Chapter Text
“So, tell me. What team are you a fan of?” The guy asks.
Silence. Gavi is pacing around, staring at the broken windows and the wrecked furniture surrounding him. He checks the gun in his pocket, makes sure it is loaded.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a favorite team. Everyone does, to some extent. My mom, for example, doesn’t watch football as much but she roots for Milan. Because she’s Italian, you know, even though I grew up in France. It’s a nice place to live.” He sighs. “I’ll miss it. I’ll miss everything.”
Gavi raises an eyebrow. If this dude wants to keep whining he would very much rather blow his head right now. He regrets not having drugged him more so he would have been unconscious for longer.
“We’ve been here for hours. And I still don’t know anything about you. C’mon. Talk to me, at least. What team are you a fan of?”
“Barcelona,” Gavi replies dryly. He knows they’re playing against Real Madrid right now. Wonders if they’re winning. He wishes there was a TV there so he could watch the match.
Gavi has been there, stuck in the living room of an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere with dust, mold and termites. And this very condescending Kylian guy with the annoying French accent is insanely boring. He’s wearing a suit and has a golden watch in his wrist than probably costs more than Gavi’s getting paid to do this. And he will not stop talking. Gavi hoped that, because he is literally about to get killed, he would at least reflect on his life in silence before he becomes nothing but flesh. But no. He wants to yap about frivolous things. Gavi is so done. He hopes Lewandowski calls to give him the green light as soon as possible.
“They hired a Barcelona fan to kill me?” The guy laughs. He’s tied to a chair, about to be shot in the head, those are the last minutes of his life. What’s so funny about it all?
Gavi snorts. “Do you have a problem with it?”
“I prefer Madrid, you know. Do you think Barcelona’s gonna win the league this year? I don’t think so, man. Well, I guess today’s match will settle it-”
“Jesus.” Ah, yes, Madrid fans. Always talking too much. Gavi sighs and paces around a little more. He just wants to get done with this. He knows dying of boredom isn’t possible but he’s about to do so.
“Alright, alright. Not in the mood for talking.” He chuckles, then sighs. “My head hurts like crazy. You spiked my drink, didn’t you? I knew you didn’t look like a waiter. I’m so stupid, I shouldn't have believed you.” Silence. Gavi taps his foot on the floor, waiting for Lewandowski to call. “Who hired you?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I want to know who’s behind this.”
“You’re going to die anyway, why do you want to know?”
“Exactly. Since I'm gonna die soon, can't you at least tell me? Can this be my last wish before you kill me?”
“No.”
“C’mon. I can give you some thousands for that, you know? There’s a few bills in my wallet.”
“If you really want to know, there’s a lot of people who want you dead, Kylian.”
“Why?” He seems genuinely surprised. “I’m a decent guy.”
For the first time in hours, Gavi laughs. Cackles, even.
“What’s so funny about this?”
“You’re not a decent guy, Kylian. No one is. I am not, neither are you. We both deceive people. The difference is, I pull the trigger and you just sit behind a desk on a building worth millions of euros like you rule the world when in fact you’re just a coward.”
“I’m not deceiving anyone. Business is business. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive in this field.”
“Business is business? You lie about millionaire investments and wreck countless of people’s lives. Is that what your life is all about?”
Kylian chuckles. “Talk about wrecking people’s lives. You would know about that, wouldn’t you? Besides-”
Gavi’s phone rings. He grabs it, and Lewandowski’s number is on the screen.
“Hi. Can I finish this?” He picks up the phone, sighs and pouts. “I wanna watch the second half of Barça.”
“Is there any day you’re gonna take this job seriously, Gavira?”
“Don’t pull up the dad talk on me again.” Kylian frowns his eyebrows at Gavi and stares at him with confusion. Gavi turns away and speaks lower into the phone, almost whispering. “Just tell me if I can do it, okay? This guy’s a pain in the ass, no wonder why they’re giving us a fat check to blow his brains out.”
“Yeah, you can wrap it up.” Gavi mentally thanks the heavens and reaches for his gun. “But you’re not going home after this. You’ll meet me in Warsaw and we can talk about your new assignment.”
“What? Give me some time, I’m barely even started with the mess here.” Gavi rolls his eyes. As much as he enjoys exploding the heads of assholes like watermelons, he could catch a break sometimes.
“Time is expensive. You know it. The plane departs at nine. I’ll send your tickets to your email.”
He snorts. “But-”
“Don’t be late, and don’t do anything stupid,” he hangs up before Gavi has time to complain about anything else.
Gavi turns to Kylian again. He’s contemplating something out of the window. He is startled by the sound of Gavi preparing his gun.
Kylian looks at him. Gavi can tell his life is flashing through his eyes right now, not that he gives a fuck. But before he points the gun at him, he reaches for his backpack on the floor.
There’s a light blue polaroid camera inside, it’s pretty new, he bought it a few weeks ago in a store in Sevilla. He carries it everywhere now. He grabs it and points it at Kylian. “Say cheese.” The camera flashes, Kylian blinks and jolts his head.
“You really took a photo of me before you kill me? What type of assassin are you?”
“One of the cool ones,” he says.
The polaroid drops to the floor, Gavi leaves it there for a bit. He raises his gun and pulls the trigger. The gunshot is loud, it goes straight through Kylian’s forehead and makes a mess out of him. His body drops back to the chair and now there’s blood and brains everywhere. Gavi grabs the photo, contemplates it for a bit and tucks it inside one of Kylian’s pockets.
Gavi checks the time on his phone. Barcelona is still playing. If he hurries back home, he can still watch the rest of the match.
Pedri taps his ID card on the sensor and the door to the elevator opens. He enters, taps the ID once more, and starts moving towards the fifteenth floor. He leans back on the metal wall behind him, adjusts his gray suit and checks his watch. Nine twenty six. He is a little late because of traffic and he hates that. He is never late, for he takes his job very seriously. And maybe because he never stays up later than midnight. There is no point since he doesn’t party or hook up with anyone, all he ever does is watch football and some TV shows.
There isn’t much going on in his life besides tracking killers the regular police cannot stop. He wouldn’t claim half of the labels people usually put on him—genius, psychopath hunter, Albert Einstein of the blood chasing field—but he is undeniably good at what he does. After graduating with honors in Psychology and Criminology at the University of Barcelona, he made his way to Spain’s International Intelligence Centre, where he now works as a young and condecorated analyst.
It sounds like a nerve racking job but everything is merely routine to him, sometimes it even gets boring. Call him an emotionless weirdo of sorts, but to survive in his field one has to be as cold blooded as the psychopaths on the streets. As such, Pedri’s only worry right now is whether or not they fixed the coffee machine in the office. He wouldn’t be pleased to go down fifteen floors just to get an overpriced espresso at the Starbucks down the building.
The elevator jolts at Pedri’s stop. The door opens and he is received with the strong smell of freshly brewed coffee. Great.
The office is eerily quiet, although Pedri can hear sounds of keyboards and low chatting. His coworkers usually talk loudly so he doesn’t get why they’re whispering. As he says hi to them, they say hi back but look at him with worry as if he’s the only one not aware of a secret going around. What’s happening? Is this an internal joke he’s not part of? Are they making fun of him for being unusually late?
He walks to his desk and looks at the stuff on it that make that corner entirely his. The stack of psychology books, a bag of pistachios, his coffee mug with a drawing of the Canary Islands, a frame with a photo of him and his family. He stares at it for a few seconds and the bittersweet taste of homesickness lingers under his tongue before he’s pulled back into reality.
“Flick needs to see you.”
Pedri jumps. “God, Ferran, you scared me. I don’t even get a good morning? A cup of coffee to compensate for the tantrum that’s about to come? Damn, there was a time.”
Ferran chuckles at the joke, but Pedri knows him well enough to tell he is forcing it. “It’s serious, though. He really needs to talk to you.”
“What happened?” Pedri asks, trying to understand Ferran’s expression—his facial muscles are more tense that usual, but there isn’t much else Pedri can get from it. His analytical skills only go so far.
“Kylian Mbappé is dead.”
Pedri frowns. “The French investor? The founder of that one AI company?”
“Yes, him. He went missing three days ago after a private afterparty in Madrid. He was found this morning in an abandoned house in the outskirts of the city.”
“Do we have any suspects?”
“We don’t have much on the case so far. He was a very controversial guy. Lots of people wanted him dead.” He takes a sip of his cup of coffee. “You should talk to Flick. He’ll give you more information on it.”
Pedri takes a deep breath. Ferran is usually on a great mood even when he’s talking to the prime minister on the phone or emailing someone in El País about the frenzy caused by the most recent criminal scandal. Much like everyone in the office, he’s chill, really. Now, he’s clearly unsettled. Not that Kylian deserves anyone’s sympathy, he was just another rich guy with no sense of humanity. But a killing of this magnitude is enough to make anyone think who could be next.
Pedri feels like he’s being watched by the entire office. He looks around and they all pretend to be invested in their own tasks.
He walks to Flick’s room and knocks. A few moments later, he hears a voice from inside. “Come in.”
“Hey, Flick,” he says as he opens the door. Shuts it behind him. “Ferran told me we have a new case. What’s the procedure?”
Pedri takes a seat. He can’t see Flick at first, who’s sitting down, facing the opposite direction. He then spins the chair and turns. He has a mug of coffee in his hand and nothing like a smile on his face.
“You know, sometimes I wish I could be a killer just to shoot people like Kylian in the head. But I chose to be on the other side,” he chuckles, and the tension on his face eases a bit.
“Yeah. A private afterparty, huh? Maybe it was someone on his circle that did this to him? Or maybe someone that sneaked into the party and gained his confidence first?”
Flick slides forward a yellow folder. “Take a peek and tell me what you think.”
Pedri opens the folder. It’s mostly pictures of a house that probably saw some good days in the last century, now covered in old furniture and debris. Then there’s pictures of a body tied to a chair, its head perforated. There’s a lot of blood on the walls and on the ceiling.
“Interesting place for a man like Kylian to be,” Pedri jokes, intrigued by the contrast of Kylian’s fancy clothing and the worn out surroundings. “Doesn’t suit him very much."
“The autopsy shows no signs of fight, but they found traces of ketamine in his blood. He was probably drugged and taken there. But that’s not the most intriguing part. They also found this,” Flick hands to Pedri a transparent, sealed small bag with a photo inside. It’s a polaroid of Kylian. He’s alive in it, it seems to have been taken right before he was shot. “It was found in one of Kylian’s pockets, it’s likely that the killer took it. But no one knows why they would do such a thing.”
Pedri squints. He traces his fingers over the plastic bag and tries to get the most out of the picture. The blurred lines of Kylian’s body, the flash lighting up his expression. He doesn’t smile but also doesn’t show fear. If anything, he looks simply stoic, resigned to his fate.
“A death polaroid? I’ve never seen anything like this before. It seems performative. Maybe the killer’s just messing with us.”
“Maybe. But we have to find out who’s behind this. Ferran is in contact with the Interpol and the Spanish police, he’ll update you once we get more information. Rapha is going to upload what we already have to the database so you can take a better look.” He runs his hand through his hair. The white strands are nothing short of signs of experience in the field. He’s been in situations like that before, multiple times. And he’s brilliant at what he does. If there’s anyone Pedri looks up to, it’s Flick. “Can I count on you?”
“Absolutely. I’ll start working on it.”
Pedri doesn’t know who’s behind Kylian’s killing, but, given the guy’s background and influence, he is sure that this case is much more complicated than it looks like.