For a second, Zoyar’s gaze shifted past Rony’s shoulder and landed on Cixi, who looked ashen. She was still kneeling on the floor, her body looked rigid, and she held pure fear in her eyes.

Cixi caught his glance and immediately shook her head. She seized the moment and pulled herself upright. She gathered her cleaning supplies with unsteady hands and walked away. And as she walked, her legs felt like wet cement beneath her, requiring a significant conscious effort not to collapse.

Rony did not turn to watch her leave, but he heard her footsteps fading across the tile floor.

"What is your problem, bro?" Rony irritably asked as he squared up to this stranger who had inserted himself uninvited.

"You!" Zoyar took a single step closer to Rony, invading his space and looking directly into his eyes, as if challenging him.

Zoyar watched Rony carefully, who tried to scare Cassian’s Crown fiancée, a woman who was negotiating with Cassian now to kill the others. A woman, Cassian, is apparently possessive about. How long will this man live, Zoyar wondered.

"I was talking to my pal," Rony continued, puffing his chest slightly. "We went to the same college and were trying to reunite with her, but then you came.... You got a problem? Or are you one of her admirers?"

Zoyar would have broken his teeth on the man who was looking at him and talking to him so casually. But this was a cafe where Lily worked. And he can’t make a bad impression on her. "Listen to me carefully—’Pal’." Zoyar placed one hand on Rony’s shoulder, and his fingers were itching to break his shoulder, but he reminded himself to calm down for now. "If you want to live, do not ever come back here, and especially you will die if you ever talk to your ’Pal’." He removed his hand and gestured toward the exit with nothing more than a slow shift of his dark eyes. "Leave!"

"You must be kidding me," Rony muttered under his breath, brushing his hair back with his fingers in frustration. "If you are one of her admirers—"

"I do not think you love breathing enough to finish that sentence." Zoyar cut him off, and the way he looked at Rony carried a final warning. He was a man who had killed before and would not hesitate to do it for a reason far smaller than this.

Seeing his eyes darkened, a chill ran down Rony’s spine. Despite his ego burning hot, his survival instinct glowed hotter.

Tomorrow was an important football match, and he was not about to miss playing because of a fight over a pathetic girl who was not worth the bruises or his match. At least, that was what he told himself as he turned and walked toward the exit.

Rony left, but not without throwing Zoyar one last hard stare over his shoulder.

Zoyar stood perfectly still and watched until the glass door swung shut behind him.

*

For the rest of the afternoon til evening, Cixi worked without speaking a single word with anyone. It looked as if she was carrying the world’s burden.

She mopped floors, wiped down tables, emptied trash bins, and scrubbed the espresso machine until her fingers ached. She moved from task to task of someone who had decided that stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering Ronny’s face and the nightmares she went through in college. So she did not stop and kept working nonstop.

Because she had arrived late, Amanda added an extra hour to her shift. Cixi accepted the punishment without complaint.

Throughout the afternoon, Zoyar kept his eye on her. Not continuously, not in a way that would draw attention. He would glance up from his coffee when she passed. He would track her through the reflection in the window behind the counter.

And Cixi noticed none of it.

By the time her extended shift ended, the evening crowd had started filtering in. The warm light from the pendant lamps made the cafe feel softer than it had all day, but nothing about Cixi had softened. Her eyes looked hollowed out from the inside.

She untied her apron, folded it neatly inside the locker, and walked toward Amanda, who sat behind the counter with her legs crossed, nursing a cup of black coffee and scrolling through the day’s receipts on her tablet.

"Amanda."

Amanda glanced up. "Hm?"

"I want to resign."

Amanda had just raised her coffee to her lips. The hot liquid hit the back of her throat at the exact wrong moment. She choked violently, and her face turned red and her eyes watered. She slammed the cup down on the counter, splattering coffee across the receipts, and pressed a fist against her sternum while gasping for air.

"You—" She coughed again. "You want to what?"

Cixi stood there, hands clasped in front of her, watching Amanda hack and sputter with patience.

"Resign," Cixi repeated in a flat voice.

Amanda wiped her mouth with the tissue paper and blinked rapidly, still recovering from coffee going in the wrong pipe. "Is this because of the cleaning punishment? Because you were late. Twice. In one week. What did you expect me to do, throw you a Party?"

"It is not about the punishment."

"Then what is it about?"

Cixi’s jaw tightened. She could not tell Amanda about Ronny. She could not explain the deepfake video, the bullying, the fact that a ghost from her past had walked into this cafe and shattered the fragile sense of safety she had built here.

"I cannot work here anymore." That was all she offered.

Amanda studied her for a long moment before her sharp eyes narrowed as she tried to read the girl standing before her. Something had changed in Cixi today. After contemplating, Amanda spoke.

"Go home." Amanda picked up her coffee again and took a careful sip, her eyes still fixed on Cixi over the rim. "Think about it tonight. If you still want to resign tomorrow, come tell me, and I will process it. But I am not accepting a decision you are making right now."

Cixi was in no spirit to argue. She pressed her lips together, nodded once, before turning to leave.

*

Meanwhile, Lily had been watching Cixi for the past hour with growing unease. She had tried to approach her twice during the shift, but Cixi had responded with nothing more than a tight-lipped smile and an immediate change of direction.

Cixi suddenly shut herself inside a silence that Lily could not crack it. So she went to the only person who seemed to know something.

Lily walked toward Zoyar, who sat at a corner table near the window, a half-finished cup of cold coffee in front of him. She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down without waiting for an invitation.

"What happened?" Lily kept her voice low, leaning forward. "She has not spoken to me all day. I saw a stranger talking to her, and then you went immediately as if she was in trouble."

Zoyar tilted his head slightly, weighing how much to share. He owed Lily nothing, but the concern on her face looked genuine. She was not fishing for gossip. She was scared for her friend.

"A guy walked in earlier," Zoyar kept his voice even. "He knew her from college. The second she saw him, she froze. I sensed her unease and went there to help your friend. Did I do well?"

"Did he say something to her? Did you hear it?" If Lily wasn’t occupied at the counter, she would have done something... However, when she noticed Zoyar approaching Cixi, she knew he would help her, and he did.

"I handled it. He will not come back—here atleast."

"How can you be sure? And what do you mean here atleast? Do you think he will approach her somewhere else?" That guy was looking for beatings, Lily thought.

When Zoyar met her eyes. The look he gave her answered the question without a single word needing to leave his mouth.

Lily exhaled slowly through her nose. She leaned back in her chair and stared at the spot where Cixi had been kneeling on the floor hours ago.

"She tried to resign," Lily said quietly. "Amanda just told me."

Zoyar said nothing to that. He lifted his cold coffee, took one sip, and set it back down.

"He will not come back," he repeated. And this time, it sounded less like reassurance and more like a promise he had already begun to keep. "She is safe here. Talk to your friend."

*

She took a bus to the next station to change into her disguise as a pregnant woman. After changing, she made her way to the bus stop to head to the Crown Hotel. A black BMW came to a stop in front of her, but she didn’t pay it any attention, still lost in thoughts of what Silvia and her gang had done to her.

Suddenly, she heard a car door open and saw Mark stepping out. It took her a moment to realise that the car had stopped for her.

Mark’s eyes widened for a second before he masked his surprise. Yes, he... was shocked to see Cixi’s swollen belly.