"Melissa?" Lola raised a brow as she stared at the composite sketch, then lifted her gaze to where Haji and Scarlet stood. "Are you sure?"
Scarlet nodded, while Haji answered, "She beat up Chuck just to be sure—so yeah, we’re sure."
"..." Lola lowered her eyes to the sketch once more and gulped before placing it down on the table in the drawing room, where she had been waiting for Atlas. "Good work, both of you."
Scarlet nodded and turned to leave, but Haji knitted his brows. Before he could say anything, she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the room.
"Hey—" He yanked his arm free the moment they stepped outside. "Why are you dragging me out like that?"
She snapped her eyes toward him, her expression cold. "She needs a moment. And you need to come with me."
"Where now?"
"We’re leaving tomorrow," she replied without slowing her steps or looking back. "Didn’t we agree on something?"
"Something?" Haji looked up, then remembered what she’d said the night before about Himari. "Ah!"
He nodded and took a step, only to pause and glance back at the door where Lola remained behind.
"Good work?" he muttered to himself. "Why does she sound more and more like she’s my boss or something?"
His expression twisted briefly, but he didn’t dwell on it and followed Scarlet.
"Hey, wait for me! How are you going to convince that stubborn granny—wait!"
Meanwhile...
Lola rested her hands on the desk, the sketch lying between them. From what she’d heard, this was the person who had put a bullet in Jarvis’s head even after he fell.
"We considered so many possibilities and didn’t want to dwell on them," she whispered. "But this... this isn’t what I expected at all."
It had been months since she joined the Order, and months since she left Novera. Although Melissa had gone missing, leaving Lawrence behind, this was the last place Lola ever expected to find a trace of her.
Her eyes remained fixed on the sketch.
"What... in the world is going on?"
*****
Later that evening, Lola joined Atlas, and they flew to Ashkar.
Henrik Bellemonte didn’t stay long. However, he eventually agreed to Atlas’s conditions. The matter regarding Henrik’s son—whom he had hidden in Ravah under the guise of training—was something Lola and Atlas uncovered after her intense questioning of the two Bellemonte men she had rescued.
As it turned out, the missing member of their group was the one tasked with overseeing Henrik’s illegitimate son from a former lover. From what Lola learned, Henrik’s marriage was one of convenience, his wife hailing from a powerful family within their territory.
It was a tangled mess of drama and political struggle, one the Order wanted no part of.
"She does look like Melili," Atlas’s voice pulled Lola from her thoughts as they sat side by side in the chopper bound for Ashkar.
He turned toward her, studying her face.
It still didn’t make sense to her.
Why?
Ravah was a place she’d been to before—a place that supposedly had no ties to any of this. And yet, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she’d been wrong. Maybe Ravah wasn’t irrelevant at all. Maybe it was a bridge—a point where everything quietly began to connect.
That thought only grew stronger after Slater recognized Ashkar.
"What happened to Henrik Bellemonte?" she asked softly, steering the conversation elsewhere. "Did you tell him about what we discovered here?"
"I told him some things," Atlas replied, leaning back while keeping hold of her hand. "But not everything. He admitted to cooperating with the governor of Ashkar under the pretense of trade to protect his son, but denied everything else."
"Did you tell him about Pika and Tyga’s discovery?"
He nodded. "I thought it was necessary."
"What excuse did he give?"
Atlas didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he recalled Henrik’s expression when the matter was raised. Though Atlas wasn’t the best at reading people, he knew Henrik well enough to tell that the man was genuinely shocked.
"He said he’d find out who it was," Atlas finally said. "But it seemed like he already had an idea."
The lines on Lola’s face deepened until Atlas spoke again.
"He thinks... he thinks it was his wife."

Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: The Billionaire Twins Need A New Mommy!