Empire of Shadows

In the hospital, Lance saw his nominal younger sister, Lorraine.

Lorraine was just an ordinary-looking girl, not very tall, and she had some scars on her body.

She was wearing very ordinary clothes, curled up on the hospital bed.

When she saw Lance come in, she was visibly nervous.

The female police officer who got along well with her also stood up, because Blue Precinct Chief was behind Lance.

"Let Lance and Lorraine talk alone," Blue Precinct Chief instructed the doctor, and the female police officer immediately left the room, followed by himself, leaving only the two of them in the room.

Lorraine didn't look very old, probably fifteen or sixteen years old, but it could also be a little younger.

Lance wasn't particularly skilled at judging a lady's age by her appearance. He thought he might guess wrong, after all, some kids look like old people, while some old guys are as tender as if water could drip from them.

Lorraine looked at Lance warily. Lance sat down on the chair, "We should have met."

"That day I went to your house and chatted with him for a while. Were you peeking at me behind the window?"

Lorraine hesitated for a moment, then she nodded, "Yes."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Lorraine didn't speak, she just remained silent, her emotions were very low.

Lance patiently persuaded her, "The only one who can help you now is me. I don't know what your situation is, but I believe that, apart from me, no one else will really care about these things."

"Whether you want to start a new life, or whatever, you have to let me know what happened. I'm a little interested in this story."

Lorraine looked at Lance with some suspicion, her eyes filled with distrust.

Lance nodded towards the door, "The one behind me just now is the chief of this precinct. You should be able to tell who has a higher position between us."

"If you don't tell me what happened, you might still be living with your mother."

Although Lance only knew a general idea of the situation, he believed that if it could develop to this extent, the abuser was definitely not just Mr. White alone.

Mrs. White must have also played some very disgraceful role. If they really killed their two children.

Then why didn't Mrs. White call the police when her first child was killed?

She even allowed herself to become pregnant a second time, and for the second child to be killed, and now.

So Lance believed that Mrs. White might also be an abuser. She might have resisted at first, but was soon influenced by Mr. White's fallacies, or other means, and became his accomplice.

As for why Mrs. White was being abused this time, Lance's eyes fell on Lorraine.

She was actually just an ordinary girl, with golden-brown hair, and not such a great figure, a little chubby. A teenage girl couldn't be called ugly or beautiful, only ordinary.

But she had a special aura, like a… piece of paper, a piece of paper that could be painted on.

Perhaps it was Mrs. White, or perhaps it was some other reason, Lorraine visibly shivered. After hesitating for a while, she told Lance the story of the White family.

She actually knew that she had two older brothers, because there were some photos in the house, with two different little boys on them. She had asked Mr. and Mrs. White who they were, and where they had gone.

When she was little, they made up a reason, saying they got lost, but after she grew up, she found that something was wrong.

She went to elementary school, but was forbidden to go to middle school and was confined at home.

At first, the family of three lived in one room, and sometimes Mr. and Mrs. White didn't care about her.

This made her feel unspeakable embarrassment and shyness, and then he tried to hurt her, and she would resist.

Then came a cycle, Mr. and Mrs. White would abuse her together, and her father would sometimes give her a little favor.

When she was unable to resist and accepted the first arrangement of fate, problems arose between the two firm allies in this family.

Mrs. White was very dissatisfied with her daughter interfering in the family's life, and wanted to sell her to another place, which would not only earn a lot of money, but also send away the daughter who had stolen her husband's favor.

And she was willing to give Mr. White another child to vent their emotions.

But for Mr. White… a young one was always better than an old one, so they had the first fierce conflict, and Mr. White pushed Mrs. White down the stairs, breaking her leg.

They didn't have money for medical treatment, and borrowed money from Lance. At that time, the girl was peeking at Lance upstairs.

Lance also asked Alvin to do a simple investigation of this matter, but found nothing unusual.

After all, as the abuser, Mrs. White couldn't confess herself. Alvin didn't continue to investigate in depth. After all, Mrs. White said that she accidentally fell down, so how else could he investigate?

After this incident, a huge rift developed between the couple. Mrs. White always wanted to win back Mr. White, so she always abused this daughter, hurting her, and making her suffer, in order to vent those terrible emotions in her heart.

And Mr. White gradually became bored with his wife, after all… this also caused a vicious cycle.

Until, a seed sprouted.

Mrs. White frantically wanted to kill her, but was stopped by Mr. White, and the two sides had another fierce conflict.

In the conflict, Lorraine learned some things.

"She said that they gave birth to me just to kill me, and my two older brothers were killed by them," her body trembled slightly.

Perhaps even now she couldn't accept this fact. Her parents were perverts, and her birth was just a pervert looking for a free toy, nothing more!

Lance didn't know how to comfort her. He walked to the window, opened it, and lit a cigarette.

After the conflict broke out, Mrs. White was subdued, and then she became Mr. White's toy to vent his emotions. All kinds of methods that had been used on those two children, and on Lorraine, were used on Mrs. White.

She was tortured to the point of being on the verge of death with high intensity.

Finally, the hot basement was too smelly because of the feces and urine. Mr. White opened the window to ventilate, and forgot to close the window when he left at night. Mrs. White's cries for help were heard.

So the neighbor called the police, and that was the whole story.

Listening to Lorraine's simple narration, Lance still felt a kind of indescribable shock. This was fucking Federation people.

As everyone knows, the Federation produces perverts.

Most of the most shocking perverted cases in human history come from the Federation.

This land seems to have been cursed by some mysterious force. After the great cultural integration, people have not only not become more civilized and polite, but have become more depraved and perverted.

Think about those perverted wealthy people in the Bay Area, think about Mr. and Mrs. White, and those serial perverted murderers who are still committing crimes and have not been discovered!

How bad does the soil have to be to grow such evil flowers?

I hope God can send down a punishing rain to wash away the sins of the world.

The word "humanity" seems to have disappeared from the couple, and the reason for their split and turning against each other is not the outbreak of humanity, but only the outbreak of desire and selfishness.

After listening to the girl's emotionless account, Lance asked, "What are your thoughts?"

Lorraine shook her head, "I don't know…"

Lance looked at her, "Let me put it another way, neither of these two people should continue to live in this world. They don't even have the qualifications to be judged. Do you understand what I mean?"

The girl understood. After all, she had been to ninth grade. She could understand what Lance meant, but she was a little confused, confused about the future, and confused about whether she should decide this matter.

"Do you have any worries?" Lance asked again.

Lorraine asked subconsciously, "If… if they both die, what will I do in the future?"

"You can start a new life," Lance threw the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it to extinguish it.

"You can go back to school…"

Speaking of this, Lorraine's eyes suddenly seemed to… light up. She looked at Lance, "Can I really go back to school?"

"Of course, why not?"

"This time you can go to school to your heart's content, do what you want to do, and you don't need to worry about living problems, I will help you take care of it."

Lorraine seemed to have made up her mind, "If that's the case, I have no problem…"

Lance walked up to her, raised his hand and rubbed her head, "Everything will be fine!"

Later, the doctor will give her some medicine to help her solve the problem of that sprouted seed.

As long as people are still alive, everything will be fine!

At this moment, Lorraine felt an unprecedented peace.

But some people are in torment. Mr. White, who was being held in the detention room, was muttering in a low voice in the corner.

From the outside, he didn't look like that kind of pervert at all.

His hair was a little messy, he was wearing an old white shirt, a pair of light-colored pants, and a pinhole belt.

He looked clean, and except for being a little embarrassed, he wouldn't make people feel sloppy or dirty.

But he was cursing the dirtiest words in his mouth. Of course, this may also be related to the limited vocabulary of the common language.

When the door was opened, the twisted ferociousness on his face disappeared, and he became that seemingly harmless Mr. White again.

He saw the person coming, it was Lance, and immediately greeted him, "Mr. Lance, I…"

Lance raised his hand, signaling him not to speak first.

After the police officer responsible for opening the door handed the keys to Hiram, he proactively left. There were two detention rooms here, both empty.

Even the duty room at the end of the corridor was empty.

"I heard that your first two children were killed by you and your wife and buried behind the house?"

Mr. White's expression looked terrified. He swallowed hard, a large movement. "The two children died of illness, we could only bury them."

He was still lying. Lance stared into his eyes. "Why did you tell people the children were lost?"

Mr. White still had that terrified look. "I was afraid they would talk about us, and I was afraid the police would bother us, after all, someone died!"

"You're still lying!" Lance directly exposed his lies. "I went to see Loreen."

Hearing his child's name, his eyes lit up a little. "Is she okay?"

It seemed that he did have a special affection for Loreen, but this affection was perverted, it was evil.

"She's not good, but that has nothing to do with you anymore."

Lance was silent for a while. "Your actions disgust me. If this matter is publicized, I will also be implicated, so…"

Hiram and Raun walked out from behind Lance, and with Mr. White's even more terrified expression, walked to his sides, "…you can only be wronged to commit suicide."

"No…"

Before he could shout, Hiram strangled his neck with a tie. Raun assisted him from the side, preventing Mr. White from breaking free from the tie.

Lance lit a cigarette and stood about two meters away from him, watching him calmly.

Watching his face turn red, he first reached out to himself, but soon his face began to turn blue, and he tried to pry up the tie that was barely strangling him.

He used his fingernails to do that, and under the force, his fingernails were turned over, but he still couldn't shake the strength produced by two strong arms!

His struggle became weaker and weaker, until finally, he completely lost his resistance.

Even so, Hiram still strangled him for a while until his heartbeat completely stopped before releasing the tie.

"Help me." He pulled the chair next to him over, and the two of them together hung Mr. White on the window, the kind of window that was more than one person tall was just right for hanging some heavy objects.

Fortunately, he wasn't that heavy, otherwise, it would be difficult to hang him up.

Watching him hang there properly, the three of them left.

The police quickly came in. He took a broom and dustpan, as well as a rag. They swept some of the remaining cigarette ashes on the ground into the dustpan, and then used the rag to wipe the chairs that might have fingerprints and footprints clean.

He also mopped the floor.

After the floor was completely dry, the police officer picked up a spoon and blew it, "A suspect committed suicide!"

On the other side, Lance purchased two doses of special painkiller from the doctor. The doctor specifically instructed that if the dose was too large, it would cause the heart to stop.

Originally, Lance thought she hadn't woken up yet, but in fact, she was already awake, so when Lance and the others entered the room, her eyes were open.

She recognized Lance, having seen him once, when Lance gave the money for the first time.

She knew that Lance was a big shot, and recently, with more news spreading, there was no way they wouldn't notice this.

Just as she was about to say something, Lance said, "Mr. White committed suicide in the police station."

Hearing this sentence, Mrs. White's eyes turned red in an instant, "Impossible, this is impossible, he couldn't have died…"

It could be seen that she really loved Mr. White, no matter what that man did to her.

Hiram walked to the bedside, took out two doses of painkillers, then drew them into a syringe, and finally injected them into her IV drip.

"What is this?" She asked as terrified as Mr. White, even wanting to call for help.

Raun grabbed her mouth and nose, and soon she seemed to lose control of her body.

"Fucking disgusting!" Raun retracted his hand and wiped it on the quilt.

He saw Lance and Hiram looking at him with suspicious eyes, his face turned slightly red, and he explained, "That bitch licked my palm with her tongue."

In fact, it wasn't that Mrs. White wanted to lick his palm, it was purely that the large dose of painkillers caused her body to lose control.

She wanted to speak, wanted to call for help, but her tongue and facial muscles began to not cooperate, eventually turning into subconscious or unconscious tongue movements.

Soon an unusual red color appeared on her face, very red!

Then the whole person seemed to lose their spirit.

Raun felt her carotid artery for a while, then nodded, "Stopped beating."

The three waited another half a minute, and after confirming that it had completely stopped beating, they left.

In the evening, when the hospital made rounds, the nurse discovered that Mrs. White was already stiff!

The hospital quickly came to a conclusion: sudden cardiac arrest, the trigger may be continuous hunger, physiological and psychological trauma caused by abuse, which suddenly broke out after being rescued.

Before being rescued, she may have had a desire to survive supporting her vitality, but after she was rescued, that breath was gone, and she had a sudden arrest.

If you want to know more detailed causes of death, you need an autopsy, but Loreen refused an autopsy.

This matter did not ferment quickly. The criminal suspect chose to commit suicide, and the police officer responsible for guarding the suspect clearly had dereliction of duty.

He lost his police job, but at the same time got another job.

Another victim had a sudden cardiac arrest and died in the hospital bed because Loreen didn't want her mother to suffer after death, so she refused an autopsy.

The doctor wrote natural death as the cause of death.

At this point, the case seemed to be unable to continue, and there was no need to continue.

Loreen followed the words Lance told her, saying she didn't know anything when asked. Regarding whether she knew about her brother's death or something, she also said that she didn't know, and hadn't heard anyone say it.

People from the city police department's criminal investigation team came to inquire twice. They seemed to want to dig out some valuable information from Loreen's mouth, but ultimately failed.

Because every time they appeared, Lance's people were on the scene, and there was also a very troublesome guy—Lawyer Robben.

Lawyer Robben has a certain reputation in the legal circles of Jincheng City and even Licarai State. Many people despise his work attitude—specializing in defending criminals.

But they envy his income!

After coming twice, the people from the criminal investigation team stopped investigating the case.

It's better to have less trouble than more trouble. Not only is there no profit in this case, but it's also very dangerous.

Even with Hunter's support, these police officers were unwilling to touch it.

The bodies of the White couple were quickly cremated and directly scattered into the sea, and the two small skeletons in the backyard were also dug out by Lance and reburied in a proper place.

This house was also completely sealed up.

Lance had people clean the house and then completely seal it off with cement slabs, connecting it to the yard.

And Loreen, he sent her to a boarding school to start a new life from the eighth grade…