They two had been talking until noon when at long last, the man stood up and left. But Steven did not
move. He remained glued to the same spot, looking out the window, the same way he had done while
waiting for the man. He did not look away from the window, even after seeing the man drive off.
Mist enshrouded the glass, making it difficult to see through what he was thinking. He switched his
eyes back to the cup of coffee on the opposite side of the table, where the man had sat. He stared at it
intently, as if it gave him secret clues to what preoccupied his mind.
"What I was owed... will be taken back!" He gritted his teeth, a cold haze looming in his eyes.
It took him quite a while to calm down his nerves. He took out his cellphone and called Molly. The call
was rejected almost immediately, about the second or third rings. While he was wondering, a short text
message came through,"It's not convenient to talk. Dad, what's up?"
Composing a short message, Steven replied,"Do you have time to came back?"
As she tried to guess why Steven wanted to see her, Molly frowned, but she instinctively thought there
was something important, so she replied to his short message saying yes.
With exaggerated politeness, Brian was cutting steak genteelly. He only stole a furtive glance at Molly,
without taking too much notice of what she was doing. Even after Molly was done with texting and put
back the cellphone, Brian did not ask anything. He was waiting for her to tell him.
But for quite a while, Molly hesitated before she pulled out the cellphone again and typed something
that she passed to Brian,"My father told me to go back home. At once!"
"No!" Brian refused without thinking.
Molly frowned and typed in a hurry,"Why?"
"No reason!" Brian did not want to explain at all,"Just take my word for it. If I say no, then that's it!"
Hearing that, Molly glared at Brian in anger. She had not been feeling good because of the loss of her
voice. As soon as she saw the short message from her father, she wanted to fly back home out of a
kind of instinctive dependence. Although the home could not always comfort her, she still wanted to go
back.
Seeing that Molly was angry, Brian put down the knife and fork in his hands, picked up the napkin and
wiped his mouth elegantly before he said indifferently,"Edgar will find it out if you go back home!"
Slightly astonished Molly was about to say something. But when she opened her mouth, a sharp pain
shot through her vocal cords, harshly reminding her of the problem with her voice. So taking out her
cellphone once more, she hastily composed a response to Brian,"I won't go to meet him! I will keep the
promise I made on that day. I will try to do my part well."
After glancing at what she had typed, Brian rather said curtly,"This has nothing to do with that!" He then
picked up the fork before asking,"Do you know that Edgar has placed informers in your neighborhood?"
Obviously, Molly did not understand what Brian was talking about. The blank look on her face said it all.
However, Brian was not planning to offer any further explanations. He just said coldly,"Your dear Edgar
is not at all that simple. In my opinion, he is not as innocent as you think."
Molly was shell shocked. For a moment, she couldn't even find a response to Brian. Instead, her first
instinct told her there was something about to happen. She did not know what and why exactly, but she
had no ifs, ands or buts about the pre-apprehension.
In the end, Brian did not allow Molly to go back home. Molly had no choice but to send a new short
message to Steven, merely stating that Brian forbade her to go anywhere.
It didn't surprise Steven to receive such terse, clipped response from Molly. To the contrary, he was in
fact relieved. Strangely so. Noticing the expression on Steven's face, Sharon too had an inkling that
something was about to happen.
"Where did you go early in the morning?" sounding as casual as possible, Sharon asked.
"I went to meet Justin Yan!" Steven answered frankly.
As soon as she heard the name, Sharon frowned, nervously clenching her fists. She had had great
antipathy towards every member of the Yan Family, ever since she had distanced herself from them.
It distressed Steven to see her like that. He held her into his arms and comforted,"Let go of the past!
We're together, living well now, aren't we?"
Almost weighed down with melancholy, Sharon did not answer. In the first place, their grim living
conditions had contributed to her ailing health. True she had received the best possible medical care,
courtesy of the Dragon Empire Group and their excellent private hospital. But she had not fully
recovered yet. Her face was still pale, showing imperfect health, despite all the progress she was
making.
"First, it was Rory. And now Justin too is coming. What indeed do they want?" Sharon asked, her voice
quivering, and resentment written in her eyes.
Tightening his embrace around her, Steven said slowly,"You don't need to worry about them. There's
nothing they can do as long as I take a firm stand on my own. However....."
Steven swallowed hard, choking back the words on the tip of his tongue. Sharon looked up at him,
waiting for him to continue.
"Hmmm!" Stopping to catch a deep breath, which he let out in one sigh, Steven said,"I'm wondering
why Justin would secretly come to A City, sneaking in under the rudder. That's very odd. Considering
his current position, it's highly irregular and strange."
As a political commissar and vice president at the time, his office required highly documented and
publicized itinerary. Why did he come here so covertly?
Sharon didn't answer. The pitiable memories swirling in her head tormented her soul like a monster.
Those images from the past hurt like pinpoint needles, piercing deep into her heart. It made her cringe
as if she'd pull her knees up, fold them around her chest, wrap her arms around the shins and curl up
into a wailing ball. If she were to cry, she'd squeeze shut her eyes and pour out a tempestuous flood of
tears. She'd let her head flop to her folded knees and weep until her red, puffy eyes throbbed with pain.
When he sensed that something was wrong with Sharon, Steven hastily said,"Well, we don't need to
worry about them any more. After all, now I have nothing with which they can threaten or blackmail me.
Molly is fairly safe under Mr. Brian Long's watch. At least she is safe, in spite of a few difficulties she
might be facing here and there. But basically, they can't harm her for as long as she's under Mr. Brian
Long's care."
Still lost in melancholy, Sharon took a moment before reacting, and even then, her mood didn't lift. After
quite a while, she said sadly,"Steven, thank you. Thank you for treating Molly as your own daughter..."
"Why do you say that?" Steven said somewhat angrily,"Molly is my daughter!"
Sharon dropped the topic. She knew clearly how well Steven treated her. For so many years, he had
taken a lot of bullets for her but never had he complained nor wavered in his commitment. For such a
good man, why didn't she make some sacrifice?
"I want to meet Rory Yan!" said Sharon all of a sudden.
"No!" Flatly, Steven refused,"Why put yourself in harm's way again?"
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