Chapter 538
Dusk fell.
The secluded villa district, tucked away from the city’s chaos and surrounded by dense woods, was the perfect hiding place.
A White Bentley Continental rolled to a smooth halt outside a standalone property, blending seamlessly into the shadows.
The car door swung open, and Sienna Sloan stepped out briskly.
For a woman who always kept her emotions perfectly masked, a heavy layer of unconcealable anxiety now clung to her brow.
She hurried into the villa and headed straight for the second-floor bedroom.
The lighting inside was dim, the air heavy with the suffocating scent of antiseptic masking a faint, metallic tang of blood.
A lifeless man lay motionless in the center of the massive bed.
It was Quincy, the man Sienna had poured every available resource into finding over the past few days.
Spotting her, Alister immediately stood up from his watch at the bedside.
“Ms. Sloan p>
Sienna raised a hand, signaling him to keep his voice down.
Alister nodded, tactfully shutting his mouth and stepping behind her.
Quincy had lost all of his former formidable edge.
His eyes were squeezed shut, his complexion ashen, without a single flicker of consciousness—he was eerily still.
Standing behind Sienna, Alister stared at his battered and broken comrade, a hard lump forming in his throat as his eyes turned red.
The grief and fury he had suppressed for days finally boiled over, lacing his voice with an uncontrollable hoarseness.
“Ms. Sloan… by the time we found him, he was barely holding onto his last breath p>
Lowering his gaze, Alister locked his eyes on the blood-soaked bandages.
“The doctors just finished a comprehensive exam; he has severe brain trauma and extensive internal organ damage.
Right now… he’s in a persistent vegetative state, but thankfully, his vitals are temporarily stable p>
Sienna stiffened, her heart squeezing tightly in her chest.
Moving with agonizing care, she reached out and lifted the corner of the thin blanket covering him.
The sight that greeted her was visceral, slamming into her vision and making her breath hitch.
From head to toe, Quincy was swathed in thick layers of gauze.
What should have been pristine white fabric was entirely soaked through with dark, seeping blood.
The crimson stains bloomed outward in a gruesome, mottled pattern that made it hard to look directly at him.
Not an inch of the skin exposed outside the bandages remained intact.
Varying degrees of severe burns mottled his flesh, old and new wounds overlapping in a mess of ruined skin.
The damage warped his once clear-cut features, rendering him almost entirely unrecognizable.
Sienna let out a sharp gasp.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of inhuman torture and relentless agony he had endured alope during all those days off the grid.
Beside her, Alister ground his teeth, swallowing his mounting fury as he continued in a low voice.
“Ms. Sloan, Quincy didn’t suffer for nothing; even when pushed to the absolute brink, he never stopped. trying to send a signal out.
He must have seized a single, desperate window of opportunity during his captivity.
Using the covert tracking signal on the Sterling bodyguards, he brute-forced his way into their network.
He encrypted every piece of intel he dug up and transmitted it directly to his private server.
We only managed to find him by tracing that tiny fragment of a digital footprint p>
Sienna remained silent, staring at the broken figure on the bed as the color drained from her own face.
When she finally spoke, her normally composed voice was completely. fractured every word carrying a crushing weight.
“Who did this p>
Alister lowered his head, his gaze turning glacial. “Judging by the scene, it was The Global Vanguard Mercenaries.