Harem app-Chapter 184: A desperate man...

Third person POV

Dario, Harper’s ex-husband, stumbled back home after yet another night of drinking and trying to distract himself from his problems.

But those problems were closing in on him fast. He had just received word that one of his associates, who had been arrested by the police, was preparing to make a major plea bargain.

Meanwhile, Funny Corporation, once a giant, was now crumbling into shadows, its pillars of power collapsing as the investigations advanced.

That being said, the men who truly controlled everything had swiftly erased their tracks. After all, they were powerful—untouchable.

And what did they do for Dario? Nothing. They didn’t even pay him what he was owed for the last month. He had been discarded like an annoying inconvenience.

For a long time, Dario had deluded himself with the fantasy of being a king. He truly believed he was part of that untouchable elite. He even thought he had built genuine bonds with those men.

It was ironic. Dario had approached them with the intent of making valuable business connections. But for someone who had climbed the social ladder by forging fake friendships and flattering his superiors, he was surprisingly shocked to learn that, to those men, he had only ever been a convenient pawn.

And now that everything had collapsed, he was no different from the disposable thugs hired to do the dirty work.

Well, at the very least, he knew a little more than the average henchman. But what could he do? Even if he snitched on everything he knew, he doubted it would lead to any real revenge against those men. In the end, he would just end up rotting in prison.

"Those bastards!" He slammed his fist on the table, then grabbed a nearby glass and hurled it against the wall, shattering it into pieces.

There was no point in fantasizing about revenge. The only option left for Dario was to flee the country—he needed to disappear and start over somewhere new.

But for that, he would need a lot of money.

"If only I hadn’t spent so much on lawyers..." he muttered to himself, ignoring how much he had spent on betting, prostitutes, drinks, drugs, parties, luxury clothes, and much more.

During the last decade, he never bothered to save money. His salary was so high that, even spending recklessly, there was always a good amount left over to invest.

But he definitely didn’t have the millions needed to flee the country and live a life of luxury elsewhere as a fugitive.

Especially after he lost so much money in recent weeks trying to distract himself from reality.

But he had a solution for all of this. He picked up his cell phone and deposited all the money he had in his bank account into his online casino account.

He was feeling like it was his lucky day. He knew the gods wouldn’t let him down. After all, he needed the money; he couldn’t flee the country in a risky way like a commoner, and much less would he accept going to prison.

He walked to his room and turned off all the lights. The only illumination left was that coming from the screen of his cell phone with the online casino.

Before him stood a small improvised altar that he had prepared.

He lit the candle on it, revealing that the altar was composed of a red candle, a handful of old coins, and a faded photo of himself, younger.

Somehow that was supposed to bring him more luck. At least in that man’s mind, it made sense.

Then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took another deep breath, while feeling enormous tension run through his body.

Just to be safe, he decided to do a luck test. He tossed his lucky coin up once, and if it landed on heads, he would know he was lucky.

The result was positive, which relieved him. He was confident that on this day he would get rich betting his money. Much richer than all those men who despised and abandoned him.

He opened his eyes and focused them on the screen. His hands trembled slightly as he confirmed the deposit of all his money on that roulette wheel that had taken so much from him.

Several colorful options of numbers appeared before him; it was simple, he just needed to guess which slot the roulette wheel would stop on. He chose the number 17, his ’lucky number,’ and clicked on bet.

The roulette wheel started spinning.

The man held his breath, his eyes following the white ball that bounced from number to number, as if his life depended on that small digital object.

His heart beat strongly in his chest, and he felt a cold sweat run down his temples. The ball slowed down, passed 32, then 12, then 25... and it looked like it was going to land on 17. Dario almost smiled, almost believed that the gods were with him.

But then, at the last instant, the ball landed on 0.

"Zero... ZERO?!" he screamed, jumping up from the chair. His face contorted in a mixture of rage and despair.

He looked at the screen, at the zeroed balance, and then at the improvised altar. With a brusque movement, he kicked it all away in revolt.

He couldn’t take responsibility for his own mistakes, so his mind began to wander, looking for things to hate. He cursed his wife who had abandoned him, his daughter who hadn’t stood by him.

But, above all, he cursed those he worked with.

"Those bastards! Bastards! Bastards!" he screamed, punching the wall so hard that blood ran down his fist. "They used me, discarded me, and now... now I have nothing!"

He began to pace back and forth, gesturing and talking to himself, as if he were in a dialogue with the powerful men who had betrayed him. "You think you can do this to me? You think I’m just a pawn? A disposable thug? You think you’ll be fine without me?!"

Dario desperately punched the wall, trying to calm his soul. He wanted to destroy those men completely, but how?

But at that moment, he heard a police siren passing by his house, and he became desperate. The patrol car wasn’t even going to visit him, but in his paranoia, the man became absolutely frantic upon hearing that sound.

So he left his house desperately, running aimlessly, while trying to flee to a place he didn’t even know where it was. The intense rain of that day crashed against his body, and pathetically, he tripped after only a few steps.

But who ended up seeing all of this through a camera was Clara. She was doing everything to investigate the organization that was capturing those girls.

Most of the time, she stayed observing the house of a certain man who never left his residence. But she also had secret cameras to observe other important people, and since she knew that Dario was about to be arrested for involvement in all of that, she placed some cameras around his house.

And later, while checking the footage, she discovered that he had fled desperately, appearing to be out of his mind.

In her mind, she quickly added this information to the fact that she had already spoken with people who knew him, and they said he had been acting strangely in recent days, apparently addicted to gambling.

Because of all this, she believed that perhaps he would be a perfect target.

And after exchanging a few messages with Zoe, she found out that she would be free at the end of the week. Now all that was missing was to locate that idiot.

Dario walked slowly through the deserted streets of the abandoned industrial zone, his dragging steps echoing in the oppressive silence. His clothes were dirty and worn.

His eyes, deep and tired, wandered unfocused, while he muttered that it was all those men’s fault. He hadn’t eaten anything since he fled his house, and everything around him frightened him.

He looked like an abandoned stray cat, staggering and afraid of everything. It was then that, upon turning a corner, he was surprised to find a girl staring at him with a smile that was difficult to understand.

"I’d like to talk to you," she tried to strike up a conversation.

"I don’t have time for this," the man lunged towards the small girl, wanting to push her out of the way.

However, before he could touch her, his hand was grabbed, then his back slammed against the ground before he could say anything.

"Thanks for that," Clara thanked Zoe, who was immobilizing the idiot. Then she crouched down, looking him in the eye, "I know everything."

The man’s eyes widened as several thoughts ran through his mind, and his paranoid head began to make him terrified, but Clara couldn’t care less.

"I can offer you a solution to your problems," she said, getting up.

The man’s eyes gleamed with hope that perhaps his problems could be solved; after all, all he wanted at that moment was a magical solution to all his troubles.

"I can’t prevent you from being arrested," but the girl cruelly dashed that hope. "But I can offer you the chance to get revenge, to be a great hero."

She said, as she began to manipulate the mind of that lost man, after all, he would be the missing piece in her investigations.

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