Amanda isn't surprised, she isn't angry. She just coldly and mockingly stares into Bruce's single eye, as if everything has been predicted and is under control.
Dealing with Bruce, Amanda took the phone from her subordinate and after dialling a number, she said to the person on the other end...
"Professor, as you predicted, he is indeed stupid, planning to make his escape during the chaos caused by Bane's murder of Galado. Now, I have a legitimate reason to put him in a special detention cell."
Bruce slowly widened his eyes, and then he heard a familiar voice from Amanda's end of the line.
"Yes, Amanda, what a foolish little lamb he is. A hired mercenary, a drug dealer destined to be executed, was enough to make him act so recklessly... Now, do what you have to."
"Take him to the special detention cell, under maximum surveillance!"
Amanda held her head up high as she spoke. She didn't look over at the detained Bruce, she could feel his burning gaze. This filled her with the gleeful satisfaction of a successful revenge. This damned killer has finally met his earned punishment.
But if she had turned her head a little to look at the criminal being led past her, she would have found that the single eye fixed on her was not locking onto her, but the phone in her hand.
When Shiller hung up the phone, Constantine, who was lying on the office treatment bed with his hands behind his head, stared at the ceiling and sighed: "Before I met you, I never imagined that someone in this world could be so petty."
"Bruce locked you up in a harsh cell, and so you lock him up too, even making Zatanna use her mental magic to hypnotize Elliot to kidnap the surviving little girl."
Shiller gently wiped the dust from the phone cord and sighed, "Bruce thinks that everyone is as meticulous and careful as he is, but in reality, Elliot had no intention of eradicating the roots."
"He had long forgotten about the little girl. If it wasn't for me getting Zatanna to control Elliot and walk him into Bruce's trap, how could he have pulled off his perfect decoy plan?"
"You know Bruce too well." Constantine sighed, sat up from the bed and walked over to the sofa. He poured himself a drink and asked, "But I'm still curious, how did you manage to lock him up? What happened in the prison?"
Shiller smiled and sat across from Constantine, unbuttoning his suit jacket and crossing one leg over the other.
Constantine raised an eyebrow. He knew this was Shiller's casual pose, so he took a box of cigars from under the table and asked, "Fancy one?"
Shiller gently nodded, and while watching Constantine cut the cigar, said, "Bruce's biggest problem is, he thinks everyone is a genius like him. As if they need to have a shocking motive and mystic backstory before they can do anything."
"But in reality, most people's motives and methods are very simple. And once Bruce starts overthinking it, he does some things that seem very logical to him but to others, look pretty dumb."
"Like this time. He irritated me over a broccoli field and thought I wouldn't easily forgive him. Instead of coming to apologize, he decided to do some very difficult social work, even cutting his own face to swap identities with Elliot, and put himself in prison."
"So in reality, if he had come to apologize, you would have forgiven him?"
"Generally speaking, if anyone sincerely apologizes to me without causing me severe harm, I will forgive him and greatly reduce the severity of any future retaliations."
"That's unbelievable."
"I do adhere to such rules indeed." Said Shiller, supporting his head on one hand with a few fingers. "However, there seems to always be some misunderstanding about my temper. Even Clark believes that it's better to run away than to apologize to me."
"Even after he destroyed my Tower of Thought twice, I didn't do anything to him, yet he still stubbornly holds this belief. The reason he usually stays put until I arrive is because he pessimistically thinks that he can't escape."
"So far, you are the only one who has sincerely apologized to me and offered your assistance voluntarily. Therefore, not only can you drink my wine now, I also don't mind that you've cut my precious cigar, a gift from Alberto, into a mess."
Looking down at the cigar in his hand, Constantine gave Shiller an apologetic smile and said, "Thanks to all the messes I've made in the first half of my life, I'm convinced that apologizing is the one thing I can do well," as he opened his matchbox.
Seeing him take out a match, Shiller stood up, leaning across the coffee table with one hand in his trouser pocket, stooping and lowering his head. Constantine offered the cigar which Shiller placed in his mouth, and he lit it for him, one hand shielding the flame and the other striking the match.
Seeing Shiller take a puff of the cigar that he had clipped, Constantine's pupils contracted slightly. Constantine, as a magical advisor who often frequented upper-class residences, certainly wouldn't have cut the cigar so poorly. He believed Shiller was aware of this as well.
An undeniable feeling of guilt and regret welled up within him. He was fully aware that Shiller suffered from severe OCD, yet he still deliberately destroyed the valuable item like a child who intentionally breaks toys, expressing his unreasonable discontentment, an emotion he had no reason or basis to harbor.
Doing such a thing in front of a man with great self-restraint seemed even more like a tantrum. Constantine took a deep breath, repeated to himself ten thousand times that this was just another one of Shiller's traps, and then leaned back tiredly on the sofa with a sigh, "Sorry, Professor. I was a tad bit shaky."
Smoking his cigar, Shiller sat back down on the sofa and smiled, "It seems like Morbid left quite an impression on you. But I'm not him. I don't manipulate others with every little detail in life. I speak the truth."
"Can't be that only me, among everyone involved, has apologized to you, can it?" said Constantine, taking another sip of his wine, trying to slow his racing heartbeat.
Seeing the expression on Shiller's face, an astonished Constantine asked, "Really?"
"Indeed."
Shiller exhaled a puff of smoke before continuing, "Now let's talk about what happened in the prison. The process was actually quite simple..."
"I know Bruce very well, and he knows me too. He's aware that if I were to settle old scores, he'd be the first one I'd seek. Therefore, he would certainly run first."
"I've been keeping an eye on his movements. When I realized that his itinerary overlapped with Elliot, who the Federal Bureau of Investigation was pursuing, I knew what he was up to…."
"How did you find out their location?"
"When I was on the West Coast, I served as a psychology lecturer at the Federal Investigation Bureau Agent Training Academy for a while. Naturally, I have ways to obtain the pursuit status of important fugitives. As for Bruce's itinerary... he told me himself."
Constantine stared into Shiller's grey eyes, seemingly seeing the scene at Shiller's Tower of Thought a few days ago.
There was a knock on the door. A suited Shiller opened the door and looked at Bruce standing on his doorstep. He moved aside and said, "Come in."
Shiller walked Bruce towards the table, not looking back, and asked, "So you left Gotham?"
"Yes, I'm currently in Missouri conducting business at the Monsanto Company headquarters."