part that had haunted me for weeks.
“My mother knew his wife. She wrote about her, she said that the woman came to her, terrified, she said she found files on his laptop. Videos, photos, girls, barely conscious, half-naked. Tables surrounded by rich men pretending they were at some kind of fucking banquet. She begged my mother to help her and didn’t trust the cops. Three days later, she was dead. A car crash, they said. But someone mailed my mom a piece of her skin, a visible tattoo to recognize her, and a threat.”
I pulled another image: the chef, present-day, with grey hair and a fuller face. “I found him, though. He was holding a comeback dinner for Halloween last year. Secret guest list, at a private venue. I found his name buried under a new LLC. He was hiding, but not from everyone, just enough to avoid headlines.”
Zanae’s hand tightened on her coffee.
“I got to him that night.” The memory was cold in my mouth. “And just before I was done with him, just before he died, he said,‘the church.””
I dropped the last photo on the table, the vineyard owner, the chef, and behind them: a white-columned church. “Invitations only, rich men in black suits and gold crosses. All white walls and gold trim. They’re both donors at the same congregation. I followed the records, the sermons this pastor gives aredisgusting. Purity-obsessed, misogyny dressed as holiness, but no charges ever stuck. He’s protected.”
My voice got quiet.
“I think that’s the last stop. Where they break them, scrub them clean.‘Sanctify’them. Before they’re sold. Like it was protocol, like it was a procedure.”
I hesitated, then whispered the part I hadn’t written.
“And I think it’s part of something bigger, something organized. I just… I don’t have a name.”
Elijah leaned back slowly, eyes still on the photo. Then his voice, like the crack of bone. “You do.”
I blinked. “What?”
Nikolai’s voice this time, softer. “The organization behind all of this. We’ve been tracking it for years, they’ve been hiding under charities, corporations, even religious institutions.”
He looked at Elijah, a nod passed between them and Zanae leaned forward, her face different from what I’ve seen. She looks like her reputation, the Emira, the Huntress, filled with rage. “They call themselvesThe Veil.”
And just like that, every thread I’d followed suddenly had a name.
Zanae spoke again, and I caught Nikolai’s worry in his eyes, like he knew his friend went through hell because of them and hated them for that. Elijah’s hand tightened around her wrist like he was checking… her pulse?
“They don’t just kill. They sell silence, disappearances, reprogramming and complete erasure. That’s the real mission.”
I blinked. “How do you know?”
She looked at me, and there was something feral behind her eyes. “Because my mother ran part of it.”
Nikolai and Elijah didn’t move. They already knew.
Zanae didn’t flinch, she smiled sadly. “I was a victim when I was younger,” she said, voice calm but something beneath it cracked. “Elijah and Nikolai rescued me.”
She didn’t sound broken, she didn’t sound grateful, she sounded angry. Like someone forged in pain but still burning. “Last year, I startedreallysearching,” she went on. “I found others. Girls. Boys. Not all of them survived. They were marked, disposable, and I found contracts connecting rival gangs, hits. But it was never personal.” She inhaled slowly, like the truth still scraped going down. “It was systematic.”
I didn’t speak, I let her fill the silence with what she clearly needed to say. “We always knew about the contracts. How clean and coordinated they were, like mercenaries, not criminals.” A pause. “But we didn’t know the trafficking was real, not until that one mission.”
She turned to me. “That man’s phone, from the thief case a few months ago. The one you took on Nikolai’s order?”
I nodded, that mission…the night I got stabbed. The one where Damir carried me home and stitched me up like I wasn’t just another broken thing. The night everything changed.
“Brian, our hacker in Vesper, she went into that phone. Encrypted logs. Hidden videos. GPS caches. Media archives. Text chains with only first names and burner IDs.”
She glanced at Elijah, then back to me. “Whoever was texting your target wasn’t just helping him move money or product.” A breath. “They were planning entire transfers, routes, people and packages; some of the faces in those chains matched my files.”
