Chapter 505 I’m Out
Ever since the day Raymond returned from the park, he had been in constant fear as he kept messaging Mike to make sure that everything was alright, fearing that they might find out Mike was involved.
With a cigarette in his mouth, Mike had been perusing the messages he received from Raymond. It was from asking politely to texts with curses in the end, which only made him smile at this. After noticing that Raymond’s message was, ‘I’ll drag you down with me,’ Mike then replied with a, ‘10.00AM. Cafe Solace.’
Raymond had been waiting for him at the cafe since 9.00AM. These few days, he found himself not having any appetite and staring out into space often. When Mike arrived, he had already finished two pots of tea.
“What is the meaning of this? Are you thinking of burning the bridge now?”
Mike had barely sat down when Raymond slammed the table using his hands, shaking the pottery. Without panicking, Mike then poured a cup of tea and sipped from it leisurely.
“Do you think that I wanted to meet you for tea?”
Raymond’s veins were about to pop out of his head.
“Raymond.” Putting the teacup down, Mike then smiled somewhat devilishly before remarking snarkily, “In the beginning, it was you who actively sought our help in setting up Citron Apparel all because you wanted the donation. In the end, you didn’t get the donation either due to you losing Jackie. After that, as a show of apology, you promised to help us kidnap Tina…”
Mike intentionally said the final sentence slowly, scaring Raymond and making him stand up. Wishing that Mike could shut his mouth, Raymond finally relaxed a bit upon ensuring that nobody was near them.
Sneering, Mike then continued, “So tell me, how is this me burning my bridges?”
His words made Raymond annoyed as he was angry. “Whatever! I’m not doing this anymore! I’m out!”
“Are you sure?”
“What am I not sure about? I was going to use this donation to make the orphanage be selected as the example for the province. This opportunity would’ve propelled me to the next level. Now, excluding that next level, I’m about to go into the next life! You guys are just gangsters!”
As Raymond grew angrier, Mike frowned upon listening to his words as he recalled unwanted memories.
Before he was thirty years old, Mike had been living like a gangster and more as he would be even more violent and bloodthirsty. This was why even though he had an ordinary face, the special aura he emanated differentiated him from normal people.
“Alright.” He then slowly continued, “If you’re sure about stopping this, we won’t force you either. You can go back and release that brat now. From now on, the things that’ll happen will not concern you, but the donation that we’ve agreed on will be revoked too.”
“Are you sure?”
Raymond had a hard time believing that things could be solved this easily.
Mike smiled.
“Of course. But, if you dare say even a word to anyone about our dealings, this is what you’ll end up as.” While saying that, Mike had raised the teacup in his hand up high. Letting it go, a loud shatter was heard as it reverberated around their ears, making Raymond tremble in fear.
“I won’t. I won’t say anything.”
Trembling, Raymond had almost curled up into a ball.
Still smiling, Mike then shook his jaw. “Go then. What are you waiting for?”
He had just finished his sentence before Raymond ran out.
As Mike slowly poured himself a new cup, he drank from it while observing the white car that was following Raymond from before with an inexplicable expression.
After finishing that cup of tea, he set the money for the tea and the broken cup before walking out leisurely.
Driving away from the cafe, Raymond made a beeline toward the south side of the city as he accelerated at breakneck speed without even noticing the car tailing him.
Raymond’s old house was there as there was another ancestral home in the city, which Tina was being kept in.
He had asked the relatives there to help send food to the house everyday, stating that a daughter’s friend had gone crazy and suffered from a delusional disorder. So, he could only place her there under extreme circumstances. As the people there were all considered naive, they did not suspect much either.
When he arrived back at the old house, the woman from next door had just sent lunch over and greeted him passionately.
“Are you here to see the child, Raymond? I think that the child is quite sick as I always heard her saying that she is kidnapped everyday I sent food to her. How about you bring her to the city to get looked at?”
Wiping the sweat from his head, Raymond then smiled and nodded. “I was just about to bring her back. Her father has found a hospital to treat her.”
“That’s good.”
Seeing the woman enter her house, he took out the keys to open the door. Inside, Tina had heard the commotion for a while now, so she took a rolling pin from the kitchen and hid behind the door before beating the person that came in, making him plead for mercy under this sudden assault.
“Stop hitting me, I beg of you. I’m here to let you out.”
However, why would Tina listen to him? After beating Raymond senseless, she took the chance and ran outside, but she had not predicted the neighbors to congregate and blocked off the stairwell to stop her from leaving.
Tina panicked and was on the verge of crying when she yanked a woman’s arm and begged. “I was captured by this man here. I was kidnapped. Please, help me call the police. My father will come save me.”
That woman looked at her pitifully, obviously treating her words as gibberish, as they forcefully dragged her inside the house.
“Mr. Newman’s going to bring you to the hospital to get treated now, so just stay quiet and don’t run around. No one is kidnapping you.”
At that moment, Tina felt what despair was as all the words were stuck in her throat since only more and more people dragged her back to where Raymond was.
Even though Raymond, who had crawled back up, was livid, he could only touch the bump on his head and say gently, “I’m going to send you back to Melrose. Send you back home.”
He emphasized the last four words.
Tina did not believe this at all, as which kidnapper would send her back after trying so hard to kidnap her? So, she kicked the man’s crown jewels.
Rolling on the floor in pain, he could not hold it in anymore and raised his hand, about to slap Tina, but before he could manage to do that, a sound that he feared reached his ears.
It was the siren of a police car.
“What happened? Why would there be a police car here?”
As the crowd started to feel uneasy, Raymond’s face was completely pale. Looking left and right, he ran straight for the staircase. Since the traditionally designed houses had staircases on the outside, he had already climbed onto the outer railing of the staircase before anyone could react and jumped while closing his eyes.
“Ahhhh!” There was a terrible shout.
After finally breaking free from the crowd, Tina ran to the staircase only to see that Raymond had limped away and drove off.
“Tina.”
All of a sudden, she thought he heard Alexander’s voice. As she turned around, she could see a tall silhouette standing in the middle of the staircase as the backlight made him seem a bit unreal. Maybe such a vision was caused by the tears welling up within her.
Tina trembled as she found herself finally having the courage to relax a bit after tensing up for ten odd days. “Daddy.”
Running right into his embrace, she felt a sense of safety and happiness she had never felt before enveloping her.
