CHAPTER 133: Insurrection-2

CHAPTER 133: Insurrection-2

The main room of Enid Corp's temporary headquarters in Munich was a large rectangle of glass and steel, overlooking a city that still smelled of recent rain. Clean tables, dark screens, and indoor plants trying to give the place a touch of human life. Fénix, Lucian, and Vanessa sat in a row, hands on their thighs, as if waiting for the curtain to fall. There was weariness in the gestures of all three; the night had left marks not hidden by ties or polite expressions.

The door opened with the precision of someone who tolerates no delays. Enid appeared in her fitted coat, her eyes like a knife: patient, but without compassion. When her gaze settled on them, the air seemed to tense.

"Lucian, Vanessa," she said without ceremony. "You may leave. I need to speak with Fénix privately."

They exchanged a quick glance; Lucian offered a half-smile of support, Vanessa nodded with a clenched jaw. They stood up in a near-synchronized movement, and before leaving, Lucian placed a brief hand on Fénix's shoulder, a gesture of solidarity that needed no words. The door closed behind them, and the room was reduced to three breaths: Enid, Fénix, and the silence.

Enid took a few steps and planted herself half a meter from Fénix's chair. She looked him up and down, not waiting for him to start. Her voice, when it came, lacked the earlier courtesy: it was cold, cutting, stripped of any affection.

"This isn't a hero's soap opera," she began. "This is work and consequences. And you, Fénix, acted like an idiot. Like an unhinged animal that costs more than protecting the entire team."

Fénix didn't respond. His gaze was lowered, the muscles in his neck tense. There was no plea or justification on his face; only the marks of the fight, the dried blood on his bandage, and something akin to monumental weariness.

Enid didn't relent. She was direct, implacable.

"We had to identify the guy by his fingerprint." The sentence fell like a verdict. "You know why? Because no normal human could identify that trash by his face. They had to do it that way, with the system. The cameras were useless. That's sloppy work and a risk we cannot tolerate."

Fénix clenched his jaw but remained silent.

"And on top of that," Enid continued, raising her tone until it tore through the calm, "I had to spend a fortune to keep him from ending up in prison. Why? Because a father and his son saw him. Two civilians. If the press—if the garbage you call the press—had caught the scene, if that man had gone to the press, we would have been left with a thousand legal, political, and regulatory problems. I spent money, intervened, paid to make the scene evaporate, and you come in with your fists and your spectacles."

Her eyes shone with a biting intelligence; behind the hardness was calculation, and behind the calculation, a rage that didn't know how to turn into anything but cutting words.

"You!" Enid took a step forward, her voice turning sharp. "Do you realize the selfishness? Do you realize that a single afternoon of fury can cost the company millions, the people who work here, your team? Do you think we're a consequence-free hero club?"

Fénix looked up for an instant, and in his eyes was a tide of things—guilt, weariness, hatred—but no answer. His silence was more dangerous than any retort.

Enid seemed to lose her composure for a second; her face contorted into an expression mixing contempt and a sharp pain.

"You're a damn irresponsible." The words came out harsh. "What makes you think you can break things and then just put your tie back on? What makes you think you have the right to destroy until something is reduced to ashes and I have to pick up the pieces?"

Fénix clenched his fists under the table; his knuckles whitened.

"Don't answer me," Enid said, lower but still stinging. "I don't want excuses. I don't want to repeat the names of those already dead. You know? I'm tired of that theatrical morality. Your violence doesn't give us an advantage; it exposes us. It makes us pay."

She took a deep breath, as if reassembling herself piece by piece.

"Expenses, influence, legal bribes, contacts… all so your outburst wouldn't back us into a corner. I've said I give you leeway because you were useful. But there are limits. I can't cover every one of your falls. I can't save you when you cross the line."

Fénix remained motionless, his face hardened, his eyes somewhat glassy. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable, and it wasn't a pretty weakness; it was a crack opening towards something worse.

She gestured with her chin towards the window, towards the city glowing under Munich's rain.

"Look at the city," she murmured. "We have to rebuild, organize, keep this alive. We can't be the army of a grieving man. I can't let your demons become our bill."

The silence was an accumulation of clocks.

Fénix finally spoke, his voice hard, dry, without embellishment.

"Was that all you had to say?" he asked, not so much a challenge, but a moment of surrender.

Enid tilted her head, surprised by the coldness of his tone. Her lips tightened.

"No," she replied. "I had more, but I won't waste saliva on the nostalgia of a consequence-free hero."

She was nearing the end of her speech when Fénix stood up with deliberate slowness. Every movement of his was a decision. He walked towards the door with measured steps, his tie hanging loose and the bandage raised like a flag of defeat.

"I'm leaving," he said, without looking back.

The air seemed to shrink. Enid took a single step and fixed her eyes on the back of his neck.

"Don't leave me like this!" she shouted, her voice breaking for the first time in a tone that wasn't just control. "You can't leave like this! You can't leave me to pick up the pieces alone again. Don't let go of me, Fénix!"

The implosion of the words shook the room. It was more than a professional command; there was a possessive, almost intimate plea that betrayed everything: the cold executive, the architect of plans, the woman with the accounts and the vision. Enid couldn't—or didn't want to—say it any other way: he mattered to her to a point that crossed her own identity.