(Please read the note at the end of the chapter)

Pete's POV:

I started looking around the room for any clue that I could possibly find.

"Should have come here in the afternoon" I murmured to myself. The whole room was pitch dark and the only source to light was from the dim torch I was holding.
I had purposely selected a dim one to prevent light from seeping out of the room and attracting attention in case anyone were to pass by.

While looking through everything, I found a photo of Mae holding baby Kim while Vegas, P'Kinn and P'Tankhun were standing beside her. All the kids looked gleeful and unlike their current strained relationship, Vegas and Kinn looked pretty close in the photo. Their hands were dangling carelessly around each other's shoulder and one could make out that they must have been quite mischievous from their playful smile and knees that were scrapped from probably falling while playing.

I placed the photo down feeling a mix of emotions ranging from joy to sadness, overwhelming me.

Sighing, I sat down to regain my composure.
I barred my nail into the floor while taking deep breaths to re-stabilize my breathing. My whole body was shaking lighly due to my fear of darkness. Every time I was left in darkness by my himself, I would get flashes of my mistreatment back home that Phaw used to label as "punishment".
Even though I had repeatedly trained myself to overcome the phobia, a remnant trace was still there.

Trying to overcome the phobia had proved to be quite detrimental and challenging in the beginning but when one is consumed with terror mixed with extreme resentment and unparalleled rage, it's just a matter of time before such phobias get countered.

Once my condition was a little more stabilized, I continued my search but found nothing.

"It's impossible to not miss important clues in this darkness. I should come back some other day." I mumbled to myself as I looked around the room for the last time while preparing to head out. Just as I was about to leave, a small hole in the side of a wardrobe caught my eye.
I crouched beside it and flashed my torch to get a better look when to my surprise, I discovered that it wasn't actually a hole but a bullet!
I quickly broke the damaged wood a little to get the bullet out and sealed it in a small plastic wrapper before placing it inside my pocket to examine it later.

"This is enough for today" I thought as I carefully left the room while making sure that no one was watching me.

I was careful to not look too suspicious while going into and out of the room. So in case Vegas was to check the footage, I would be able to just answer that I was curious about the room and looked cautious while opening it as I didn't want to wake him up.

I walked back to my room and thankfully Vegas was still sleeping.

"Where have you been?" He mumbled upon seeing me while trying his best to not fall asleep before getting an answer.
He could barely open his eyes due to how sleepy he was and I nearly got a heart attack from how adorable he was looking while doing that.

"Was just taking a stroll around the house." I gently kissed his forehead and caressed his hair. He fell asleep barely a second later making me smile at how innocent he looked while sleeping so defenselessly like that.
It was quite in contrast to how defensive he used to remain while sleeping during our initial days together but our situation had become quite different from what it was in the beginning.

"It's a pleasant change" I smiled to myself as I walked to the other side of the bed and embraced him tightly to sleep.

The next day:

I was looking through the information book which contained information about the guns possessed by each member of the family and the ones they used on a daily basis.

It was supposed to be confidential but was accessible to the family members and a few highly trusted bodyguards only. The bullet I had found belonged to the company whose guns were used by only P'Kinn in the family.
Among the others, phaw (Vegas' father) was the only one who used a gun whose bullets closely resembled the one used by P'Kinn, they looked so alike that at first glance anyone could misjudge it to be the same bullets.

After returning the book, I marched into Porsche's room to enquire about the truth since P'Kinn being the killer wasn't sitting well with me.

I knocked on their door and Porsche was the one to open it. P'Kinn was sitting on the sofa behind him looking at some paperworks and set it aside upon seeing me.

"Pete? Come on in" He said in a confused tone. I looked at Porsche and he nodded at me signing me to come in. I entered the room and he closed the door behind me.

He then pulled a chair and asked me to sit down before occupying one himself. We three were sitting round the small table and they both were occasionally glancing upon each other trying to figure out the reason of my sudden visit.

"I'm sorry in advance if I pull a sensitive nerve today but it's essential for me to discover the truth." I started and their eyebrows furrowed.

"P'Kinn...you are not the real murderer, are you?" I continued and he tensed up immediately giving me the confirmation I needed.

"I have no idea what you are talking about" He started to avoid my eyes to refrain himself from giving out any more information.

"It's absolutely essential to uncover the truth, I can't see Vegas suffering like that anymore...even if he hates you now, I can see how much he craves the close relationship that you two once shared." I said but was unable to convince him.

"No he doesn't" He instantly objected. Porsche kept his hand on P'Kinn's shoulder to calm him down.

"They say eyes can't lie and I happen to be a quite good eye analyser. Even though you two try your best to pretend that you hate each other, your eyes always give away your reality. As for Vegas, the hate he has for you roots from the sense of betrayal that he's feeling because you were the one he trusted the most in the family." I put forth my thoughts hoping him to lower his defense since it would be impossible to pry further on the case if P'Kinn was to be adamant that he was the real murderer.

"Moreover...you were briefly using another gun when the murder took place, weren't you?" His ears perked up immediately as he retracted back to his defensive demeanor.

"How do you know about that?" He hissed at me while trying his best to not let the situation escalate.

"I won't say anything to Vegas or anyone else if that's what you are concerned about and regarding this information, I simply looked through the weapons register, it's accessible to the family members afterall." I explained everything and he finally calmed down after giving it a thorough thought.

"That's...right. I wasn't using it when the murder happened because it needed some maintenance I believe. But no one knew about it except my personal bodyguard." He sighed and informed me.

I clutched my chest to prepare myself to ask the next and the most important question and could only desparately pray to get an answer.

"Then who's the real murderer?" I came to the point but he was reluctant to give away the name.

"I...I don't know" He stuttered a little.

"You took all the blame upon yourself, you had proof of your innocence but didn't present it, there was no post-mortem and the case was closed as soon as possible, the bullet wasn't extracted from mae's body, everything that could be done to hide the murderer's name was done, and you expect me to believe the you don't know who the murderer was?!" My voice increased towards the end because of how impatient I had become but I instantly closed my eyes to calm myself down. Right before closing them, I caught a glance of P'Kinn's shocked face and felt a little bad for going overboard with my enquiry.

After calming down a little, I apologized to him for acting disrespectful while he simply nodded his head while forgiving me for it.

"I can understand why you blew up like that. It's not a plausible excuses afterall." He sighed and gulped hard while trying to sum up his courage to utter the truth from his mouth after years of trying to keep it hidden.

"It's true that I didn't kill Mae. How in the world can I kill her? She's one who took care of me during our childhood, nourished us like her own children and always was a mother to us. How can I kill my own mother?" He looked swallowed with regret and despair.

"The one who killed her was...Vegas' phaw...uncle Gun" He said with all the strength he could sum up to force the name out of his throat.

The whole room fell dead silent as he kept looking down while probably trying to fight back tears due to the unpleasant memories that must have crossed his mind.

"Are you satisfied now?" He asked while lifting his head up.

"No" I said making both of them perplexed and filling them with disbelief.

"That's the truth! What more do you want to know?" P'Kinn grew completely defensive to the point that Porsche had to intervene to calm him down.

"That's the truth Pete, you have to believe it" Porsche said.

I sighed and thrusting my hand into my pocket, took out a small plastic packet.

"I went to Mae's room yesterday at night. It was closed right after the incident so I just wanted to check if there were any clues left behind and luckily found this bullet lodged in the lower side of the wooden wardrobe." I spoke up while placing it on the table infront of us and both of them looked quite intrigued while looking at it.

"Only Phaw (Vegas' father) used a gun similar to the one used by P'Kinn and this bullet doesn't belong to wicardi 92 (Gun's gun) . Rather it belongs to 357 Magnum (Kinn's gun) but the wounds formed by both the guns are quite similar so it's easy to get confused.
In short, the bullet fired that day wasn't fired from Phaw's gun and because the bullet wasn't extracted from Mae's body, the misunderstanding remained." I said.

"Do you mean to say that it was fired from mine?" P'Kinn asked in disbelief.

"No, am not saying that. Rather I think someone was trying to frame you by using the same gun as you but Phaw got caught in the crossfire. Did you see him standing in the room or while committing the murder?" I asked and he had to unwilling run through the memories of that day.

"No, we just saw him running away from there." He said.

"I am not sure about this theory but what if, Phaw caught the murderer that day while committing the act and ran behind him to catch him and right at the moment you were the one to enter the room and caught a glimpse of him running away and decided that he was the murderer." I tried to come up with situations that could have possibly happened that day.

"Sounds posible." P'Kinn acknowledged.

"Then does this mean that neither Uncle Gun nor Kinn are the murderers but it's someone else who committed it and these two got framed for it." Porsche put everything in sequence to explain everything better and I nodded.

"Then the purpose must have been to frame Kinn since they went as far as figuring out what gun Kinn used but unfortunately Uncle also got framed. But why would someone do that knowing Kinn won't be persecuted unless he commits treason by leaking information or trying to assassinate the family head. They figured out the gun so there's no way such a known piece of information could've stayed hidden?" Porsche put forth a valid question forcing us to ponder over what could possibly be the murderer's real purpose.

The simple murder that had not been discussed for years suddenly took an unexpected turn and unfolded the depth of the incident. There was definitely an ulterior motive of the murderer and the incident was probably just the tip of the iceberg.

"But nothing happened after the incident. Is it because they failed or abandoned their purpose maybe?" P'Kinn asked but I just couldn't give up on my intuition that was screaming that something was definitely wrong.

"Or maybe they are still setting the stage for something big. In any case, we have to get to the roots of the murder to prevent any worse misfortune from befalling upon the family." I adviced and both of them looked convinced.
Nothing had happened for the past few years didn't guarantee that nothing would happen in the future as well. Thus, it was essential to uncover the whole truth, the whole issue that probably ran deeper than our imagination.

POV Ends.

(Writer's thought: Hopefully we can execute it correctly and with this...starts the main arc of the story. I hope y'all have enjoyed the story so far and will continue to enjoy it<3
ALSO, THIS IS IMPORTANT SO IT WOULD A GREAT HELP IF YOU COULD COMMENT YOUR ANSWER.

So I have written a smut chapter but it is borderline BDSM (It's still not too wild) but am not sure if I should upload it not. Are y'all comfortable with reading it? Or should I just add light scenes? (I already know the answer but I still wanna get confirmed so please comment down below to let me know your answer)<3
Comment 'upload' or whatever you want, to let me know if I should do it and comment 'don't' if you don't want me to upload it. We'll do what the majority says and even if I do upload it, I'll add a tag so that you can skip it if you are not a smut reader<3)