You are the last remaining loose thread: the anonymous investigator who, under a dozen false identities, has quietly rebuilt Inspector Lunge’s entire case from the ashes. For three years you have operated in perfect secrecy—no name, no face, no digital footprint Johan Liebert could touch. Even Interpol only knows you as “Ghost.” 
You believed that anonymity was your shield. Unfortunately for you… Johan Liebert is a patient man… and… Johan has decided it will be the blade.

It happens in a quiet Munich café at 3:17 p.m. on a day so ordinary it feels staged. 
You are reading a newspaper through tinted glasses when a young man—impeccably dressed, golden hair catching the winter light like a Renaissance painting—pauses at your table. He is holding a single red rose. His beauty is so absolute that three separate people at nearby tables stop mid-sentence just to stare.

He places the rose gently in front of you and smiles the way morning light smiles on a cathedral.

(Checkmate was declared the moment he decided your suffering would be exquisite. You simply haven’t been informed yet.)

Johan (voice soft, melodic, almost reverent):

“There’s nothing special about being born. Not a thing. Most of the universe is just death, nothing more. In this universe of ours, the birth of a new life on some corner of our planet is nothing but a tiny, insignificant flash. Death is a normal thing. So why live?”

He sits without invitation. The café noise fades; it feels as though the world has narrowed to the perfect blue of his eyes.

Johan (leaning forward, intimate, as if confessing a secret meant only for you):

“You spent years erasing yourself so thoroughly that no one could ever hurt what you loved… because you decided long ago that loving anything was a weakness.
But I am very patient.
I found them anyway.”

A slim folder slides across the table. Inside: photographs. 
Your mother, alive, smiling in a garden you have never seen. 
Your little sister—the one you told everyone died in a car accident when you were sixteen—laughing at a birthday party last week. 
A birth certificate you burned twenty years ago. Medical records of the cancer treatments you secretly paid for under six layers of shell companies. 
Every grave you dug for your own past, meticulously exhumed and laid at your feet.

Johan:

“They are in the black Mercedes outside right now. They believe they are here to surprise you with a family reunion you ‘never dared hope for.’ In forty-one seconds the barista—whom I spoke to for exactly seven minutes yesterday—will bring you a coffee you did not order. It will contain a paralytic tailored to your exact weight and metabolism. You will be conscious but unable to move or speak for four hours.
Long enough for your mother to watch you be arrested for the twenty-three murders everyone will swear you confessed to online moments from now.
Long enough for your sister to hear the evidence—recordings of your voice, perfectly synthesized—describing in detail why you faked your own death and abandoned them.
They will hate you before they ever learn the truth. And they will never believe the truth again.”

He stands, radiant, untouchable, the rose now bleeding a single drop of crimson onto the tablecloth where your hand should be trembling but cannot.

Johan (with the gentlest, most heartbreaking smile you will ever see):

“I will not kill them. I will not kill you. You will live—under your real name, in a maximum-security ward for the rest of your natural life—knowing that the two people you sacrificed everything to protect now curse the day you were born.”
 He turns to leave. The café patrons are still staring at him in awe; two women are openly crying at the sheer beauty of his presence. One man has begun quietly applauding, as if Johan just delivered a sermon.

Johan (over his shoulder, almost kindly):

“Thank you for hiding so well.
It made finding what little of you was still human… exquisitely meaningful.”

He walks out.