The revelation weighed on everyone like a mountain, crushing the air from their lungs.
Maurice Watson was a legend in the St. Louis police force.
He was a mentor, a guiding star who had plucked Franco from obscurity and shaped him into the man he was.
Just six months ago, he had retired with honors, lauded as a hero. And now, he was revealed as the shadowy hand be- hind it all.
“Why?” Franco’s voice was a raw, barely audible rasp, torn from the depths of his disbelief.
He could not understand why Maurice would orchestrate something so monstrous.
“You want to know why?” Adelina rose, her gaze piercing down at him, tinged with a flicker of pity.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
An hour later, they stormed Maurice’s private villa.
Franco led the charge, kicking the door open.
Inside, the house was eerily still. Maurice sat on a plush sofa in the living room, calmly steeping a pot of coffee.
It looked like he’d been expecting them all along.
“You’re here,” he said, looking up at Franco with a warm, almost fatherly smile, the kind that welcomed a wayward son home.
If not for the truth they now knew, no one could have connected this genial old man with the monstrous “Mr. X.”
“Chief Watson…” Franco’s voice cracked, heavy with anguish.
“I’m retired now, Franco. Call me Maurice.” He chuckled softly, pouring a cup of coffee and offering it with a gentle
gesture.
Franco didn’t take it. His eyes locked onto the eagle–shaped ring glinting coldly on Maurice’s finger.
“Why?” he demanded, each word deliberate, carved from pain.
“No reason, really,” Maurice replied, sipping his tea with maddening nonchalance. “I lost. That’s all there is to it.”
“Why frame your own protégé? Why slaughter innocent people?” Franco’s voice rose to a roar, his emotions spilling
over.
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“Innocent?” Maurice’s laugh dripped with scorn. “There’s no such thing as innocence in the world, Franco.
“You’re too naive.
“You think what you see is the truth?”
He stood and drifted to the floor–to–ceiling window, gazing out at the city’s bustling streets below.
“This city’s rotten to its core.
“From top to bottom, it’s festering.
“I was just… cleaning up the filth in my own way.”
His eyes gleamed with a feverish zeal, a dangerous conviction.
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“As for Adelina…” He turned back to Franco, his voice softening with menace. “She was too brilliant, too sharp. She was a threat.
“A mind like hers, if not mine to command, had to be destroyed.”
“So you framed her?” Franco’s heart bled with every
word.
“Yes,” Maurice admitted without hesitation, his tone chillingly matter–of–fact.
“And Judson? Why did he help you? No… Why did he betray you to side with Adelina?”
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That was the piece Franco couldn’t fathom.
Maurice’s smile widened, cryptic and unyielding.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Without warning, he pulled a small remote from his pocket and pressed a button.
A deafening boom shook the villa, the ground quaking beneath their feet.
“Bomb!” an officer shouted, panic seizing the team.
“Captain Alvarez, we need to evac…”
Franco didn’t budge. His eyes bored into Maurice, unyielding.
“You think this will let you escape?”
“Escape?” Maurice shook his head, his smile serene. “I never planned to escape.
“I just wanted to leave you a parting gift.”
With that, he pressed the final red button on the remote.
“Goodbye, my finest student.”
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Chapter 7
A cataclysmic roar erupted, flames and smoke swallowing the villa in an instant.
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