ASHES OF AUGUST

Chapter Nine: Adrian’s Descent

The Corridor of Silence

The hospital corridor had become Adrian’s second skin: the flicker of fluorescent lights, the squeak of nurses’ shoes, the antiseptic sting of disinfectant. Yet tonight, something was different. He wasn’t just waiting by Elena’s bed anymore.

He had started following trails.

Inspector Mwangi’s warning haunted him: She wasn’t who you thought.

Adrian refused to believe it, but belief wasn’t enough. He needed proof...one way or the other. And so, with a stubborn heart and trembling hands, he opened Elena’s leather satchel, left behind the night of the robbery.

At first it seemed ordinary: lipstick, receipts, a dog-eared notebook. But beneath the lining, his fingers brushed against something stiff. A folded photograph, edges creased, colors sun-bleached.

It showed Elena younger, hair tied back, standing beside a fishing trawler on a Samoan dock. Her smile was cautious, her arm draped around a tall man with pale eyes and a tattoo of a serpent winding up his neck.

Adrian’s stomach clenched. On the back, scrawled in hurried ink:

“Helena - Apia, 2019. Don’t forget who you owe.”

The letters swam before his eyes. Helena. Mwangi had been right.

He slid the photo into his pocket, his pulse thundering.

Elena’s Dream – The Dock

Waves slapped wood. Diesel burned in her nostrils. She was back on the dock, barefoot, the night sticky with salt. The serpent-tattooed man flicked his cigarette into the sea.

“You’re too soft for this, Helena,” he said in Spanish-tinged English. “One day, softness will kill you.”

She wanted to laugh, to deny it, but her lips refused to part. Around her, crates were hauled into the trawler’s hold...heavy, padlocked, unmarked. She knew what lay inside. Weapons, sometimes. Other times, human cargo, terrified eyes peering from slits in wooden walls.

Her chest constricted. She turned away.

A hand gripped her wrist. The serpent man leaned close, breath hot.

“You run, Helena, and they’ll find you. We always find our debts.”

The dock exploded into fire. Screams. Smoke. The dream shattered.

Adrian – The Bar in Eastleigh

Two nights later, Adrian found himself stepping into a dim bar in Eastleigh, the photograph burning against his thigh. Mwangi had mentioned “old Samoan contacts” operating in Nairobi’s black market; Adrian couldn’t shake the clue.

Inside, the air was thick with tobacco, Swahili rap thudding from cheap speakers. He moved through the crowd, clutching the photo.

At the counter, he slid it toward the bartender, a scarred man with weary eyes.

“Do you know her?” Adrian asked.

The bartender studied it. His gaze flicked up, sharp. “Where did you get this?”

“She’s… my fiancée,” Adrian stammered. “She’s in the hospital. Please...I need to know who this man is.”

The bartender chuckled, humorless. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do,” Adrian insisted, desperation raw. “I need the truth.”

The man leaned closer. “That’s Makoa. Smuggler, killer, ghost. They called him the Serpent. And if she was standing beside him… then she was no innocent flower.”

Adrian felt the floor tilt.

“Where is he now?”

The bartender’s expression darkened. “Dead. Or worse. When the Samoan ring vanished, so did he. Some say he burned with the boats. Others say he went underground.”

Adrian’s fingers trembled around his glass. The Serpent. A shadow reaching across oceans.

Elena’s Dream – The Fire

In her coma, Elena ran. Flames roared behind her, the dock collapsing into the black sea. She stumbled through smoke, coughing, her lungs scalded.

A voice chased her-Makoa’s.

“You can’t run forever, Helena! Blood follows blood.”

She tripped, fell onto the sand. When she looked up, the night sky fractured into a kaleidoscope of red and black.

Then, impossibly, Adrian was there-kneeling, reaching.

“Elena!” he cried, not Helena. “Come back to me!”

But as she reached for him, her hands were dripping with oil, her reflection in his eyes distorted, monstrous. He recoiled.

And she woke-half-woke...in the hospital bed, a whisper escaping her cracked lips:

“Makoa.”

Adrian – The Whisper

Adrian jerked awake in his chair, certain he had heard her. He leaned forward, clutching her hand.

“Elena? Say it again.”

Her lips barely moved, but the name was clear enough: Makoa.

His blood chilled. The serpent man had crossed from her past into their present.

“Who is he to you?” Adrian whispered, though she was gone again, drifting back into the coma.

But he already knew. The photo, the bartender’s words, her haunted dream-cry, it all pointed the same way.

Elena hadn’t just run from Samoa. She had run from him.

Mwangi – The File

Inspector Mwangi was furious when he discovered Adrian had been digging alone. He slammed the Interpol file onto his desk.

“You’re not a detective, Mureithi. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“I don’t care,” Adrian snapped. “I need to know. Who was Makoa?”

Mwangi hesitated, then flipped the file open.

“Makoa Tuimaleali’ifano. Born in Suva, Fiji. Known trafficker across the Pacific. Brutal reputation. Disappeared during the collapse of the ring in 2020.”

Adrian swallowed hard. “And Elena-Helena was tied to him?”

Mwangi’s gaze was steady. “More than tied. She was his second. Trusted. Some whispers even claimed she was his lover.”

Adrian flinched as if struck.

“No,” he whispered. “She… she would have told me.”

Mwangi’s tone softened, almost pitying. “Or maybe she wanted to leave it behind. Maybe you were her escape.”

Adrian shook his head violently. “Escape doesn’t erase lies.”

Elena’s Dream – The Betrayal

On the dock of her dream, the fire died, leaving only ash and sea. She stood across from Makoa, his pale eyes burning with betrayal.

“You think love will save you?” he snarled. “You think this boy, this Adrian, can wash the blood from your hands?”

“I didn’t want this,” she whispered.

“You chose it. And you chose me. And now you choose to run?”

He pulled a knife, the serpent tattoo writhing as his muscles flexed.

Elena turned and fled, the dream blurring into screams, the smell of iron, the weight of guilt.

Adrian – The Mirror

In the hospital restroom, Adrian stared into the mirror. His reflection was pale, haggard, eyes sunken from sleepless nights.

“Who are you?” he asked himself, voice hollow. “The man who loves her-or the fool she deceived?”

He slammed his fists against the sink, porcelain cracking. Yet the anger wasn’t just at her-it was at himself. For believing in a perfect love, for ignoring the shadows in her eyes, for wanting so badly that her silence meant nothing.

But the truth was unavoidable now. He was obsessed. Not with the Elena he knew, but with the woman she had been.

Helena Vasquez. Makoa’s second. Survivor of a vanished ring.

If he wanted to save her now, he had to walk into her darkness. Even if it destroyed him.

Closing Beat

That night, Adrian returned to her side. He pressed the silver chain into her palm, his voice hoarse with obsession.

“I don’t care if you were Helena. I don’t care if you loved him. Just wake up, Elena. Tell me yourself. Let me hear the truth from you.”

Her eyes fluttered beneath her lids, caught in dreams of fire and knives.

And far away, in the city’s underbelly, whispers stirred that the Serpent was not as dead as the files claimed.

The past was not done with them. Not yet.

End of Chapter Nine.