The Devil's Favourite Obsession

In the car on the way back, Olga did not speak.

She did not understand why she could not tell Cixi who she was. Why could she not pull the girl into her arms in the seat beside her and apologise for every year she had been gone and promise her every small thing she had been denied? She wanted to give Cixi everything Cixi had not received.

Before any of it, she would divorce Lorian.

Perhaps Cassian was trying to protect Cixi from Lorian. Perhaps that was why he had told her not to reveal Cixi’s true identity. Perhaps that was the reason for the wait.

She would go back. She would talk to Lorian about divorce. The whole night, she thought of what Lorian did to Cixi. And how she survived all these years, feeling lonely. People who thought to sell her couldn’t have loved her...

She decided that moment she would leave Lorian, and if Tatiana and Rafael’s engagement did not go through, it would be for the better. Tatiana was nineteen. She did not need the pressure of marrying a man who did not respect her.

Maybe Olga could take both her daughters away. From Lorian. From the Crown family. From all of it.

*

The cafe was full.

The bell above the door announced Cixi as she stepped inside. Her eyes went to the corner booth before she had given them permission.

Zoyar was sitting there.

Lily waved from behind the counter. Cixi’s eyes went again to Zoyar. Zoyar caught her looking. She gave him a scowl. And he smiled. He looked at her as though he had been waiting for her to arrive.

”How long is he planning to come here?” Cixi asked Lily as she crossed behind the counter.

”Who cares?” Lily handed her the apron. ”He is bringing money to the cafe. That is what matters.”

Cixi tied the apron.

She crossed the floor to Zoyar’s booth.

”Thanks for the other day.” Her voice was flat.

Zoyar nodded. ”No problem.”

”Did you tell Cassian about the incident?”

Zoyar’s eyes lifted to hers and held the look. ”I did not.”

”Then who informed him?”

”Must be his men.” Zoyar’s mouth tilted. ”Do not look down on men who work for the Mafia. They do not need to be in suits to keep their eyes on a person.”

”And here we are talking about Cassian and his men.”

She turned to leave.

”Cixi.”

She stopped.

”I think you should tell Cassian about that guy.” Zoyar’s voice had lost the smirk. ”He might not come here. That does not mean he will not try to meet you outside and cause trouble.”

”That is my problem.” And Cixi walked away to the next customer.

*

Her shift ended at six.

She untied the apron. She washed her face. She put on her summer jacket. She walked out the front of the cafe and crossed the road to the taxi stand.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket as she reached the kerb.

She knew before she looked at the screen.

Cassian.

She considered ignoring it. But then she remembered, in the same second, that ignoring him had never produced a better outcome than picking up. He would send a man. He would send several. He would have the taxi driver replaced. He would have her brought to him in a way she would prefer to avoid.

She picked up. ”Yes!”

”My pregnant fiancée.” His voice was lazy and amused. ”Where are you going instead of going back to the Palace?”

”Apparently, I am safer outside than in the Palace.” She made the sarcasm clear. ”You know I do not like being followed. I feel my privacy is being invaded.”

”I remember discussing this topic. Do not waste your time, Lousy Kisser. The result will be the same. My men will follow you to keep you safe.”

Cixi sighed heavily. She heard him hear it.

”Now, where are you going?”

”Why are you jealous that I am going to meet some guy?”

”No,” came Cassian’s quick response. ”I only need to ask the sniper to get ready to shoot the guy as soon as there is a blind spot.”

Cixi’s eyes widened.

The kerb under her shoes felt thin. The taxi she had been waiting for had not arrived. The cafe behind her was warm. The street in front of her was cold.

Would he kill a person? Would he really do that because she went to meet a guy? Should she cancel the meeting with Officer Bill?

”I am going to meet Officer Bill. And if he dies, you will be in trouble, Cassian!” she warned him. ”I will never forgive you. I have a lot of respect for him. And —”

”And for me?”

Cixi paused. The question did not fit. What did he want to know? She opened her mouth to ask.

”How much do you respect me, Cixi?”

Why did his voice sound serious? Cixi questioned herself... She frowned. She had not expected the question from him, of all people. Yet she knew the perfect answer.

”I have lots of love for you!”

A throaty chuckle on the other end of the phone.

”Have fun, Lousy Kisser.” His voice was lazy, pleased. ”Do not stay out too late. Or I will come and pick you up myself.”

The line went dead.

Cixi stared at her phone. Her cheeks were warm. Her stomach was doing the small, treacherous flutter it had been doing for two months without her permission.

She put the phone in her pocket.

A taxi pulled up at the kerb.

She gave the driver the address.

”Hartwell Lane. The cafe with the brown awning.”

The drive took fifteen minutes.

She watched the street through the window. She watched the cars behind the taxi. She watched every dark window of every building they passed. She did not see a sniper. She reminded herself she did not know what a sniper looked like.

The taxi stopped at the corner of Hartwell Lane.

She paid. She stepped out. She walked the half block to the cafe with the brown awning.

Officer Bill was already inside.

He sat at a small round table at the back, near the window that looked onto a service alley. Grey jacket. Pale shirt. No tie. A folder sat closed in front of him. He saw her come in. He raised one hand by an inch.

Cixi walked to him.

She sat down.

”Officer Bill.”

”Cixi. Thank you for coming.”

”Thank you for fro helping me so much, Officer Bill. You said you had information.”

He glanced once at the door behind her. Once at the window behind him. Then he opened the folder.

He turned the top sheet around and slid it across the table.

”These are the countries.”

Cixi looked.

The page was a list. Black ink. Twenty-three names. Numbers beside each name.

Russia. Germany. Brazil. United States. Japan. India. South Korea. Australia. France. Canada. Italy. Mexico. United Kingdom. Indonesia. Turkey. Netherlands. Spain. Argentina. Poland. Saudi Arabia. South Africa. Philippines. Sweden.

A small cold feeling started at the base of her spine. ”How many in total?”

Bill did not answer at once. He turned a second page. He laid it on top of the first.

”Two hundred and forty thousand confirmed downloads. The actual number is higher. We can only count what we can trace. Anything that went through a virtual private network, a re-uploader site, or a private message thread is not in the count.”

Two hundred and forty thousand.

Cixi had known the video was out. She had not allowed herself to think in numbers.

Numbers were worse.

”And these are the places people downloaded it from.”

”Yes.” Bill folded his hands on the table. ”The pattern of the downloads tells us something about who uploaded the file in the first place. The first cluster of downloads happened in a six-hour window. He concentrated on three countries. South Korea. The Netherlands. Russia. None of which is our country. None of which has any reason to be the first audience for a deepfake of a woman who has lived her entire life in this city.”

”So the first audience was selected.”

”Selected. By someone who wanted the video laundered through three foreign markets before it reached your city. To make the source untraceable to anyone investigating it from here.”

Cixi sat back. The cold feeling at the base of her spine moved up by an inch. ”So whoever uploaded it knew people would investigate.”

”Yes.” He replied.

”And they wanted to make sure any investigation went to Seoul first?”

”Yes.”

”That is a lot of trouble. For a deepfake of a college student.” Cixi told more to herself.

”It is. That is the second thing I wanted to tell you. The hacker we engaged found the IP. The device. The network. The trace was working. He had narrowed the original source to a building in this city. While he was confirming a piece of metadata embedded in the file, his computer was hacked.”

”By whom?”

”He does not know.”

”How fast?”

”Six minutes. From the moment he opened the file to the moment his screen went black. He estimated that whoever entered his system was either already inside it from a previous breach, or had been notified by an alarm built into the file itself.”

”An alarm. Inside the file?”

”Yes. The file knew when someone got too close.”

The cold feeling reached the back of Cixi’s neck.

”The only thing he could. He wiped his system. He wiped the backups. He wiped the network he had been using. He wiped every machine he had ever touched in the building. He saved nothing because he could not afford to save anything. If a single fragment of his trace had remained on a drive, whoever was on the other end of that alarm could have walked it back to him in a day.”

”He killed everything.” Cixi looked at the list of countries. She looked at the numbers carefully.

She thought it through. Whoever made the video did not make it as a prank.

This was someone with money.