He approached the bed and handed her the folder, his fingers flinching back from hers as she took it. Trying to hide how much that hurt, she focused on the folder.

All the pages inside were typewritten, which narrowed down the possibilities of where it could have come from. Only people with money could afford typewriters. Each page inside listed names, dates, and details. Many of the names seemed familiar to her, but it took her a while to figure out what connected them.

She’d seen them all in newspapers. These were Steels who’d lived in Kosín in the past two decades. Every one of them was dead. Reports flashed through her mind, blurred by the time that had passed since she’d seen them.

Train accidents. Gas explosions. Faulty electricity burning down houses. Her hands shook the more she read, and when she saw the names Hiroe and Masato Hirai, she nearly dropped the folder.

It explained that Ryuu’s parents had died in a gas explosion, but it also detailed that they’d been shot prior to the explosion, along with a codename for the hired killer who’d done the job.

This was documentation of hits on some of Kosín’s highest-earning residents. Her time spent spying on Kouta, and how he was reading all the time—had he been reading these documents that day she’d followed him home?

As she read the rest of the pages, she frowned with suspicion. All of these kills had been covered up or blamed on someone else. She recognized the name of a businessman Tannis had been sent to kill once. She’d had to lie low for months afterward, as there were rumors that a Kaiyanis woman from the south of the city had been the culprit.

It was clearly done to divert attention from whoever was truly behind the kills. There was nothing new to her about hired murder in this city, but to see that other people from the Stacks like her were being used as weapons and scapegoats for someone higher up than them engineering these kills made Aina’s stomach squirm with unease. When she saw Kouta’s name, her heartbeat slowed. She was a part of this operation even if she hadn’t known it.

The final page simply said Black Diamond in the center. No names, dates, or details were given. She frowned, staring at the words for a while, but couldn’t understand what they meant.

She flipped through the pages again, and as she neared the earlier kills made during and after the war, something caught her eye. In the paragraph that detailed the murders of Ryuu’s parents was the sentence: “Let it be known that our goal is to progress, not to regress.”

She stared at the words for a few moments, trying to recall where she’d heard them. When the realization hit her, she tossed the paper aside as if it had burned her fingers.

When she next spoke, Teo and Raurie both nodded. Ryuu must have shown it to them already. “General Bautix. He’s the one who got your parents shot and made it look like it happened during the Inosen’s attack on their mines.”