part 74

Third Person POV

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Back at the Sampsons residence in Turkey, Emma's stepmother was enjoying her afternoon tea in the living room until her phone vibrated with an incoming message. She took it from the table and clicked on the pop up icon to open the message.

Accept the call.

She found it weird, why would anybody send a message to accept their call.

Then she got their answer when her phone rung, it was a video call.

She spent sometime thinking whether she should accept it or not, then she clicked the green icon, accepting the call.

The device almost slipped through her hands she did.

Her only son came into view, his hands were securely tied to a wooden chair in what seems to be an empty room.

She was watching the video so intently when a voice she knows all too well, cut her off. "Mila Becker, I hear you're a fan of games, especially hide and seek."

"W- who's this?" Mila tried to feign ignorance but her tone failed her.

"Oh, you don't know who am I?" Emma questioned amused.

"What do you want with my son!" Mila exclaimed, scared.

"Isn't it obvious what I plan on doing with him?" Emma asked. "I'll give you a hint then, it involves blood." She chuckled on her own joke.

"P- please-"

"Don't plead just yet, it'd make it less entertaining." Emma cut her off.

"W- what do you want?" Mila asked.

"I want you to find him. Use every last person in your little pathetic organisation to find him, and if you do before the room oxygen level reaches 10% I'll let you off the hook, all of you." Emma said. "But if you don't your old man is next." She added.

"Why are you doing this?" Mila asked in a broken tone.

"I want you and your son to feel what my mom felt when she kept letting herself poisoned willingly and without anyone knowing. That feeling of depression and loneliness, I want you to go through the same, and I also want to see who's stronger between us. You and your organisation or me and my army." Emma answered.

"David will not sit still and watch this happening." Mila tried to threaten her.

"We both know, dad will do nothing. Haven't you figured anything out of this whole set up?" Emma's tone indicated she thought low of the woman IQ.

"I-"

"You have less than 8hours before your son suffocates." Emma said, cutting her off before she hung up.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

Mila ran to the organisation her father introduced to her when she was only 10 years old, seeking help.

She told them everything Emma told her, and even added few things here and there to give them the boost they needed to save her son because she knew if it was only her and her son who were involved they would never risk exposing themselves to help her.

So after she successfully convinced the elders of her organisation, she accompanied the search parties that were dispatched to find Ben, to Berlin.

They didn't even get the chance to rest after their flight as they started their search right off, it went on for hours and hours but everywhere they searched they'd come up empty handed as they don't know where exactly to look in.

The only thing Mila knew was that her son was there in Berlin or else Emma wouldn't give her only 8hours to look for him. Or at least she hoped she wasn't that much heartless to confine him in a place where they won't reach in time to save him.

Mila knew they didn't have time since they already wasted 4hours between convincing the elders, gathering men, and flying from Turkey to Germany. In addition to the 2hours and a half they spent searching for him around the city.

Whatever they had to do, they need to it fast.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

After another hour had passed, a message popped up on top of her phone's screen.

She saw it right away because she was looking at her son who had hard time breathing.

Emma made sure she never missed a minute of the torture her son was in, a number called her shortly after Emma hung up on her few hours back. Only this time nobody spoke, the only thing she saw and heard was her son and his breathing that kept getting shorter and shorter every passing hour.

A small hint, der Palast. The message read.

Mila spent sometime looking at he phone's screen trying to figure out what the two last words meant, but she wasn't in a state where she can use her mind properly because of how scared she was for her son.

All she could think of was the fact that she had less than an hour left before she runs out of time.

Her mind was both fuzzy and preoccupied.

She knew it was German but she couldn't decipher what it exactly meant, then she remembered that one of the men she brought with her was German. "Albert!" She called.

"Yes, ma'am?" He was in front of her in seconds.

"What does this mean?" She asked as she held the phone up to him.

"The palace, ma'am." He replied after he read the message.

"The palace? What does that mean?" She murmured to herself.

She kept thinking about what could this mean and how does it serve as a hint, until she snapped her head up so quickly that her neck almost snapped.

"The Monarchs' palace!" She said aloud.

Mila, then yelled at the men to get in the cars after she gave the driver of the car she was in, the address to said palace and asked the rest to follow them.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"Took you long enough." Emma's voice came out from the darkness of the dungeon when Mila and her men barged inside.

Mila and her men, even though would've liked to force their way inside the house, they couldn't. Because they'd need more than just bare hands or SUVs to knock the gate down.

The butler ushered them inside as per Emma's instruction, and led them through the palace until they reached the dungeons where his master was waiting for her guests, did he leave.

The dungeons weren't the typical ugly and unattended to type, rather the opposite actually, they were quite modern and clean. Though they were supplied with all types of torture tools, every room-like-cell was filled with different kinds of those tools, both traditional and modern ones. However, other than that, it was just a simple floor in terms of decoration and design of course.

Even the smell was that of one of those beautifully scented and expensive air fresheners.

"Where is my son!" Mila exclaimed angrily but with confidence, she thought that Emma can't do anything to her, especially since she only got three men with her beside herself while she on the other side had more than a dozen of me behind her.

"I liked you better when you were the trembling and scared coward that you are." Emma said causally before she nodded to Sam and Puerto to take care of the men Mila brought with her.

The duo charged towards them and in a blink all of the men came crumbling on the floor, their hands on their throats coated with blood as they desperately tried to stop the red liquid from oozing out of the clean cut injury just above their collarbone.

Mila put her hands on her ears as she saw the men she came with falling like dry leaves, she screamed aloud frightened of what she just witnessed.

"Now, that's the tone I like." Emma laughed happily as she watched the scared middle-aged woman in that position. "Don't you?" She asked the three men beside her, Jürgen, Sam, and Puerto. They nodded in agreement, each supporting a sick grin.

"P- pleas-"

"Bring him out!" She ordered, cutting her off.

A couple of men came out of the room next to them, carrying the wooden chair Ben's tied to with him still in it.

"Ben! Son!" Mila screamed as she saw her battered son, she stood up and tried to go to him, but was stopped by a strong pair of hands and forced down to her knees.

"Uh-uh, no moving around once the show begins." Emma said, as she moved her index finger left and right in a don't-do-it gesture.

"P-"

"No talking either." Emma cut her off, glaring at her. "Come in." She said.

And a figure of a woman came from the dark side of the dungeons, the clicking of her heels filled the pin-drop silent space.

"Y- you!"

"You!"

A barely conscious Ben exclaimed the same time his mother did when they saw who the woman was.

"Surprised I'm alive?" The woman smirked evilly at the mother and son duo. "Or that I am with young miss?" She added in the same tone and expression.

"But how? You said you abhor the little girl!" Ben exclaimed, angry that he was fooled so easily.

1

"The fact that you believed the fact that I hate a child I practically helped bringing to this world is dumbfounding, and why would I stick to staying the head maid of the Knights if I did when I had many opportunities to be in higher positions?" Greta said. "Those are questions you should've asked yourself before trusting my sob story." She added.

"You fooled me!" Ben screamed as he tried to break free from his restraints.

"Don't blame me, it was quite amusing seeing you falling right in the trap Young Miss set up for you." She said chuckling.

"You'll pay for this, all of you!" Ben screamed.

"May I have the honour, young miss?" Greta aske, ignoring him.

"Go ahead." Emma allowed.

"W- what are you doing?" Mila asked warily.

"What I promised, you were an hour late, remember?" Emma said.

"Please, I beg you don't do it. Just let us go, please!" Mila begged, but in vain since they all ignored her pleading like it was never uttered.

Greta grabbed a plastic bag from one of the men that brought Ben out of the room as she stood behind him. "Make sure she watches everything, Puerto, will you?" She said referring to Mila who was trying to get rid of Puerto's grip.

"You got it." Puerto winked playfully at her.

Greta crossed her arms together around the table next to Ben's head and leaned her head down so that her mouth was next to his ear. "Just a little secret, you have no mole on the Knights side, they're all Young Miss' people. Not one of them changed sides, they can't move an inch without her orders." She murmured to him.

Ben's eyes bulged out, he called out for his mother. "Mother! Tell the elders not to trus-"

Greta put the plastic bag on his head before he could complete his sentence and squeezed hard, suffocating him. "Don't you know the meaning of the word secret?" Greta asked annoyed. "It means whatever I told you is private, no one is supposed to know of it but the two of us!" She explained in the same tone, not caring that Ben was struggling to his save his life.

She ushered to the same guard she took the plastic bag from to untie his hands and feet.

"Now, this is funny." She said, something about her tone was sickly chilling, her gaze is that of a maniac.

Ben fought with all his might, but Greta was apparently stronger as she didn't even break a sweat fighting him, until the very last moment when his struggle ceased and she was sure he was about to die of asphyxiation she extended her hand to the guard and a needle was put in it. "Just so that dear mommy knows what will happen, I shall explain what I'd do with this needle." Greta said as she looked at a thrashing Mila. "The liquid inside will cause him a heart attack." She added in a tone so cold that it resembled the one of A.L to a great extent.

"PLEASE! PLEASE, NO! I BEG YOU!" Mila thrashed frantically in Puerto's grip, begging for her son to be saved. She looked at everybody in the room for help, but they all looked back at her in the same cold gaze.

They'd have felt sympathy for her if she hadn't had a hand in killing the mother of the one person the whom they cared about the most.

If she had shown sympathy for Emma's mother, they'd have returned their gesture, but she did not only kill her mother but also tried to kill her five years back.

Greta injected the Ben with the needle, and released her grip on the plastic bag.

Ben's hand flew to his chest, gripping it tightly. He struggled for sometime before he came crumbling down the floor.

Pale and Lifeless.

Mila ran to him as soon as she was released and cradled him in her arms as she wailed out loud.

"An eye for an eye." Emma who was calm the whole time, said.

A/N

Hello, lovelies!

I was tired last night that's why I couldn't update.

Hope you like it. This is the longest chapter I've ever written.

Don't forget to vote and comment.

Until next time.