Poor Julia.

She looked as though she had just emerged from a battleground, fighting on the frontlines to grace this office with her presence. Marco had briefed me about the bar incident, and during the entire fiasco, Naseer was conspicuously absent. Meanwhile, I had to maintain the façade of the gracious host at the dinner, all the while keeping a keen eye on Eduardo.

It seemed like Eduardo had managed to charm quite a few acquaintances tonight. Despite my distaste for facing that man, I had no choice. I had to confront the sight of his perfectly yellowed teeth, deteriorating after years of substance abuse, tainting the elegance of the meticulously arranged party. Eduardo attempted to engage in banter with Ralf, but my father-in-law astutely banished him from his circle of friends and flirtatious interests.

Eduardo made the mistake of connecting to the party's Wi-Fi, unwittingly enabling malware that transmitted data from his devices to our receivers. A move calculated to expose those betraying our family. The only reason I wanted Eduardo to enter our chateau was to gain his trust enough to penetrate his shield of oddly managed security.

As much as I exuded confidence in my abilities at the parties, Eres discreetly entered, whispering the entire incident in my ear. We instructed Nina to maintain round-the-clock surveillance on Kay, and, to my knowledge, Julia was tasked with providing an additional layer of emotional barrage and security for Kay from suspecting anything evil present at the party tonight. I knew Eduardo knew about Kay, but I wanted him to stay away from her despite being her guest at the party. Her presence here was important for our enemies, who were trying to hurt this poor soul.

Regrettably, Julia and Nina proved incompetent in handling her.

Eres informed me that Rhys had escorted Kay to the chateau, prompting me to quietly instruct the in-house medical team to attend to her immediately.

Amidst these directives, I noticed Naseer discreetly indulging in the dinner buffet without engaging in a conversation with anyone present here.

Hm. odd behavior of someone who was trying to gain his kingdom back from perpetrators. The party was filled with people who had all the capacity to help his causes, but he decided to remain stupid.

Hm, not my kingdom, not my headache.

As everyone bombarded me with questions about Rhys and Kay, Royce and I skillfully exchanged greetings with the guests, appearing as if we were intoxicated beyond measure and utterly oblivious to Rhys. Our playful charade allowed us to deflect the inquiries seamlessly.

Meanwhile, Ralf was engrossed in flirting with someone notably younger than myself.

Old Bastard!! 

I chuckled at my own thoughts, reminiscing about the times when Ralf harbored nothing but hatred toward me. He may have conveniently forgotten the past, but I hadn't. The only reason for maintaining a semblance of civility with him today was his love for my husband and our son.

Nina discreetly coughed to capture my attention as I got lost in reflection. "You had one job," I murmured to both of them, their gazes fixed on the ground.

"Well, I tried," Nina mumbled.

"What made her drink like this?" 

I asked calmly, prompting both Nina and Julia to look at me with expressions similar to those of deer caught in headlights. Marco entered the room like a silent cat, clearly embarrassed by the entire situation.

"It's all her fault," Nina accused Julia, who shot her a stunned look before turning her gaze to me.

Oh, Julia. Always pushing boundaries.

I cast Julia a meaningful glance, signaling her to explain. Julia struggled internally, ultimately sighing in defeat.

"I thought... you all knew about her, and she knows everything about you all."

This statement made me a bit confused at the beginning, but then the revelation made me question my assessment of Kay a few months ago. Kay had always been a mysterious figure, exceedingly introverted, but her past hadn't revealed any grave sins.

As they continued to explain, with mumbling and accusations flying between them, my rational side leaned towards holding Julia responsible for this mess. This woman seemed incapable of keeping her mouth shut, and perhaps inviting her to the party had been a mistake. But I never doubted Julia's loyalty, her intentions, or her moral compass. She had been an unwavering member of our business for the last 25 years.

Julia appeared remorseful for a moment, but then vehemently shook her head.

"You can't win Kay over with anything—no amount of money, wealth, power, or glamour can attract her. You're doing it wrong! The way Rhys was handling her, it's completely wrong!" Julia erupted, on the verge of bursting. In this moment, most would press her for clarification, but I chose silence, allowing her to vent and unveil the truth.

"I am a mother! I have a young daughter! I raised her alone! You have no idea how scary the outside world is! I am a mother, I know!" Julia's voice echoed with raw emotion, directed squarely at me.

I am a mother too, Julia, I wanted to tell her.

But before this conversation could progress any further, Rhys's sudden and erratic entrance into the chamber interrupted my interrogation. His appearance struck me like a blow to the heart. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been shedding tears for decades; his hair was disheveled; and his clothes were unkempt.

"Where is Julia?" he asked, his voice hollow, as if someone had torn out his vocal cords. Perhaps something had transpired between him and Kay.

This marked the second time I had seen Rhys brought to tears over an issue related to Kay.

"Rhys?" Julia called out to him, and he turned towards her voice. Ignoring everyone else in the room, Rhys gripped her shoulders and shook her.

"You knew!" 

His voice hissed and trembled with betrayal as tears streamed down his cheeks.

Julia's expression morphed into a mixture of confusion and fear as Rhys continued to shake her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he cried out, his anguish shaking me to my core.

"What didn't she tell you?" I asked, the pounding of my heart echoing in my ears. Rhys didn't respond to me; instead, he slowly knelt down in front of Julia, his sobs uncontrollable, and pressed his head to the ground.

My son's unrestrained sobbing left everything blank around me. What had hurt him so deeply? I felt an overwhelming urge to burn the whole world to the ground for him. 

Who dared to inflict this pain upon him? 

What had Kay done to make him cry like this?

I couldn't bring myself to admit to anyone that I struggled to warm up to Kaya. Despite her being perfectly fit within our family, Rhys's overwhelming possessiveness made the entire dynamic uncomfortable for me. 

I knelt behind my son, gripped his shoulder, and asked, "What happened?"

Rhys lifted his head, and as his eyes met mine, his expression tore at my heart with unfathomable pain.

"Mum... they raped Kay." He burst out crying. His howling echoed everywhere. 

................

I had no idea how long I had been staring at him; the air around me seemed to suck me into a void, and I felt weightless.

It took a moment for me to process what Rhys had just revealed. My analytical brain started scouring through my memory stock, searching for answers everywhere, but this sort of information on Kaya was never in our Volkner Intel database. I doubted she had endured any trauma, considering her complete lack of communication with her family.

"Rhys, shut up! Shut up!" Julia's desperate cry pierced the air.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He pleaded with Julia, who could only respond with tears. Nina's face turned pale.

"How?" I  cluelessly asked him. Rhys said nothing and hugged me tightly.

I knew that this information had reopened the worst wound Rhys never healed, a wound he tried to conceal from me. But as his mother, I knew everything about him.

"You're not supposed to know," Julia frantically wept.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Rhys's voice echoed with anguish as he clung to me.

"I made a promise to her. I swore I'd never tell anyone anything," Julia muttered once more.

I glared at Julia, my entire being consumed with sudden rage.

"Who did this to her?" I demanded, my tone laced with the same venomous edge as Kay's voice.

"She didn't tell me. It all happened when she was a preteen until she was 16," Julia mumbled hopelessly.

Upon hearing this, Nina began to weep, and Marco ran to her, offering comfort.

A single piece of information about Kay's past abuse had opened Nina's wounds as well.

I stood firm, playing the role of Maria Volkner herself, pretending that everything was fine with me. As if nothing could break me or bend me to my knees. But people often forget that I am also a human with emotions. 

I rested my chin on my son's head, feeling the weight of his tears soaking into my arms.

"I have hurt her..." Rhys mumbled, his voice heavy with remorse. I wanted to tell him that I knew what he had done, what he had said to Kay, but I held my tongue. I wanted him to release his pain, to let it out.

"Mum... Mum....." Rhys raised himself up from our embrace, his words tumbling out like the unraveling of a tortured soul. "I can never forgive myself..." His anguish pierced the air, and I wished he could see how much I wanted to slap some sense into him when I learned of his actions that night Kay came to the chateau. I knew one day Rhys would face the consequences of his actions, but I never imagined the depth of his suffering.

Struggling to hold back my own tears, I instructed Nina and Marco to leave us alone.

Rhys continued to weep, his cries echoing through my office. I had never witnessed a man cry like this. I recalled how Royce wept when he saw Najma's lifeless body, his grief still haunting my nightmares.

But seeing Rhys's reaction to the news of Kay's abuse, I realized something profound. There was no difference between Royce and Rhys, especially in this moment. If faced with the same news about his beloved, Royce would have reacted just like Rhys.

Rhys's wails filled my chamber, each echoing cry a testament to the depth of his pain. Everything in this room would bear witness on the day of judgment to God, to how Rhys had cried for Kay.

_____________________________________________--

Julia told us everything.

And Rhys, in helpless despair, wept while laying his head on my lap after recounting the events that unfolded in Kay's suite. 

This revelation about Rhys's love interest left me in confusion. Despite our meticulous efforts to gather information about Kay before meeting her in Paris, not a single person had uncovered this aspect of her background. While we did discover details about Kay's father's shady businesses in her hometown, they were so small and inconsequential that I hadn't paid much attention to his corrupt activities.

Kay's father, Mr. Harun Rashidi, had never been a significant concern for us. If Rhys and Kay were to take their relationship seriously, I believed I could mold Kay to fit seamlessly into our family and its business. She proved to be more intelligent than average girls her age, brave, and loyal to his peers. Most importantly, Kay's past seemed to be wiped clean, but Mr. Rashidi's wasn't. He faced multiple lawsuits and attempted murder cases, yet none of our intelligence revealed the extent of his abuse towards his daughter to further his business interests. He had 5 kids; Kay was the youngest and was born after he married off his first child, Kay's eldest sister, when she was mere 16. Kay's second-eldest brother left home when he was 18 for unknown reasons; even they have no communication with their father. 

Had he abused them as well? Did all of his kids know that their sister was getting abused like this??

My head was spinning with all these probable assumptions. My people already told me that Bangladesh was not digitalized that much when Kay was a kid, so a lot of her past actions were not detectable.

But this??

How can someone digest these heinous acts towards a child? 

A flash of memory swiped me off my reality—my memory of the day when I saw Kay's childhood photos for the first time. Hjördis, head of Volkner Intelligence, showed me those photos.

As I gazed at them, my heart ached with unfathomable joy. Her innocent face bore a striking resemblance to Rhys's baby face, triggering a déjà vu of the day when I first saw 6-year-old Rhys playing football in his dad's office while Najma chased after him. However, even I couldn't ignore the unknown fear lurking in her eyes, as evident in those photos.

Rhys rested his head on my lap, his gaze fixed on the expansive window. The moon bathed my office in its glorious light. Rhys harbored dreams of becoming an astronaut; his love for the sky surpassed that of anyone else on earth.

For a moment, it seemed like he had forgotten why he wept like a child.

For a moment, it felt like I was looking at Najma's 6-year-old son for the very first time. My heart wanted to weep out loud—for my dear old friend, for Rhys's mother, for Royce's first love—that I could not keep my promises to her, again.

I have failed Najma, again.

Rhys stood up from my lap and left the chamber with sheer mesmerization in his eyes, heading to the big balcony. I looked at Julia and instructed her to leave us alone. She nodded, wiped her tears away, and left.

I walked to Rhys; he was standing at a distance, holding the railings. I approached slowly and stood beside him. He wasn't looking at the moon; his eyes were fixed on the little star glittering beneath it.

The North Star.

Rhys's fluffy hair flowed with the wind, almost covering his eyes. I wiped them off his forehead. My touch made him weep again, but silently now.

The moonlight reflected on his tears, flowing from his eyes to his chin.

"I can never forgive myself," he mumbled to the sky. I sighed.

"It's not your fault. You didn't know any better." I tried to speak. He turned to me with fury.

"Why is it not my fault? Neither John nor the CIA were able to find out these things about Kay! What if our enemies know about this? What if they use it to hurt her?"

Desperation and fear were evident in his voice. I searched for an answer. I wanted to suggest that Kay might be lying, but I stopped myself. Whatever Kay had told Rhys and Julia required thorough investigation before the three of us could come to any conclusions.

"We need to figure this out," I replied, my tone desperate.

"I'll fucking kill them all." Rhys mumbled, and his cold tone shivered my core on this breezy, warm night.

Suddenly, a flapping of wings caught our attention, and we both turned to see what it was. Minerva and another owl glided and perched on one of the railings in the distance. All of these owls had listening and GPS tracker microchips installed in their bodies—small but efficient devices that helped us spy on our guests. Soon, we will start implanting these devices in humans for human trials.

"Rhys, calm down," I urged.

My words caused him to break down in tears again.

"She will never forgive me," he insisted, the scene of their drunken state making out from that night flashing before my eyes.

"She will," I said, looking at him with assurance. His face registered confusion.

"How?" he asked.

"Did she ever recoil any time you two came into physical contact?" I queried. Rhys looked away for a few seconds and shook his head. I smiled in response and continued, "Do you know why?"

Rhys shook his head again. His beautiful, sad face glowed in the moonlight. I couldn't help but find it endearing.

My son's innocent, confused gaze filled me with warmth.

"Because..... you made her feel safe. Something she might have never felt in her life before she met you," I assured him. His expression changed; the sadness disappeared for a moment, but then he looked away into the distance.

"Sameer made her feel safe," he replied. I burst out laughing. Rhys Sameer Volkner, understood his silly mistake, and he started laughing with me, tears in his eyes.

He wiped his own tears away. I rested my head on my son's shoulder as he leaned his own on top of my tilted head.

"You have to fix your mistake with Kay," I told him.

"She is very stubborn; I don't know how," he confessed.

I sighed, then replied, "I will help you."

"Mum, you don't know Kay. She is unreadable, unbreakable, stubborn, way too curious about everything, and..."

"And?" I lifted my head and looked at his face, his blue eyes illuminated by the moonlight.

"She makes me happy... She made me the happiest I have ever been in my whole life," Rhys admitted, confirming what I already knew.

"I know... and you made her happy too," I assured him, but he started to shake his head in agony.

"Now she hates me."

"No, she doesn't." I protested, "You know what you have to do from now on. Be very humble in front of her," I suggested. I had a slight feeling that Kay's thought pattern was very similar to mine. If so, Rhys would have to be very careful whenever he dealt with her.

"What I have noticed is that Kay hates arrogance; she loves humbleness. Nina and Marco were humble toward her from the beginning, but Kay teased them with arrogance. They didn't stray from their humble, playful behavior. Kay became closer to them because of it, as she appreciated their humility and sweetness. The same goes for Julia. Kay only liked Julia because she was humble." I expressed my assessment. 

Rhys looked like he was getting lost in his thoughts.

I sighed with relief. I wanted to distract him, and it seemed I succeeded.

"I will find out what actually happened to her and who was to blame," I assured him again. He nodded and tried to smile at me. I returned the smile, then decided to leave him alone.

As I walked toward my chamber, Rhys called out, "Mum?"

I turned back to the question.

"We can't let her know that she told us everything while drunk. We have to act normal. As if we know nothing," Rhys requested. I nodded with a smile and added, 

"I'll let Nina, Marco, and Julia know that they have to behave. Also, I think I should tell Royce. Hjordis needs to figure this thing out before our enemies know anything. The three of us need to act fast if you really want your situation with Kay to work out. Don't tell anyone anything about this issue. Not even Nas. Please."

Rhys nodded in affirmation. I started to walk away, then he called for me once again, "I love you. Thank you for calming me down," Rhys calmly expressed. His blue eyes were glowing like a star in the moonlit night.

It felt like my eyes would erupt in tears. 

"I'll burn the world for you, my son," I calmly declared at him, and he smiled ear to ear.

Rhys knew I meant it. He knew, his father knew, and all the Volknerrs knew how much I loved my son. I may not have birthed him or breastfed him; it didn't matter. God blessed me with Rhys through Najma, the absolute best human I have ever met in my life.

If Najma were alive, she would have been so proud of how Rhys turned out as an adult man. He got all the good looks from both Najma and Royce, and his personality was a reflection of Najma's absolute kindness.

I could hear her beautiful voice whispering in the winds of the moonlit night, telling me that I did a good job raising my son.

The son I love most on this planet.