Chapter 16: REVELATIONS

Karim stood there, confused, broken, unsure of how to react. His eyes caught the bandage around Aisha’s arm, and suspicion stabbed at him like a knife. His instincts screamed the truth—that she had been the second assailant, the one his bullet had clipped the night before.

He swallowed hard. The thought coiled in his chest, heavy, unbearable.

His gaze moved between Jemima and Aisha. His face hardened, every furrow in his brow etched

deeper than ever. Jemima’s smile was gone, replaced

with a fragile mix of sadness and guilt. Aisha, in contrast, looked unnervingly calm—almost too calm.

Her body language was relaxed, as though the storm inside him didn’t matter, as though she had nothing to answer for.

The silence pressed down on them. Karim felt its weight, suffocating, wrapping around his ribs. His mind wandered for a second—back to Irene’s steadying hand in the hospital, to the DSP’s watchful, suspicious eyes, to every wrong turn the case had taken. And now here he was, standing across from two women who were not supposed to belong in the same world, bound together by something darker than he had imagined.

He hovered there for a long moment before finally lowering himself into the chair opposite them. The

leather creaked under his weight, a small sound that seemed deafening in the charged stillness. His eyes never left theirs.

“Why?” The word cracked out of him, raw and jagged. His throat was dry, his voice shaking. He leaned forward slightly, his stare burning. “Why have you been going around murdering people in cold blood?”

Aisha smirked. The gesture was sharp, unsettling, splitting the fragile quiet like glass.

“You call them people?” she said, her tone steeped in contempt. Her lip curled, almost in disgust. “Those

pigs with their flabby features and rotten hearts?”

She gave a bitter laugh, short and sharp. “Animals— that’s what I call them. That’s what they are. That’s what they deserve.”

Each word dripped with venom, each pause carried years of festering hate. She could have spat on the floor and it would have matched her fury.

Her eyes flicked to his, glinting. “You had the

chance to stop me, Karim. Last night. But you

hesitated.” She tilted her head, the smirk widening. “Part of you knew I was right.”

Her words stung him more than he expected. A part of him recoiled, but another part—one he didn’t want

to acknowledge—wavered. He clenched his fists under the table, pushing the thought away.

Jemima reached out, placing a hand on Aisha’s shoulder, trying to calm her. The gesture worked only slightly—Aisha’s posture eased, but the fire in her eyes still burned.

Karim sat stiff, lost. His heart hammered, his palms itched with restless heat. None of it made sense. He felt like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, the ground crumbling beneath him.

The room itself seemed to conspire against him. The curtains were half drawn, letting in slivers of muted

light that caught on the glass table between them. A

low hum from the air conditioner filled the silence, cold against his skin. Every detail, every breath, seemed sharpened.

He opened his mouth to push further, but Jemima cut across his hesitation. Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed the weight she carried.

“I’ll tell you everything,” she said quietly. “Everything that happened, exactly the way it happened. And at the end of it…” She paused,

holding his gaze, her tone heavy with promise and

dread. “You can decide what to do with it.”