Chapter 374: Fucked To The Bone
"I’ll be clear about why I brought the two of you here," Hector said finally. "I need a concrete report. Precise. What actually happened at the Jade Garden. What Nash took, exactly. And above all, how we ended up losing ten player contracts without me being informed of any of it before a public press conference."
Harlan said nothing, his eyes still fixed on some vague point on the floor, his wheezing breath filling the silence between each of Hector’s sentences.
Monique sat rigid in her chair, her jaw clenched so tight a small vein visibly pulsed at her temple. She said nothing either, but her whole body seemed to vibrate with tension, like an animal that senses the next word spoken might be the one too many.
"Monique," Hector went on, finally turning his head toward her, his tone not shifting one degree, still just as cold, just as measured. "You were in charge of this operation. You were the one who signed off on the site’s security, the one who approved Harlan’s presence in the control room. If things went this wrong, the initial responsibility falls on you, before it even lands on him."
A cold anger flashed across Monique’s eyes, her lips parting to fire back, but she held herself in check, swallowing the words, her nails digging a little deeper into her own forearm under the table, out of sight.
"You really want to do this right now," she said finally, voice low, trembling from holding back so much at once. "Blame me, while I’m sitting right next to the piece of shit who—"
"I’m not blaming anyone," Hector cut in. "I’m stating facts. You were responsible. It failed under your watch."
Silence fell again, heavier still, broken only by Harlan’s uneven breathing, still collapsed in on himself, as if absent from the room despite his physical presence.
Hector studied him for a moment, mildly irritated by the silence.
"Harlan," he said, more softly this time, with something like false compassion. "Look at the state you’re in."
Harlan didn’t react right away, but a slight tremor ran through his shoulders, as if the words had finally managed to cut through the thick fog he seemed sealed inside.
"Prison is a horrible place, isn’t it? What torture, for someone who once saw the beauty of an open sky, to end up locked in the smallest cell at the bottom of the Underground. Isn’t it practically a grave? Truly tragic. But me, I can get you out," Hector went on, his voice dropping lower, almost intimate now, loaded with that soft, venomous persuasion that had always been his gift. "I have the means. The right people, the right bribes, the right files that can simply disappear. You could be out before the end of the month."
Something shifted instantly in both Harlan’s and Monique’s eyes. The former’s, until then empty and evasive, snapped up all at once, a spark igniting in them immediately.
"You... you can..." he murmured, voice shaking, broken. "You can really get me out of here?"
"If you cooperate," Hector answered, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Fully."
Harlan straightened up slightly, a painful motion that pulled a grimace from him, but he ignored it, too seized now by this sudden, unexpected possibility.
"I’ll tell you everything," he said, almost pleading now, the words tumbling over each other. "Whatever you want. Just get me out of here, please... I can’t take it... I really can’t stay here, every night it’s—"
"I know," Hector cut in, almost amused by this sudden eagerness to negotiate, coming from a man who, seconds earlier, had barely seemed able to string two coherent words together. "Here’s what I want in exchange."
He leaned forward slightly, hands still flat on the table.
"You’re going to state that you acted alone. You’ll claim you stole the Baby-Boom contracts for your own gain, that you worked in secret for Nash in exchange for payment, without ever implicating Apex in any of it. A corrupt employee, lured by money, acting in the shadows. Nothing more."
Harlan blinked, confusion mixing with his still-fragile relief.
"That’s... that’s it?" he asked, almost disbelieving. "Just that?"
"Just that," Hector confirmed. "Getting Baby-Boom back remains my absolute priority. I’ll deal with the rest."
A strange silence followed, Harlan staying frozen, something in his expression starting to crack in a different way now, almost as if he’d just understood something Hector himself hadn’t grasped yet.
"You..." he started, voice hesitant. "You really think Baby-Boom is the problem?"
Hector’s brow furrowed slightly, the first crack of irritation crossing his usually impenetrable mask.
"What do you mean by that?"
Harlan let out a laugh, short, broken, almost uncontrolled, a sound that had nothing human left in it, something between a sob and contained hysteria.
"You don’t even know," he said, shaking his head, the motion erratic. "You really don’t know what he took."
"Harlan," Hector said, his voice hardening instantly, every trace of amusement vanishing at once. "What are you talking about."
But Harlan had already slipped somewhere else, his shaking hands coming up to press against his battered face, an incoherent murmur escaping between his fingers, fragments of sentences that no longer really formed sense.
"If I tell you... if I tell you, you’ll never let me out... never, never, you’re gonna..."
"HARLAN." Hector’s voice cracked through the room, every trace of false gentleness gone in an instant. "What did he take. What are you two hiding from me. Tell me. Now."
Harlan kept trembling, shaking his head, unable to answer clearly, sinking back into that half-conscious, half-collapsed state, his words dissolving into murmurs that went nowhere.
Hector turned sharply to Monique then, frustration finally starting to break through his usual shell.
"You," he said, curt. "You were there. You must know something. What the hell did they take, for everyone in front of me to be acting like useless fucking idiots?"
That was the sentence, that exact one, that snapped something loose in Monique.
Victoria’s words came rushing back all at once, filling her head. Since I walked into this room, has he asked you once how you’re doing? Funny how we pick our anchors in life.
She looked at Hector, this man for whom she had sacrificed so much, her dignity, her body, her pride, calmly negotiating the freedom of the man who had raped her, blaming HER for this entire disaster, without an ounce of compassion, without a glance, without anything.
Then her eyes slid to Harlan, curled up, pathetic, and the memory surged back, brutal, nauseating, that moment at the hospital when the doctor had coldly explained to her the state her attacker’s body had been in at the time, the total neglect, the infection he’d passed on to her without a second thought, without a shred of concern. All the filth he’d let accumulate on himself, poured into her, and left behind as a vaginal infection.
Something in her broke completely.
"GO FUCK YOURSELF, GODDAMN IT!!!" she screamed, her voice cracking between rage and a sob she could no longer hold back.
She shot up out of her chair, sending it clattering to the floor behind her, and crossed the distance to Harlan before landing a kick square between his legs with absolutely no restraint. Harlan collapsed with a strangled cry, crumpling hard onto the cold tile.
Her voice broke apart completely, the words dissolving into sobs, as a third kick, harder still, cracked against Harlan’s head, slamming his skull against the floor.
"P-Please—" Harlan started weakly, one hand raised in useless protection.
Tears now streamed freely down her cheeks, her rage tangled with a deep, uncontrollable despair, each blow barely seeming to ease the enormous void opening up inside her.
"You want to negotiate, you piece of shit, you want to negotiate with HIM?! You disgusting bastard!!!" she sobbed, one last kick landing, harder still, tearing a scream out of him. "Nobody touches me. NOBODY! And look at you, look what you did to me, look what you left in me—"
One final kick, lower, more violent, crashed between Harlan’s legs, ripping a high, broken scream out of him, his body folding completely in on itself, shaking, incapable of the slightest defense.
Hector hadn’t moved from his chair. He watched the scene with that same unreadable expression, making no move to intervene, letting Monique empty out this rage that seemed to have no limit, no foreseeable end.
Then he let out a sigh, almost annoyed, glancing at his watch.
"I sincerely hope we can get back to my question once you’re finished," he said, his voice settling back into that unbearable calm. "I want to know exactly what Nash has."
Monique went still, breathing hard, tears streaming down her face, hands shaking, eyes fixed on the whimpering wreck at her feet.
Harlan stayed there, curled up on the cold floor, a thin stream of blood now running from his mouth, mixing with the tears flowing freely down his battered face. His shoulders shook with a violent, uncontrollable sob, whatever resistance he had left collapsing all at once.
"He has everything," he finally murmured, voice broken, barely audible between sobs. "You don’t understand... Nash has everything."
He lifted his head slightly, his good eye, red and swollen from crying, settling on Hector with a kind of despair, the despair of a man who has nothing left to lose because he’s already lost everything.
"Absolutely everything," he repeated, a broken, joyless laugh escaping between two sobs. "He has everything on us... Everything."
A deathly silence fell over the room. Monique stood frozen, breathing ragged, staring at Harlan without really seeing him. Hector, too, didn’t move, his face finally beginning to waver, the first real crack in that facade of absolute control he had maintained until now.