After driving for more than thirty kilometers, Hayden and Joseph arrived at Sea View Town.
Hayden who was sitting on the passenger seat had dried tear stains hanging at the corner of her eyes
and she had fallen into a deep sleep.
Joseph couldn’t bear to wake her up, but he also knew that they were running out of time and they
needed to settle the things here and go back as soon as possible. Therefore, after parking the car,
Joseph patted her on the shoulder.
“Hayden, here we are.”
Hayden opened her eyes. She stared at Joseph with her drowsy eyes for a while before she looked out
of the window as if she was in a trance like a dream.
The sun was shining so brightly outside that it almost burned one’s skin.
Hayden took two steps forward after getting out of the car. Then, she was covered in the shade, and as
soon as she looked up, she saw Joseph standing beside her with a black umbrella and asked her very
casually.
“Where do you want to go?”
She regained her consciousness and pointed to the grocery shop in front of her.
“I want to go there. Alayna asked me to contact the owner of the grocery shop when I reach here. She
said that it is the only shop in this town that has a public phone.”
Because of its landscape, Ningpo had never been affluent, especially Sea View Town. It was a poor
and remote place as if the economy there never improved since the last century, and the residents
there still practiced the living habit of the last century. In this town, it was common that fishermen
squatting in the sun at the entrance of the shop, smoking homemade cigarettes.
After introducing herself to the owner of the grocery shop, the owner quickly remembered that Hayden
was the woman she had spoken to before. He called his wife to watch the shop, and then took both
Hayden and Joseph to look for Dante Bruke.
“Dante lives by the sea. He is a bit strange as he doesn’t interact with anyone in our town.”
“Is that so? Why do you say he is weird?
Hayden followed the owner of the shop, curiously asking him about the designer Dante.
“He doesn’t want to live the good life in the city and come back to this poor place to suffer. Isn’t it weird
enough?”
Hearing her words, Hayden smiled, “Sir, many people are like that nowadays. It’s too noisy in the city,
so it’s quite good to go back to the countryside to live.”
“I don’t know about this, but Dante still did many weird things before. Two years ago, the mayor of our
town led us to develop a tourist resort by the sea, but he ruined the plan.”
“Ah? Why?”
“He said he didn’t want the tourists coming to the town and disturbing him, and he said the plan would
pollute the town.”
“Even the mayor can’t do anything with him?”
“Dante is educated and he is the only one in our town who has studied overseas. Most people in our
town listen to what he says, but we don’t understand much about the development of the tourist resort,
so we just follow him.”
Sea View Town was a remote place and it was isolated from the outside world, so Dante who had gone
overseas before was like an authority figure, and even the mayor of the town respected him.
However, Hayden frowned.
Wasn’t this Dante impeding the people of the town from improving their lives for his personal gain?
If tourism was developed in the town, the whole town would have a new look and its development
would be accelerated immediately.
After walking for almost two hours, Hayden’s legs and stomach were trembling before she heard the
owner of the shop speaking something.
“Here we are.”
The owner of the grocery shop pointed to a boarded-up house at the beach.
“Dante lives there. I won’t be going over there. If you two want to stay here overnight, you two can go
back to the town. If you two can’t find the way to the town, just call me using the shop telephone and I’ll
ask my daughter to come to pick you two up.”
“Okay, thanks boss.”
After thanking the owner of the shop, Hayden and Joseph both walked towards the unique house by
the sea, one after the other.
The beach was not developed at all. There was no fine soft sandy beach, and the scenery there was
not very nice. One could also smell the fishy smell of fish and shrimps in the sea breeze.
The blue and white boarded-up house was enclosed by a white fence and had three rows of wooden
racks with salted fish and some men’s clothes hanging out to dry.
A swarthy and bare-chested man was boiling water in the courtyard, using a pot set up in the open and
operating the simplest method of distillation.
It was so primitive.
Hayden and Joseph exchanged a glance and smiled as if they knew what each other was thinking.
“Excuse me, is this Mr. Bruke?”
Hayden stood at the fence gate and asked the man politely.
The man turned around and glanced at her. His eyes were cold and wary.
“Who are you two?”
“I am Alayna’s friend. She asked me to come and find you. I heard that you and Alayna are alumni of
St. York University, and you are her senior.”
“Alayna?”
The man stood up, wiped his hands, and walked towards the gate of the courtyard, “You’re the boss
that Alayna was talking about, who is from the Downey family?”
Hayden nodded her head and took out her business card, handing it over to the man.
The man didn’t reach out to take it. He was still looking cold. His swarthy face was like the bottom of a
pot, which was shining black. He looked at Hayden for a moment, before looking at Joseph.
“Then who is he?”
“I am her bodyguard.”
Before Hayden answered the man’s question, Joseph at her side said the sentence faintly, which
surprised Hayden a lot.
Hayden glared at him angrily.
“What bodyguard. You are not… Sorry, this is my assistant.”
Who would bring a bodyguard when she was trying to recruit a talented person from the countryside to
work for her? Wasn’t this clearly distrustful of the person?
Hayden felt that Joseph was trying to make her in trouble.
The man swept a glance at Joseph and unexpectedly pulled open the fence gate, “Come in.”
Looking at the man’s tanned shoulders, Hayden sighed in relief and followed him into his house.
“Mr. Bruke, I know you’ve been living here alone for a long time. It’s a pity that such a talented designer
wastes his time here, so I think that you can really think about working as a designer again in my
company.”
Dante didn’t even look at her. He sat down in front of his pot. The fire made his face look glowing, and
his voice could be heard mixing with the ‘crackle’ sound of the flames.
“I live alone. There’s no place to sit here. Make yourself comfortable.”
Then he never said anything more.
Hayden inwardly cried out in anguish, as Alayna didn’t lie to her, Dante was really a strange person and
she knew it would take her some effort to recruit him to work for her.
Seeing Dante’s ignoring them, Hayden was at her wits’ end. She stood in her place.
She couldn’t just stand there until the evening, could she?
As she was thinking, Joseph moved some steps forward, and his low voice rang out in the courtyard.
“Mr. Bruke, I think that it is not hard to ask people to help us to do something, as we only have to give
the person what he needs. This process requires communication between two parties. It’s pointless to
leave us here in the sun if you don’t tell us what you want.”
Hayden quickly tugged at Joseph’s arms, but what had been said cannot be unsaid, just like water that
had been poured out.
Dante turned around and looked at Joseph.
“Sorry about that…”
Hayden apologized to Dante quickly.
Dante turned around again, still with his back facing the two people.
“Your assistant is right. Giving the person what he needs is of paramount importance, but I don’t need
anything.”
“Then why do you make me come here?” Hayden was slightly angry.
“Do I make you come here?” Dante glanced at her and continued to comminute something in the pot, “I
remember what I told Alayna was asking her don’t come to find me, as I won’t go even you
come.”
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