"Walk me through everything," the officer said. "From the beginning."

Emma straightened slightly before answering.

Her explanation came cleanly and professionally.

"Amelia arrived in Velaris City yesterday for the talent show and checked into her hotel that evening just before the show was about to start. At some point afterward, early morning of today, she left the hotel without informing anyone on her protection detail."

The officer continued taking notes without interrupting.

"We had no advance warning and no indication where she was going," Emma continued. "The first sign something was wrong came when her emergency alarm triggered."

She hesitated briefly before adding,

"Our unit didn’t have the technical capability to trace the signal directly, so we relayed it to Vanguard headquarters and waited for location analysis."

The officer glanced up briefly at that.

"By the time the tracking data came back," Emma continued, "Amelia was already in transit. The signal indicated she was being moved through Inksea roads in a vehicle. We lost the signal several times, reacquired it, and were ultimately guided to this building after the alarm triggered a second time."

The officer listened carefully the entire time, occasionally nodding while writing notes into a small black notebook.

When Emma finished, he closed it halfway and looked thoughtful.

"As expected of the transparent Vanguard Protection Group," he said slowly. "Your reputation extends well beyond Europe all the way to this city."

Then his eyes narrowed slightly.

"Though I am curious about one thing."

He looked between the guards.

"Why was your client’s security detail entirely female?"

The women exchanged brief glances before Emma finally answered.

"Amelia has a severe aversion toward men," she said carefully. "Strong enough that she refused to allow any male personnel anywhere on her detail."

The officer’s expression shifted slightly at that. Not surprised. Just more... grim.

"Hm..."

He tapped the pen lightly against the notebook.

"That level of aversion usually doesn’t appear without reason."

His voice lowered slightly.

"Something serious must’ve happened to her."

The guards quietly nodded.

Even as women themselves, they found it difficult to completely understand condemning an entire gender because of the actions of a few individuals.

But at the same time... None of them felt it was their place to judge trauma they knew nothing about.

"We don’t know what caused it," Emma admitted quietly. "She never told us."

The officer remained silent for several seconds before continuing.

Notably, he made sure Stan remained far enough away that he couldn’t overhear the questioning.

It wasn’t the behavior of someone rushing toward an easy conclusion.

It was the behavior of an investigator carefully constructing a timeline.

"When exactly did the first alarm trigger relative to the time she left the hotel?" he asked.

Emma answered immediately.

The officer nodded and continued.

"How long between losing the signal and reacquiring it?"

Another answer.

"Did headquarters provide any indication regarding the number of vehicles involved during transit?"

A brief pause before Emma answered again.

"And during the pursuit," the officer continued calmly, "did any of you visually identify the kidnappers before arriving at the building, or did you only see them upon entry?"

The guards answered every question as precisely as they could.

And the officer wrote down every detail carefully.

Then the officer called Stan over.

"Your turn," he said calmly. "Start from the beginning and leave nothing out."

Stan nodded and recounted everything plainly, without embellishment.

"I left my car at Imperium Motors to be serviced and washed," he began. "After that, I went to a nearby hotel to kill time."

He continued evenly.

"While I was there, I noticed Amelia on the staircase. She looked... wrong. Unsteady. Frightened. Like she wasn’t fully conscious."

The officer wrote as Stan spoke.

"A short while later, a group of men escorted her out of the hotel. At first, I thought they might’ve been acquaintances or security. But then they grabbed her roughly and forced her into a white van."

Stan’s eyes narrowed slightly at the memory.

"That’s when I realized something was seriously wrong."

"So I flagged down a taxi and followed them."

The officer glanced up briefly.

"The van eventually stopped at the abandoned building," Stan continued. "I looked through a gap in the door and saw the men inside. Amelia had clearly been drugged. They intended to assault her."

The Vanguard guards visibly stiffened hearing it stated so directly.

"She tried resisting," Stan said quietly, "but she couldn’t really fight back in that condition."

"So I forced the door open, dealt with the men inside, and they fled in the van afterward."

He paused briefly before continuing.

"The guards arrived maybe a minute later. They tracked Amelia there through her phone signal."

"I was in the middle of calling the police when the standoff started. After that, I called the ambulance. The paramedics left with Amelia shortly before your team arrived."

The officer listened without interruption.

Then Stan added,

"There’s also a taxi driver who can verify part of what I said, specifically the pursuit from the hotel to the abandoned building."

The officer looked up.

"You have his contact information?"

Stan shook his head.

"No. But he picked me up directly outside the hotel. I’d recognize him if I saw him."

By this point, even the Vanguard guards standing off to the side had largely stopped suspecting Stan altogether.

His account was too coherent. Too consistent. And more importantly, too easy to verify. There were no exaggerated details. No convenient gaps.

Everything flowed naturally and aligned with what they themselves already knew.

The lead officer pulled out his phone and accessed the city’s licensed taxi-driver database.

"See if you recognize him."

Stan scrolled through the registered profiles for less than a minute before stopping.

"This one," he said, pointing at the screen. "His name’s Aldin."

The police immediately retrieved the driver’s registered contact information and placed the call.

"Mr. Aldin, this is the police. We need to ask you a few questions regarding a passenger you picked up earlier today."

The conversation was brief but extremely useful.

Aldin confirmed that he had indeed picked Stan up outside the hotel and driven him while they followed a white van toward the Inksea district.

That alone corroborated nearly ninety-five percent of Stan’s timeline.

It independently confirmed the pursuit. Confirmed the hotel location. Confirmed the white van. Confirmed Stan’s movements.

While it couldn’t directly prove what had occurred inside the abandoned building itself, it gave overwhelming credibility to the rest of Stan’s statement.