Reborn in the Enemy's Embrace

I looked at Zion in shock and grabbed tightly onto Dexter’s hand.

Had they caught the killer?

If they caught this one, then the police would be able to trace and capture the next one!

Dexter looked at me when I grabbed his hand.

I took a deep breath and waited for Zion to hang up the call.

After he did, he looked at me and said, "Phil caught someone. I don’t have time to drive you guys back now, so let’s just go to the hospital together."

Zion then accelerated the car and headed for the hospital.

Our anticipation was high during the car ride.

Who was the killer? Who was the person who killed me?

I really wanted to know.

Meanwhile, Dexter stayed silent throughout the ride with his head hung low.

He was probably scared that I might scold him again since he knew he was at fault.

The moment the car was parked, I ran out of the car with Zion.

Dexter trailed behind us for a couple steps before stopping. Then, he turned to coldly gaze at a corner nearby the hospital entrance.

But the corner was very dark, and nothing could be seen.

I stopped and turned back to Dexter. "Dexter?"

Dexter met my gaze and walked toward me.

"Hurry," I said before running forward again. I really wanted to see the killer.

But the moment I looked forward, I saw in my periphery that Dexter had pointed at that dark corner and then did a throat-slitting gesture.

However, when I turned back to Dexter, he’d resumed his innocent demeanor again.

As far as I could recall, I’d developed an idea of what an angel looked like after seeing Dexter right before I died.

And now that I was used to seeing his innocent face, I felt like he was hiding too many things under that innocent facade.

When we arrived at the hospital ward, Phil was pinning the killer to the ground while Juliet was curled up in the corner of the room. She was trembling in fear, and her face was extremely pale.

All these incidents were extremely shocking to Juliet. After all, she’d been so pampered by Damien, and for so long too.

My guess was that it would be a long time until she’d be able to sleep well again, given that she’d probably be in constant fear for her life from now on.

But this was simply Juliet’s karma.

Dexter was right about what he’d said the other day.

Death was not the greatest punishment. Rather, being alive was.

Constantly being in a state of guilt, loneliness, and fear was the cruelest punishment one could inflict onto another.

"Zion, this guy is... underage," Phil said worriedly and handed Zion the intended murder weapon.

It was a syringe containing what was probably deadly fluids.

"Someone paid me to come here and inject that into her IV. I just did it for the money!" The teen yelled at Zion, "Don’t kill me!"

Zion wore a sour expression as he went over to grab the teen by his collar. "You were committing murder! Where are your parents?"

The teen was tall and dressed in a white doctor’s coat. He seemed to only be 15 or 16 years old.

"Let me go!" The teen struggled, trying to escape.

"Take him away!" Zion angrily ordered.

If the boy wasn’t the killer, he’d at least been instructed by them.

"Look into who his parents are and where he studies," Zion said in irritation.

This killer had gone way out of line!

"I don’t have any parents! They died a long time ago! Please don’t arrest me. I still have a baby brother who’s sick! He needs money to treat his illness!

"Please, I beg of you! My brother will die!" the teen cried to Zion, kneeling on the floor. "Please, I know I was wrong. Please don’t arrest me!"

Zion angrily kicked him. "Whatever reason you did this for, you were still committing murder! Don’t you have basic common sense?"

The teen knelt there on the floor and suddenly lost his composure. "What do all of you know? All you do is look down on us from your moral high ground! Look at us! We’ll die without money!"

After screaming his fill, the teen angrily glared at Juliet as she trembled in the corner. "The man even said that she was supposed to be dead in the first place. So, why are all of you protecting the bad guy here?"

Zion stood where he was without replying.

Then, after a long pause, he said, "Take him back to the station."

Phil grabbed onto the teen, about to take him away.

"Don’t take me away! My brother’s still waiting for me..." the teen sobbed, trying to wrestle free from Phil’s grasp.

But Zion shoved the teen against the wall and growled, "Let me explain something to you, kid—bad guys will always be punished by the law, but not privately punished by you like this.

"Who do you think instructed you to do this in the first place? They’re the bad guys!"

Zion seemed to have lost control as well. After all, he’d barely gotten three hours of sleep every night ever since the first murder was discovered.

The killer had been provoking Zion, the police authorities, and everybody else.

To Zion, the killer deserved to die no matter what his reasons for killing so many people were!

After the teen was taken away, I leaned against the wall, feeling somewhat down.

When Phil dragged the teen past me, our eyes met.

The teen then opened his mouth, as if he was trying to tell me something.

I looked at the teen, confused.

Was he trying to talk to me? Was there something he wanted to tell me?

Did he... know me?

"The boy... must’ve been acting on someone else’s instructions," I said softly.

Zion leaned against the wall and weakly thumped his forehead.

He looked to be in great agony.

As long as the killer remained uncaught, there would be more deaths. And because of this, Zion felt guilty and blamed himself for it.

"I could’ve... I could’ve arrived earlier..." Zion grumbled.

He could’ve found Sophia earlier.

The doctor had said that if they’d found her even a day earlier, she would’ve had a chance at survival.

Then, with a loud slam, Zion punched his fist into the wall, and blood seeped out of his knuckles.

I rushed over to try and stop him, but didn’t know how to console him.

Zion then went to the smoking zone and took out a cigarette.

Meanwhile, Dexter and I silently stood in the doorway.

"Cigarette?" Zion offered Dexter.

Dexter shook his head. "Smoking is bad for your health."

Zion smiled bitterly. "I’ll smoke a couple more then."

Dexter continued, "Why do manufacturers still produce cigarettes when they know it’s bad for your health? Where is the source of it all?"

Where was the source of the crime?

Zion’s hand around his cigarette froze, and he instantly turned to look at Dexter.

Dexter had just reminded him that his investigation had taken the wrong direction from the start.

The police had kept a close watch on the killer and victims all this time, but finding out why the killer was killing in the first place was the key.

Since the killer had been stumped here when he tried to kill Juliet, then they should be taking the opportunity to trace everything backward, all the way until they found the so-called source of the crime.

By the time we left the hospital, it was 4:30 am.

The sky was brighter than before, but still gloomy.

This was the time of the day that I hated the most—the dark before dawn.

The dead silence that came with it often scared me.

Juliet had to be sedated to calm down.

I watched on from outside the ward door while she said I was gloating and making fun of her.

Well, I certainly was.

But I still didn’t feel satisfied.

After all, this was far from the level of suffering I wanted her to experience.

When we left the hospital, we saw a young boy in the parking lot who looked to be around eight to nine years old.

The boy was scrawny, pale, and seemed to have had a nosebleed.

He messily wiped the blood away.

"Can you please give me my brother back?" the boy cried, begging Zion.

He was clearly the baby brother of the teen from earlier.

"My brother only did it for me," the boy cried.

Zion wiped away the boy’s blood with a tissue.

Just then, a female officer ran over.

She said, "Zion, this is that teen’s baby brother. He has leukemia... We just looked into their info and both the boy and his brother are orphans.

"They’ve been roaming the streets because no one would adopt them. Their livelihood... basically depended on the teen stealing whatever he could."

Zion crouched down to look at the boy, his brows furrowed. "Have you and your brother... been stealing things all this while in order to take care of yourselves?"

The little boy shook his head. "My brother won’t let me steal things."

Zion silently hung his head.

He was probably recalling the teen’s yell of, "What do all of you know? All you do is just look down on us from your moral high ground!"

Judging how others lived their lives...

"Take care of him," Zion said to the police officer before leaving.

I was about to leave as well when I heard the boy whisper, "Sophia..."

Immediately, I stopped and turned to the boy in shock.

He and his brother actually knew me!