Villain’s Favorite 199

Chapter 199 Old Photo 

:)) 

After Edric brought Maya and Alfred back to a private compound, he had almost no time to spend with either of them in any meaningful way. 

From morning to night, every day was the same relentless rhythm. Meetings, then visitors, then hours in front of the surveillance wall in the command room, then back to the office to sign off on documents. 

Maya had never set foot in a place like this before. 

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Maps and files blanketed the desk, and an entire wall of monitors displayed every corner of the compound in sharp, shifting detail. 

The office had two bedrooms attached to it, with just enough space for the three of them. 

For the first three days, with no phone and nothing to do, Maya worked up the nerve to poke around and eventually dug up an old Rubik’s cube from somewhere. 

She and Alfred claimed a corner, sat shoulder to shoulder, and spent entire afternoons hunched over it together, turning and turning without any particular urgency. 

Edric came in occasionally, but only to retrieve a file or stand in front of the monitors for a minute before leaving again. 

He had no interest in children whatsoever. 

Maya had clocked that immediately. 

He wasn’t the type to have any sentimental inclination toward raising a child at his age. 

He’d brought her here and kept her close, but he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for in her. 

Maya had seen enough unusual people by now to form a baseline, and Edric registered as surprisingly tolerable by that measure. 

On the surface, at least. 

He never raised his voice, never lost his composure. His personality ran cool and even, his speech unhurried, his emotions steady as stone. 

Edric was the most central figure in the entire Clark generation. 

Philbert and Ned had been quietly desperate for someone capable, and the moment Edric was old enough, they’d practically thrown every branch of the family’s holdings at him. They were 

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16:35 Sat, May 9 M… 

20 Old Photo 

simultaneously grooming Toby at full speed, intent on having the two brothers share the weight. 

It wasn’t until the fourth day that Maya had her first real conversation with Edric. 

That afternoon, a delivery arrived for him. 

2) 

It was packaged with meticulous care, wrapped in a brown kraft paper bag, reinforced inside with a hard cardboard layer, and at the very center of it all was a single old photograph. 

Edric stood at the edge of the desk and stared at it for a long, unmoving stretch of time. 

Maya had been sitting with Alfred working on the Rubik’s cube, but Edric’s focus was so palpably intense that it was impossible to ignore. 

She hesitated for a few seconds. 

Then she set the cube down and walked over. 

When Edric saw her coming, he lifted the photograph by its edge and gave it a small, gentle wave in front of her. “Do you recognize her?” 

Maya didn’t follow at first. 

Then she looked at the photograph. 

The person in it was a girl, really more of a teenager. Around fourteen or fifteen, with a radiant smile, a carnival in the background, and a small boy clutched tight in her arms. 

Maya leaned in to look more closely, and Edric turned the photograph face-down with a quiet, deliberate motion. 

Maya stood still for a moment, her thoughts drifting. She hadn’t paid much attention to the boy. It was the girl that kept pulling her back. 

She looked like who Maya would grow up to be. 

She looked exactly like who Maya had been in her previous life. 

Maya held onto her hesitation for a long beat, then met his eyes. “I think that might be me.” 

Edric looked at her. 

His expression held nothing in it, the same composed blankness as always, but Maya got the distinct impression he’d been waiting for exactly that answer. 

“But not the me right now,” Maya added. 

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bate 

Her mind was already running hard, trying to work through what any of this could possibly 

mean. 

She thought she finally understood why Edric’s attitude toward her had always carried that strange mixture of detachment and inexplicable curiosity. 

It had started with this photograph. 

But why? Why would there be someone in the world who looked exactly like her? 

Had reality itself developed some kind of glitch? 

“Maya.” 

He noticed the furrow of concentration on her face. He leaned back slightly and said her name with quiet, unhurried gentleness, watching her with those calm, unreadable eyes. “I’m genuinely curious as to why you look exactly like this person.” 

To be completely honest with himself, he barely remembered what he’d looked like at seven or eight. He had almost no photographs from that time. 

But the small boy that the girl was holding in the picture was him. 

He hadn’t let her look long enough to be certain of that. 

The boy was around seven or eight, dressed in a small white button-down shirt, soft hair falling across his forehead. He’d been pulled in front of the camera by the girl, his expression shy and hesitant, the corner of his mouth curved just enough to suggest he wasn’t comfortable being photographed but was happy anyway. His hand hovered uncertainly before he finally extended it and held up a peace sign alongside her. 

That smile, though… 

One word floated up in Edric’s mind: unguarded. 

“I don’t know,” Maya said, blinking out of her thoughts after a beat. “Who’s the boy?” She’d only caught a quick impression of the boy before the photo was turned over, and most of her attention had landed on the girl. 

The boy hadn’t left much of an impression. 

Or so she’d thought, but something about him surfaced after a moment. He’d looked careful in that photograph, a little shy, smiling the way someone smiles when they’ve just been handed something precious and haven’t quite believed it yet. 

Everything about him had screamed easy to fool, easy to push around, easy to manage. 

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16:35 Sat, May 9 M 

… 

គ 

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For bed 

He was nothing like the man standing by the window right now, eyes lowered, watching her in quiet stillness. 

He wore a white shirt and dark trousers. Light streamed in behind him. His face carried no expression at all, his eyes like a stretch of open, uninhabited land. 

Maya didn’t make the connection. And to be fair, Edric wasn’t entirely convinced that boy was him either. 

The complete and total absence of any wariness in that child’s face, the staggering contrast between then and now, made him genuinely wonder if the photograph had been digitally generated. 

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