❝We were burning on the edge of something beautiful.❞

☀︎

[A/N: Another loooong chapter; enjoy!]

HARRY SHUT HIS laptop down. It had been seventeen hours since he'd taken a break. He was staring at the screen and taking notes of the various pictures that his cameras all over the city had caught.

Papers lay strewn about on the floor next to him. Maps, photos, written descriptions, lines, and dots littered the pages. Crumpled balls of discarded paper added to the mess. Endless coffee mugs stood on a small table indicating the little sleep Harry had received.

He'd been continuously tracking his father's digital images. The man just sprouted out from the grave and unless it was a zombie apocalypse taking place, Harry had to know what went wrong with his father's funeral.

He was slightly on edge ever since he saw his father's disgusting face flash in front of his screen. But the last straw fell a week ago. It was no ordinary mugger who had attacked Anna. The winding snake on the dagger could only symbolize his father's antics.

Harry simply was not going to lose someone he cared about because of that swine and his poor excuse of a heart. Not again.

He blew air into his palms and rubbed his hands over his face. He slapped himself lightly, waking up from his drowsiness. It didn't work though. Working through the night was never his forte.

Heck, he never even stayed up late before his final exams to study. Any time after midnight was unholy for him and it immediately led to a drastic drop in his academic performance.

The door to the hidden room creaked open and Harry swiftly shut his laptop down, leaning back in his revolving chair. "Mark?" he asked, closing his eyes. "If you aren't here with coffee, you are not welcome."

"Not even if I come bearing cookies and hot chocolate?" Harry gripped his chair tightly. That voice. He could recognize that light ring in her voice even if he was underwater.

"Come in," he said, still laying back. He didn't move a muscle but his senses picked up the sounds of her movements.

He heard the clink of cutlery against the wood of the table. He peeked one eye open. "Is that chocochip?"

Anna smiled at him, picking a cookie from the tray. "Why don't you eat one and find out?" She handed the cookie to him and he sat up, taking it.

He gingerly bit on the cookie, the loud crunch satisfying to the core. "Mhmm, I might die from the richness," Harry mumbled, stuffing the rest of it and reaching out for another one. His eyes fluttered closed as he chewed away.

"So," Anna said, wringing her fingers together, "what did you find about your father?"

"Nothing, to be honest. There are scattered images of him everywhere. I can't tie it together." Harry dusted the cookie crumbs off of him and swung himself back towards the table.

He picked up a couple of filed sheets and placed them in Anna's lap. "Look at them."

Anna picked up the first sheet, a zoomed out image of the pepper haired man walking out of a subway car. The second one showed him standing at a bus stop, his hands thrust in his pockets.

A third one showed him near a phone booth, awaiting his turn to make a call. The last one was a record of the number plates of all the taxis he had taken in Ostraria. "This makes no sense," Anna said, thumbing away at more of those images.

"Exactly my point. Now look at this."

Harry pulled Anna to her feet and brought her close to the screen of his now open laptop. A blue cursor printed codes at lightening speed on the left of the monitor while a red one stood still on the right. A code Anna immediately recognised.

"He's communicating in binary language?" Anna asked, stunned. It was only possible for a computer to convert languages at a rate this fast but the two cursors sped away, seemingly better and faster. It was unimaginable.

"Yes. You see the cursor on the right? Whenever my father sends a message, it begins printing. And whenever he receives one, the blue one starts typing. Which means-"

"Which means someone is talking to him right now," Anna caught on.

Harry finger gunned. "Exactly. That's where the next problem comes in. No one can code this fast. No one. Except the memory chip of a supercomputer, no human brain can come close to this. But," Harry paused for effect.

"But?" Anna urged.

"But there are only two people in the entire crime world, who can achieve this. One is my father and the other is," Harry looked back at the screen which was a web of 1's and 0's, "Mark."

Anna gasped, taking a step back from Harry's chair, the look of bewilderment chasing wonder across her face. "Mark? That isn't even possible!"

"I know but there's no other explanation that I can come up with."

"Harry, there has to be. Look, the cursors are wildly typing away. And there are no communication devices in any rooms on the upper floors. If it was him, he needed to be in this room to use a laptop."

Anna swept her hand in a gesture indicating the empty area. "He's not here."

Harry rubbed his temples. "I hope you are right. I just want to get a hold of my father and put him to bed. This time, I'm going to personally check that he is dead, the old thief."

"Why'd you even hate him so much? My dad-"

"Anna, this is my father. You know nothing about him."

"Then tell me." Anna locked her emerald eyes with his golden ones, which seemed to swim in pain. "Tell me."

Harry studied her face intently for a while. He knew why she was asking. Gathering intel and all that pizzazz. It was her job after all. But no one else had ever really wanted to know much about him.

He was handsome, he knew that. Women wanted to talk to him. There was no one who wanted to listen. And as luck would have it, the one who wanted him to talk was the one who was holding a knife at his throat.

"I had a life, you know. Before all this. I had a life. I wanted to do good by the world. I had achieved it, too. I was working in the best place a person could work at to give back to peace and justice. It felt surreal, getting out of my father's criminal background and making a name for myself.

I soon learnt that if it's too good to be true, it probably is. I made a mistake. The worst mistake of my life. The people I thought would have my back, turned against me lest they should get involved in the scandal.

My father came to me as an unexpected ally then. He offered me a way out. My name for his criminal activities in exchange for my freedom. I gave up my name to him but my past always seems to catch up with me."

Harry paused, his eyes turning red. "I never chose this lifestyle for myself, Anna. Believe me, I still want to do good. But when my father apparently died, it came to be known that he had a huge debt on his head. A debt that was now mine because he'd taken it under my name.

That's why I need the Agapi Mou. That's why I need to give it up to save myself from death. I'm pretty sure my father faked his own death to get out of the pressure of paying his dues. It's now a matter of life or death for me."

Anna grabbed a chair behind her and slunk into it. Her head was spinning. So Florian was never behind this heist? What had she landed herself into? If Harry needed it to pay back his father's debt then Florian could not be involved.

Anna drummed her fingers on the armrest. She had definitely landed herself in the wrong place. She needed to get out of here. This was not an agency approved mission. She could go to jail for this.

A piece of paper fluttered by her feet and it caught her attention. The silver grey eyes, the salt and pepper hair, the grey trench coat. Grey, grey, grey.

Anna sucked in a breath. She knew this man. She'd spent time with him. She'd been around him. She'd taken a car with him, talked to him, laughed with him. She knew Harry's father.

"Harry, I know him. Isn't this David Hobey?"

Harry was on his feet in a matter of seconds. He picked up the paper that Anna was staring at, a ghastly look on her face. "No, my father is David, um, Roberts," he said, a quizzical look on his face.

"This is David Hobey. I traveled in his car the day I landed in Ostraria. He picked me up from the airport and drove me home. I'm telling you, I know him."

Harry raked a trembling hand through his hair. "That explains why the mugger attacked you last week. He had a dagger with our family mark on it. My father must've tracked you."

"Does that mean-"

"Yes, your place is trashed and you have nowhere to be other than this abandoned warehouse. You step out of here alone and you are toast."

Anna's breathing turned shallow. She was used to being the hunter, not the prey. Her eyes turned glassy and she lost her focus. Her chest rose and fell shakily and Anna caught herself gulping back tears.

First, this was not Florian's heist. Second, this made it a non-approved mission. Third, if she stayed and left after all this was over, she would go to jail. Fourth, if she stepped out right now, she'd be dead. Oh and fifth, this was a family vendetta operation all masterminded by Harry.

Anna got up from her chair. "I need to sleep. I- I need time to process this." She raced out of the room, not paying any heed to Harry's words. She went up to fling herself on her bed, the tears starting to fall.

Not a minute after Anna had left, Mark entered the room. "Harry, it's 4 a.m. Take some rest. You need it."

"Yes, right." Harry picked up a handful of the important papers and stuffed them in a desk drawer.

"What's all that about?"

"Nothing."

"Fine. Don't tell me but also don't let anything else distract you now. We need the Agapi Mou or we're both as good as dead."

Harry mumbled a yes and walked about, cleaning the room. Mark pulled him up and held him by his cuff. "Get your head in the game. Forget about Anna. You know who she is. And these papers too where you scribble god knows what. Do you get me?"

"There's nothing to forget about." Harry pushed Mark away and resumed picking up the bits and pieces of paper.

"So you won't listen to me?" Mark asked. Harry just grunted, dumping the last of it in the trash. He shut his laptop down and walked out of the room, leaving Mark behind.

"Fine. If you won't do anything about it, I will."

━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━

a/n: [February 1st, 2021, 11:51 pm] we've reached 741 reads with a whooping 516 votes! thank you so much for all your love! <3