Grayson didn’t immediately go back to his penthouse. Instead, he redirected his hover car towards the Imperial Research Institute.

Pete Rowan was still, as if he already knew that he would come back. He met him at the side entrance.

He had a lab coat on with a crooked button. He had a mug of something steaming in his left hand. He was visibly tired and stressed, but he was calm, which made this whole thing even more unnerving.

"She’s downstairs," Pete Rowan said by way of greeting, falling into step beside Grayson without preamble.

"She hasn’t eaten. Refused the nutrient solutions, refused water. She did throw the chair at the observation window around ten, but it’s a reinforced fake glass, so it’s useless." Then, he took a sip from his mug to wet his dry throat.

Grayson said nothing, but his pace didn’t slow down as they descended. Past the public research floors, past the restricted labs, down a series of corridors that grew progressively quieter until they reached a reinforced door marked only with a numerical code.

Pete Rowan scanned his QR private encrypted ID to key it open and stepped aside.

The room beyond was small and was lit by the flat white glow of recessed ceiling panels. There was a simple bed along one wall. Then, a sealed refreshment unit on the other.

In the center sat Lilianna Gringer.

She was seated on a metal chair with her wrists unbound. Her clothes were slightly disheveled from a one-piece jumpsuit. With her body curled inward, with traces of bruises, and her hands visibly in a fist.

She looked terrible.

Not in the way she usually looked after one of her stunts or her action movies.

She looked miserable.

In a span of hours, her skin became dry and yellowish, even a little furry. It made him wonder if she was in a semi-transformation of her beast form.

But then her eyes looked normal.

Yes, it was bloodshot and slightly sunken, but it didn’t change. It was just that they looked flat, dead.

What happened to her?

He turned to Pete Rowan with an askance expression, but the other just shrugged.

Pete Rowan explained, "She was already like this the moment Zero left her locked up in here."

Grayson didn’t say anything but began to think.

Before he could think further, Grayson felt a gaze on him.

Lilianna Gringer was beginning to take in that Grayson was there in front of her. Her eyes began to come back to life.

But not in an innocent like one that Grayson remembered in their childhood. Not one fierce or passionate back when they were in the military.

Rather, it was the same intense, mindless ’love’ she had been proclaiming to Grayson for years. Panicking but also fervently believing that Grayson would side with her no matter what.

"Grayson—" Her voice cracked on his name.

She didn’t even bother with pretenses or call him with the usual General.

Lilianna Gringer lunged forward off the chair. "It wasn’t me!"

The tears poured down fast and messily.

But then she saw that Grayson looked indifferently at her, unmoved.

Lilianna Gringer became desperate.

She didn’t want to be hated by Grayson.

Not Grayson!

Grayson saw Lilianna Gringer’s hands tremble in harsh, irregular spasms. "You have to believe me, it wasn’t me, I didn’t—I wouldn’t—"

She was even hiccupping with snot and red-rimmed eyes. She looked desperate, clawing for his attention, his belief.

Grayson stood in the doorway and watched in silence.

He had seen Lilianna Gringer cry for real exactly four times in the twenty-odd years he had known her.

Once at his father’s memorial.

The second was after her first kill in the battlefield, where she had managed to hold it together for the debrief. But then she ended up throwing up behind the barracks and wept for ten straight minutes.

The third was when she had been passed over for a promotion she had earned, and decisively retired from the entertainment industry with him.

And lastly, when he had a serious conversation with her in private.

Where he had told her, plainly and without cruelty, that he couldn’t and wouldn’t return her feelings no matter what, no one in our friends circle knew about this aside from both of them, since he was concerned about her pride.

But this can’t go on anymore.

Each time, those tears had been real.

But this time—

He wasn’t sure.

And the uncertainty itself was the thing that cut deepest.

The fact that he could no longer tell whether his friend, whom he had known since childhood, was being real, hurts the most.

How did you end up like this?

He tried to recall anything, any signs of how she turned out like this. But even as he remembered it, nothing came out of it.

Had it been when he left the military?

The reasons were his own, and he didn’t owe anyone a detailed explanation. But since it was Lilianna Gringer, he tried to explain. After all, the history between them counted for something even if the feelings didn’t.

That ended up with her making up her mind and following him to resign. She also told everyone, which made some of them resign with him, too.

But those were their own choices.

If so, then had it been before that?

Was it because he rejected her?

But he thought she had already accepted it?

She even asked to remain friends. He agreed back then and was about to end it like that when she proposed to help him with those marriage proposals. He did not regret agreeing after all; that made his life conveniently peaceful.

But it was all in the pretense of ’friendship’.

Yet she took it more seriously.

It was his fault for not stopping it before it was too late. But it was not to enable her to go against someone he was trying to protect.

He’s not single anymore.

And she has to understand that.

That’s the friendship they agreed upon.

But he was not cruel enough to kill her over that.

After all, they had been friends.

Had it been something else entirely that they had missed?

As Grayson thought this through, it became harder to decide.

This was the second time, aside from Neville’s, that he was having a hard time.

Standing in this room at the dead of the night, watching her sob. Grayson realized with a cold, leaden clarity that it no longer mattered.

Whatever had gone wrong, whatever he might have done differently—the woman in front of him had tried to hurt Neville.

Deliberately, repeatedly, too targeted to come from a mere jealousy with escalating degree.

This was beyond what he could fix with a simple conversation.

"Lilianna Gringer."

The moment Grayson said her full name, Lilianna’s sobbing hitched and stopped.

Grayson only called someone by their full name for strangers. For contacts he hadn’t yet decided to trust, for people who existed on the far side of a line that, once crossed, could not be crossed back.

And Lilianna Gringer knew this very well.

Her red, swollen eyes turned wild in insanity. Just locked onto Grayson’s face with a desperate expression.

But she wouldn’t find someone to pity her, at least not here, not tonight.

Grayson watched the realization dawn on her, making her expression change in rapid succession.

Disbelief.

Shock.

A brief, flaring fury that twisted her mouth.

And then, a raw, helpless grief that almost made him reconsider.

Almost.

"I’ll inform your family," Grayson said with a steady voice devoid of any emotion, just like the one he used in the military. "You’ll stay here until you’ve understood what you’ve done."

"You can’t—" Lilianna Gringer stood up to her feet. The metal chair screeched against the floor. "Grayson, you can’t just—I’ve been with you since forever! Before you became anything! You can’t throw that away because of—because of him—that slut! That SLUT!"

"SHUT YOUR FILTHY MOUTH!" Grayson’s eyes turned murderous, pressuring and silencing everyone in the room.

Pete Rowan dropped to his knees. Lilianna was already salivating, trying to say something.

Grayson glanced at Pete Rowan and sighed as he tried to control his emotions. He couldn’t believe that Lilianna would call Neville like this in private.

"This isn’t about him." He said while gritting his teeth.

"It’s always about him!" Lilianna, as if she just hadn’t experienced what happened earlier, began to lash out. "Ever since that slut showed up, you’ve been different!"

"Can’t you see that he’s brainwashing you? He’s a nobody, Grayson, an orphan from some backwater facility, and you’re—you’re letting him—" Her voice cracked again, not with tears this time but with blood pouring from her mouth. It seemed that she scratched a great deal of her throat. "He’s just a slut. He’s manipulating you, and you’re too—"

"Enough."

Lilianna Gringer stopped. Not because she wanted to—but because something in her gut told her that the next word out of her mouth would be the last one she would utter.

Grayson held her gaze for three seconds.

Then he turned and walked out without a word.