Chapter 482 --482
It meant that either Heena was being played by a third party, or the Empress herself was being manipulated. But Heena severely doubted the latter. In her long, blood-soaked experience across lifetimes, the people who sat on thrones looking perfectly innocent were always the most venomous snakes in the grass. She absolutely refused to gamble her shortened lifespan on the Empress’s "innocence."
Heena looked at the Master, her eyes narrowing. "So? What do you know?"
The Master simply shrugged his broad shoulders, playing the fool one last time. "What can a lowly brothel servant like me possibly know about the Imperial Family?"
Heena leaned back, her patience officially exhausted.
"Listen to me carefully," Heena commanded, her voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "I did not come here to play games with you. If I wanted to play puzzles, I would have just marched straight to the Empress’s palace and told her the absolute truth about your little underground empire. Yours, mine, and your entire Pavilion’s bodies would be chopped into pieces by the Royal Guard. Mostly yours and your boys, of course. And then I would sit in the courtyard and happily join your severed limbs together just to finish my puzzle."
The Master stared at her, genuinely taken aback by the graphic, casual brutality of her words.
"You are quite cold-blooded, aren’t you, My Lady?" he noted, a hint of dark fascination in his eyes. "You were just out there letting my boys fawn over you, yet you speak of them like this?"
"I don’t give a damn about your boys, and I am not threatening them just for fun," Heena replied coldly. "If we are working as business partners, then I will treat you exactly like a business partner. I ask, you answer. If I were to die today, do you honestly think I would even give a damn about my own family? Let alone yours?"
The Master rested his chin on his hand, his eyes gleaming with malicious intent as he decided to test her psychological armor.
"Well, that’s certainly true," the Master drawled, a cruel smirk touching his lips. "After all... there are not many daughters in this empire who would ruthlessly imprison their own biological mother in a dungeon."
Underneath the table, Heena’s hand violently clenched into a fist.
She knew exactly why this bastard was speaking like this. He was actively trying to strike a nerve. He wanted to make her angry, to provoke a reaction and crack her impenetrable facade so he could regain the upper hand in the negotiation.
But Heena was a master of her own mind. She simply unclenched her hand, looked him dead in the eye, and smiled brightly.
"Well," Heena replied, her voice dripping with biting, flawless sarcasm. "After seeing just how ruthless I am to my own blood... do you still want me to call you ’Daddy’, dear?"
Hearing that, the Master’s tense expression melted back into a soft, patronizing smile. "Ah, the youth of today rarely have any respect for their elders."
Heena didn’t blink. She matched his soft smile with a chilling one of her own. "If you want to earn my respect, then just tell me about the Su family."
The Master raised a hand, stopping her. "Just as you said a moment ago—a deal is a deal. Business is business. You have to give me something in return first. When we made our arrangement, you promised to find my son. You promised to find out what happened to my missing children. Yet you haven’t given me a single scrap of information. Why should I believe you now?"
Heena calmly reached into the inner pocket of her cloak. She pulled out a small, tightly folded piece of paper and casually tossed it onto the glass table between them.
She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. "This is the address of the location where your children were taken. And this is the name of the people who took them."
The Master’s expression instantly froze. He lunged forward, snatching the paper off the table with uncharacteristic desperation. He quickly unfolded it, his eyes scanning the ink.
But as he read the words, his desperation curdled into sheer, trembling fury. He looked up at her, his eyes blazing. "Did you just write this outside?! Are you joking with me?!"
Heena stared at him, her expression completely flat. "Do I look like I am joking?"
The Master violently spun the paper around and slammed it onto the table in front of her. "You wrote the ’’’Su Family’’’ on here!" he shouted. "So you mean to tell me that the exact family you are desperately seeking information on is miraculously the exact same family that kidnapped and killed my son? Do you think I am crazy?! Do you honestly think you can manipulate information out of me with such a cheap trick? My Lady, do you really think my Pavilion is just some playhouse you can stomp into and play games with?"
Heena sat perfectly still, letting his anger wash over her before finally speaking.
"Well, if you don’t want to believe it, then don’t," Heena said, her voice dropping into a cold, pragmatic rhythm. "I don’t give a damn either way. But let me give you the answer. For the past ten years, your ’children’ have been systematically purchased by the branch families of the Su clan."
The Master’s chest heaved, but he remained silent, forced to listen.
"It happens exactly the same way every time," Heena continued, outlining the grim reality. "Sometimes the buyer poses as a wealthy merchant. Sometimes as a minor political family, or a small aristocratic branch. But the pattern is identical. When they buy your courtesans’ freedom, they act like benevolent, loving patrons. They put on a perfect show. For a few days after they leave, you maintain contact with your children. And then... sudden, absolute silence. They vanish. By the time you eventually find their bodies dumped somewhere, you can never track down who the actual owners were. Because those false identities were all shell aliases created by the Su family branches. I found the paper trail."
The Master’s eyes widened, the sheer, horrifying logic of her words piercing through his denial. "But... why?" he whispered. "Why would they do that?"
Heena smiled, a dark, utterly cynical expression. "Because the Su family maintains its massive political influence by sending ’gifts’ to rival families, corrupt ministers, and key political figures. They send women and men to act as concubines, spies, and playthings to secure power."
She watched the horrific realization finally dawn on the Master’s face. It didn’t take a genius to connect the final dots, but Heena spelled it out anyway, her voice dripping with venom.
"I know what you are thinking, so let me clarify it for your old brain," Heena stated ruthlessly. "Do you honestly think the arrogant, bloodline-obsessed Su family would ever willingly send their ’own’ precious, noble-born daughters and sons into those humiliating, dangerous scenarios? Why would they soil their own blood... when they can just buy the cheap, disposable lives of stunningly beautiful, lowly-born brothel slaves to do the dirty work for them?"
This horrifying truth wasn’t just a wild guess. Heena had meticulously pieced this intelligence together using Samuel’s elite shadow guards, the System’s temporal scans, and the Marcuset family’s vast, underlying military network.