The documents lay scattered across Malik's desk—passports, employment records, immigration stamps, and store ledgers—all painted a picture far different than the carefully crafted silence surrounding Dahlia's sudden marriage to Frederick Virell. He had spent four weeks threading through international records, backchanneling through embassies, and even placing a discreet call to the Virell estate's overseas manager under an alias.
It had all started with a single receipt—a transaction logged at a Virell-owned convenience store located in Munich, Germany. Dahlia's name had appeared not as a shopper, but as an employee. From there, a timeline began to emerge.
Dahlia and her mother had left the country quietly, vanishing from the public eye not long after Callum's accident. Seraphine had ensured their departure was smooth and untraceable, expecting Dahlia would choose somewhere peaceful to begin again.
She reemerged months later in a far-off western province—one known for its misty skylines and cobbled streets—living modestly. She worked quietly among unfamiliar faces, blending into the rhythm of foreign life. Strangely, her employment was under one of the international arms of the Virell enterprise—an inconspicuous role in one of their smaller retail chains.
Frederick Virell—Callum's cousin and a man long considered a ghost within the Virell family's empire—had been reassigned nearly three years ago to oversee a chain of expansions across the Virell holdings in the far western provinces of the continent. Quiet cities laced with rail stations and rain-soaked pavements became his daily landscape. He moved between territories with precision: trade negotiations, local supplier meetings, and retail evaluations kept him on the road. It was in a subdued city, nestled between fog-wrapped hills and once part of the old empire, where Malik's trail went warm.
The convenience store had been a small Virell-owned outlet—one of the many branches of their multinational consumer subsidiary. It operated on a busy street corner where tram bells echoed and high school students often gathered after dusk. And it was there that Dahlia— had been quietly employed as a cashier. Dressed in the modest company uniform, she stocked shelves, rang up groceries, and smiled in a language she was still learning.
Malik had interviewed no less than six employees from that store—some relocated, one retired, another still clocking night shifts. Their stories aligned.
Frederick Virell had appeared often. Too often. At first, no one thought much of it; regional supervisors were known to drop in unannounced. But Frederick didn't act like the others. He didn't check the inventory records. He didn't speak to the shift manager. He walked the aisles like a customer, then lingered at the front register, asking quiet questions about the placement of items, the timing of deliveries—mundane things, but always to her.
"He used to ask her about snack labels," one former employee chuckled to Malik over coffee. "But the strange thing was, he already knew the answers."
It was slow. Intentional. A romance not declared, but built. She made mistakes in the language, and he would correct her gently, using gestures and soft humor. He once offered to walk her home in the rain—claiming his car was parked in the same direction. A lie, the staff later confirmed. His car had been around the other block entirely.
Within weeks, his visits became daily. At exactly eight in the evening, he would show up, timing it for the start of her break. Dahlia—quiet, still grieving the life she left behind—did not resist his presence. The pair began sharing meals at the back staff table, bent over foreign-language recipe cards and city maps. They started practicing together—half-English, half-local dialect—each teaching the other with soft patience and laughter. It became routine, almost sacred.
But there was more.
A surveillance feed from the warehouse exit—obtained by Malik with some delicate leveraging of corporate contacts—showed him a moment captured on a rainy Tuesday. Dahlia stepping out the back door in her coat. Frederick waiting with two coffee cups. They didn't kiss. They didn't even touch. But her eyes found his instantly. And his entire posture changed—straightening, softening, like a man who had forgotten the rest of the world.
Malik sat back in his temporary flat that evening, sifting through his notes in silence.
There were receipts, too—gifts small in monetary value but consistent: a hairpin from a weekend market, an annotated book on language grammar, a packet of her favorite fruit tea. All purchased by Frederick, all delivered discreetly, handed over not like offerings, but as parts of a quiet ritual.
It wasn't infatuation. It was care. It was slow, built with time.
Still, something else tugged at the edge of Malik's instincts.
Throughout his investigation, he noticed subtle inconsistencies in the accounts. A few employees admitted that, once or twice, someone had been watching the store—men who didn't belong to local security or corporate inspections. One was detained briefly by local police after Dahlia reported feeling followed during her walk home. The man claimed to be an independent journalist working on a report about immigrant workers.
But Malik thinks otherwise.
He made a call to one of his old contacts in the domestic surveillance unit and ran a comparison against old Virell security contracts. One name popped.
A private shadow operative—formerly associated with Callum Virell's personal protection team—had used an alternate ID to book lodging not far from that same street for five months. He had left the country just a week before Frederick and Dahlia's sudden announcement of their engagement.
It was enough to suggest what Malik had quietly suspected.
Callum had always known.
Perhaps not the details. Perhaps not the quiet tea moments or Frederick's gentle persistence. But someone had been watching Dahlia. Whether to protect her, or to punish himself, Malik couldn't be sure.
---
It was near midnight, directly from his flight, when Malik returned to the base. The concrete halls were quiet, save for the hum of fluorescent lighting and the distant buzz of encrypted data streams.
He stood outside Seraphine's office door for a moment, then dialed her direct line.
She answered on the first ring.
"Sir, it's done," he said simply.
There was silence.
"Sir, do you want the files tonight?"
"No," came Seraphine's answer. "Just your word, Malik. Is she safe?"
"She is," Malik said softly. "Loved, even. And this—this wasn't manipulation. She maybe found her love of a lifetime."
Another silence. Then:
"Thank you," Seraphine murmured. "Rest. We'll talk tomorrow."
Malik ended the call, staring at the quiet screen. Somewhere across the country, the man Seraphine married was probably still haunted by the woman who had already moved on.