Artemio Fuegerro stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass, the city stretched out beneath him like a living organism—arteries of light pulsing through steel and concrete, restless and alive. From this height, the world looked obedient. Predictable.
The soft chime of his phone broke the illusion.
He turned back to his desk, fingers steepled, posture perfectly composed as the screen came to life. The tracker feed opened without delay. The hidden application—discrete, undetectable—had synced flawlessly with Lara's phone.
Location: stable.
Status: active.
No tampering detected.
A thin smile crept across his face.
Good.
Yet the satisfaction curdled almost as soon as it arrived.
Lara was no amateur. She was a top-tier hacker—trained, meticulous, paranoid by necessity. Anyone else might miss spyware buried deep in a system kernel. She wouldn't. She shouldn't.
But she hadn't.
His fingers tapped once against the desk, sharp and impatient.
Had she made an unforgivable mistake—or had the accident succeeded where obedience alone had failed? Had it wiped her memories clean enough and make her unusable?
She already wasted one long year.
Another window bloomed open on the screen.
Activity logs.
Artemio scanned the search history, a thin, knowing smile curving his lips.
Leonard Norse.
She was still predictable. She has started snooping.
Then the next entry appeared.
Artemio Fuegerro.
He let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh. She wouldn't find anything he hadn't meticulously curated for public consumption. Every shadow accounted for. Every truth buried beneath layers of polished myth.
But the third search wiped the amusement from his face.
Ancient Azurverda.
His brows knit together.
Why that?
Azurverda—modern Azuverda—was a footnote to most people. A poetic name born from azure skies and endless blue seas, paired with verda for its lush forests.
Yet Lara was digging backward.
His unease sharpened as more entries populated the screen.
Emperors of Azurverda.
Artemio leaned closer, the city forgotten behind him. This wasn't random curiosity. This was a deviation. Lara was following a thread he hadn't anticipated.
He scrolled down.
Alaric Kromwel.
Who was he? Why was Lara interested in him? He read it again, slower this time, as if the name might rearrange itself into something more reasonable. It didn't.
He switched browsers and slipped effortlessly into the dark web, fingers flying as he searched for Alaric Kromwel. Nothing surfaced. No records. No whispers.
He narrowed the search to Kromwel.
At last, a single article appeared—threadbare, speculative. It spoke of rumors only: the Kromwels, an ancient royal bloodline said to have ruled Azurverda before foreign powers tore the country apart in the eighteenth century.
Myths. Yet Lara was interested in them.
Artemio closed the tracker app and pulled up his contacts, his expression darkening as his thoughts aligned into something colder, more deliberate.
His thumb hovered over a name.
Yannis Fenn.
A neuropsychiatrist. A prodigy. And once—long ago—a frightened teenager trapped on a hijacked school bus; saved by Major Leonard Norse during an insurgent attack. Yannis had never forgotten that day. Heroes had a way of carving themselves into young minds.
He was a lieutenant under Leonard's command. Major Norse, after a risky mission to save Yannis, handed the frightened teenager to him to escort them back to their headquarters for debriefing.
Artemio played his cards well. Leonard was low-key, but he was good with words, a charmer. To the students, he wasn't just a soldier—he was salvation.
Yannis Fenn was one of those exceptional students, a medical genius. He completed his medical training at the age of twenty-two, a renowned brain surgeon at twenty-five. By twenty-eight, he was the most sought-after neuropsychiatrist in the entire Azuverda.
Artemio had been careful and patient. He orchestrated chance encounters engineered with surgical precision. A bar fight defused just in time. A group of drunken political heirs put in their place before things turned ugly. Always arriving at the right place and the right time. Always leaving behind gratitude that turned to blind loyalty over time.
He typed the message without hesitation.
Can you look deeper into Lara's condition? I don't think she just lost her memory. I think she believes she's someone else.
The hour was late—too late to expect a response. Yet his phone vibrated almost immediately.
Okay. I'll see her tomorrow. The last scan showed the clot is gone, but the damage may have already been done.
Artemio set the phone down slowly, his reflection staring back at him from the darkened glass.
If Lara was remembering things she was never supposed to know—or becoming someone she was never meant to be—then his control over her was at risk.
And if it affected his carefully laid-out plan, he needed to act soon.
He allowed himself a moment of nostalgia.
Was she six when she first learned absolute obedience?
He remembered the night clearly: rain streaking down their living room window, shoes soaked through as she stood trembling in the doorway of his estate. She had completed her punishment for secretly keeping a pet dog —kneeling before the mound where she was forced to bury the puppy. She kneeled for a full six hours, one hour per day, she kept the dog.
He moved toward her, his steps slow and deliberate. He did not lower himself to her level but he towered over her.
Do you know your mistake? He asked sternly.
Lara's small face lifted, tears streaming down her face as she gazed up at him, her eye full of fear.
She did not say a word but simply nodded.
Good girl.
He said as he patted her tangled, wet hair, then sent her to her room to wash up and change.
After that, she did not break a rule.
Yes, there had been rules. He set it. Simple ones at first. Bedtimes. Locked doors. Which questions were acceptable and which were not.
Curiosity is good, but it can also be dangerous. See, you were caught because you became curious and deviated from the plan. He had told her when she was seven, after she was caught prying into the laptop of his colleague during his visit. He asked her to copy a file from the laptop, but she accidentally opened the gallery and spent time looking at photos of the family's vacation on an island. The distraction led to her being caught.
He hadn't raised his voice. He never did. Anger was inefficient.
Instead, he had taken the laptop that he gifted her on her seventh birthday and placed it in the fire.
She'd cried then—quietly, the way he liked.
He had waited until the flames consumed the casing before speaking again.
Daddy, I promise. I will always follow your plan.
And she did.
A chime from his phone brought him back from his reverie.
A message from Yannis.
Another boy he had shaped. Another mind he had rescued and redirected.
If Lara indeed forgot, that was inconvenient—but not catastrophic.
He had built her once, piece by piece. He had taught her who she was allowed to be, what she was allowed to want.
He could do it again.
Because Lara didn't need memories.
She needed a father.
And Artemio had always been very good at making himself indispensable.