Villain's Breeding System: Evolving 999+ Harem into an SSS-Rank Legion Chapter 127 - Alexander Dalton’s Last Rites

The news ticker ran across the bottom of the screen in red.

’BREAKING: Alexander Dalton — Senior Strategist, ridian Party, Confird Dead. Circumstances Unknown.’

The anchor’s face was doing that thing faces do when a person has spent their career describing storms from behind a desk and now, without warning, is standing in the rain.

"—what you’re seeing in this footage is not, according to our technical team, edited. Not filtered. Not CGI. This is raw video pulled from a dia unit’s cara at the Dalton estate, and I want to be absolutely clear with our viewers—"

The footage played.

The bullet becoming ash.

The helicopter going soft, its engine dissolving from the inside like sothing learning it was always supposed to be liquid.

The caras lifting off their mounts.

"—no prior incident of this nature has ever been recorded. We have confird with two independent network teams present at the scene that all footage shows identical events. The man you see here—"

A freeze fra.

Dark hair. Sharp features. Standing in a dead politician’s garden with the easy posture of a man who has just finished sothing manageable and is prepared for what cos next.

"—has not been identified by any governnt database. Interpol has no match. The facial composite has been processed against twenty-three national registries. Nothing."

The second anchor — younger, visibly rattled in a way they hadn’t bothered to hide — leaned forward.

"And the woman — the one identified preliminarily as Veronica Dalton, wife of the deceased — she appears to be—"

"—yes, and the footage is quite clear—"

Veronica. Red hair. The helicopter reflected orange in her eyes as she looked up at it.

Her fingers snapping.

The rotors going still.

"—we’re going to play that again for viewers who are just joining us. What you’re about to watch is—"

The car window fogged slightly from the inside.

Elena hadn’t been watching the screen. She’d been watching her phone, which was showing the sa footage on a different channel, which was showing the sa footage on a different app, which ant the footage existed in all the places now and would not be going away.

She locked the screen.

Looked at the ceiling of the car.

The car was black. Sent by the Dalton family — the kind of car that communicated its own importance without needing words. Driver separated behind tinted glass. The seats slled like leather and expensive cleaning products and the specific absence of anything personal.

It was the kind of car Alexander Dalton would have sent.

Elena registered the irony without feeling it.

The city moved past the windows. Morning traffic. Pedestrians. A woman outside a café holding her phone up to show soone else the sa footage Elena had just put away.

Her own phone lit up.

’Mrs. Veronica Dalton.’

Elena looked at the na for a second longer than she needed to.

The call had co twice before. Once last night, which she’d missed during the news. Once this morning, which she’d stared at until it stopped. And now again, sitting in a car presumably sent by the sa woman who was calling.

’Why is my mother-in-law calling .’

The thought was completely flat. Not panicked. Just — a practical inventory of a confusing situation. Veronica Dalton did not call Elena. Had, in the eleven months since the engagent, sent exactly three communications: a formal welco note, a schedule for fitting appointnts, and a single text ssage that read ’The flowers you chose are not appropriate for the ceremony. I will handle it.’ No greeting. No na. Just the correction.

Elena knew what she was to the Daltons.

She was a very specific kind of transaction. The Cheon family had sothing the Daltons needed and vice versa and Elena’s role in the arrangent was to be agreeable and present and not expensive. She was twenty-three and she’d understood her function clearly since she was seventeen and had been introduced to Victor across a dining table with flowers she hadn’t chosen.

’Is she calling to cancel the wedding.’

She considered it. Turned it over.

’No.’ The wedding was Veronica’s project. Elena had always suspected that Alexander’s death — not that she’d anticipated Alexander’s death, specifically, but the general category of disruption — would make Veronica tighten her grip on arrangents rather than loosen them.

Her phone lit up again.

’Mrs. Veronica Dalton.’

Elena answered.

"Mrs. Dalton."

"There is a ceremony." Veronica’s voice was exactly what it always was — precise, level, the voice of soone who had decided what they intended to say before they opened their mouth. "You’ll be there. The car should have already arrived."

"It has."

"Good. Dress appropriately for a mourning occasion."

The call ended.

Elena looked at her phone.

She was wearing a black mourning dress.

She had been before the call.

The Dalton estate in mourning looked roughly the sa as the Dalton estate in any other condition — large, ordered, expensive, the kind of house that communicated its own importance continuously and had no specific register for grief.

The garden near the side entrance had been cordoned off, which Elena noticed.

The marble poolside patio visible through the iron fence had a small team of people moving carefully around sothing she couldn’t fully see.

She told herself not to look.

She looked.

There was nothing dramatic visible. Just the team, and the light catching the edge of the infinity pool, and the specific brightness of the Turkish marble tile.

She looked away.

People were arriving.

Not many — this was not the public morial, which would co later and would be enormous.

This was the family ceremony, the private internt, the small gathering of people who had access to Alexander Dalton’s actual life rather than the managed version.

Elena had been given access because she was, on paper, family.

She stood outside the car for a mont after the driver opened her door. Breathed.

Adjusted the shoulders of her dress.

The dress was correct — black, structured, a level of formality appropriate to the occasion.

Her dark hair was up. Her face was what it always was in these rooms: attentive, pleasant, unremarkable.

She moved toward the entrance.

"Elena."

She stopped.

Victor was crossing the path toward her.

He looked — fine.

That was the honest answer. He was in a black suit that fit him well, his hair neat, his face arranged in the expression of a son managing grief.

From a distance, from behind glass, from a photograph, it was a convincing arrangent.

Up close, you could see the smirk behind his eyes.

Not a large smirk. Not theatrical.

Just the specific gleam of soone who has received information they find privately satisfying and are performing sothing adjacent to the appropriate emotion.

Victor Dalton had always been good at performing adjacent emotions. Elena had spent eleven months reading the distance between what his face said and what his eyes were doing and she’d gotten efficient at it.

"Elena." He ca close enough that she had to stop moving or bump into him. "I’m glad you’re here."

"Of course," she said.

"It ans a lot. To . During this — difficult ti." His voice dropped into the register he used for condolences and complints, the one that was technically sympathetic and felt like being looked at through a microscope.

"I’m sorry for your loss," she said. Because it was the correct thing.

"You look lovely."