Chapter 486

“Ah…”

A girl’s scream came from the changing room. A young man said “sorry” and closed the changing room door again.

“This is the last shop here.”

Several young men gathered together. They had not only searched all the shops but also the fire escapes, toilets, and all sorts of corners where people could possibly enter.

There wasn’t a single place in the entire mall they hadn’t found yet.

After searching everywhere, Lisa was still not found. This meant that Lisa was no longer in the mall.

After Ponda learned of this news, he thanked everyone and drove the maid back home in his car.

If Lisa wasn’t in the mall, could she have already gone home?

The house was empty. Besides another live-in maid, Lisa had not returned.

Ponda became even more agitated and anxious because Lisa was also heavily pregnant. The maid reminded him, “Could Madam have gone to the hospital?”

Ponda quickly ran to all the nearby hospitals but still couldn’t find Lisa.

Lisa seemed to have vanished into thin air, completely disappeared.

She had no relatives, no family here. Ponda didn’t know where else she could have gone.

The increasingly dim sky, the dark alleys on the streets, the small river by the roadside, the vast sea in the distance—every place seemed to have opened its greedy mouth like a demon that could devour human life.

Ponda could no longer continue to imagine. He could only pray to God to bless his wife’s safety while driving around the streets aimlessly.

He only had one question now: where on earth was Lisa?

“I thought you were dead.”

Mr. Hoff sat on the sofa, looking at the lady sitting opposite him. “I arranged for people to find you. They said you were missing, that you had an accident. In the end, those people all died themselves.”

“I always thought you were dead, Lisa.”

Mr. Hoff held his wine glass, swirling it in his hand. He seemed to be reminiscing about their past.

“You were one of my favorite girls. We spent many interesting nights together. And do you think I’m a bad person?”

Mr. Hoff took a sip from his wine glass. “They always end up hurting those girls, or making them disappear, vanish.”

“But you see, have I ever done that?”

“Your dishonesty and avoidance have hurt me very much, Lisa.”

Lisa remained silent.

In the afternoon, when the maid had gone to the restroom to wash the fruit, a strange man had suddenly sat down opposite her.

“I’m sorry, sir, this spot is taken. She’ll be right back,” Lisa had reminded the other party with a smile. He shouldn’t have been sitting here.

But the gentleman opposite seemed to have no intention of leaving, at least not immediately.

He took off his sunglasses and looked at Lisa sitting opposite him. “Lisa?”

Lisa’s expression suddenly became alert. She stared at the man’s face for a long while, but couldn’t find such a person in her mind at all.

She shook her head and said, “I don’t know you.”

The man’s smile was actually quite gentle, with a harmless look. “We’ve actually met before, but you probably wouldn’t have noticed me, because every time you and that gentleman were playing games in the room, I was working outside.”

Lisa became a little restless. She stood up, holding her belly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I’m not feeling well, I have to leave.”

The man did not stop her, but just smiled and said, “You wouldn’t want your husband to know that you used to be a high-class call girl, would you?”

“A senior special agent of the Bureau of Hazardous Materials with a high-class call girl for a wife. Do you think he would become the laughingstock of the law enforcement bureau?”

The man took out a piece of deerskin and wiped his sunglasses. Lisa, who had already stood up and even taken a step, sat back down again.

“What do you want?” she asked, biting her lip.

She once thought it would be easy to deal with an inexperienced young man. She had never thought that sometimes, sincerity could make people retreat more than lies.

She had lost to Ponda, who was full of sincere feelings for her. When Ponda had placed $50,000 in front of her, she had fallen.

So she didn’t want this man, the man she loved, to have any accidents, nor did she want him to become a laughingstock.

She thought everything would be fine, but she didn’t expect this day to come so soon.

She had considered before that if Ponda was promoted too quickly, would it attract the attention of the Bay Area and let them discover her?

She was even secretly happy that Ponda had not been promoted, at least she had kept her distance from the Bay Area.

But now it seemed that hiding and the like were meaningless.

“Mr. Hoff wants to see you,” the man extended an invitation.

Hearing this name again, Lisa’s body trembled slightly.

She was very familiar with this man. He was glamorous on the surface, but his bones were filled with a foul stench and disgust.

Before, she had no choice. At Red High Heels, it was either obey or die. She didn’t want to die, so she could only obey.

But now, she was no longer the person she used to be. She didn’t want to continue that kind of life.

“Can I… not go?”

The man shrugged indifferently. “That’s your right, but soon everyone will know that Lisa is married and also has a husband from the Bureau of Hazardous Materials.”

“Fuck!” Lisa cursed. She didn’t hesitate anymore. “Let’s go, let’s go and see Mr. Hoff.”

There was still some feistiness in her bones. Once she had made a decision, she would not regret it.

She went to the parking lot with the man, got into his car, and returned to the familiar Bay Area, to the familiar villa.

This place hadn’t changed much from before. She was so familiar with it that it was as if she could find the door with her eyes closed.

Someone wanted to search her, but she refused. The man also waived the search procedure for her and called it her “privilege.”

A dozen minutes later, here, she saw her old client, Mr. Hoff.

…

Mr. Hoff kept staring at her. Perhaps because she was being stared at and had to say something, or perhaps because she felt a little uncomfortable with the current situation, she spoke, “The past life is over, Mr. Hoff.”

“I am married now and no longer do this kind of work. Please don’t make things difficult for me.”

Mr. Hoff leaned back on the sofa. He looked prim and proper on the surface, and even gentlemanly, but the strong desire hidden in his eyes was like a flame that made people feel uneasy.

He licked his lips. “You owe me one.”

Lisa was taken aback for a moment, not reacting. “When did I owe you one?”

Mr. Hoff straightened up. As he put his wine glass back on the coffee table, he leaned forward, full of aggression and aggression. “The last time, you were already on your way, but you disappeared halfway, and I had already paid for you.”

“You owe me one, Lisa.”

“After this one time, I will never contact you again, nor will I disturb your life.”

The last time…

Lisa thought of that time. She had been caught, her head held down, and was about to be sent to Mr. Hoff’s villa, but Lance had saved her and had hidden her.

In a sense, what Mr. Hoff said was not entirely wrong.

He had paid the money, called for the service, but the person had not come.

Lisa responded, “But they called other girls for you.”

The smile on Mr. Hoff’s face diminished a lot. “But what I wanted was you!”

“Lisa, is it so hard to agree?”

Lisa stroked her protruding belly and insisted again, “I’m already pregnant.”

Mr. Hoff looked at her, the smile on his face gradually fading. “My patience is limited. You know, to destroy you, your husband, and your child is not a complicated matter for me.”

“Before my patience runs out, you’d better make a decision.”

“Although I may not be very qualified to say this, I hope you will think about it seriously and then cherish your current life…”

He looked at Lisa with a condescending gaze, as if he were looking at a toy in his hand.

He would not respect the toy or the toy’s opinion. These words were actually all a way of playing.

When you have a toy in your hand, you might arrange some identities for this toy and also arrange some plots.

Just like now, these plots, this development, would make him excited. He felt that he was as strong as a steel pipe right now.

Lisa looked at him. After a moment of silence, she said, “If you insist on sending me to the basement today, it will definitely not be a living me, only my corpse.”

Her voice was not loud when she said these words, but it gave people a very firm feeling.

Mr. Hoff was finally provoked, just like last time.

Last time, their breach of trust had made him feel as if he had been made a fool of. And this time, Lisa’s attitude made him feel that he had been looked down upon.

He stood up, walked to Lisa’s side, and slapped her, sending her sprawling onto the sofa. “We have plenty of time to fix your little bad temper, Lisa!”

“I will make you beg me to enter your body, I promise!”

The sky grew darker, gradually turning completely black. Lance, at the invitation of Councilman Williams, came to his estate for dinner.

Councilman Williams was very interested in everything that had happened in New Golden City. Of course, as a mature and smart politician, he knew what he could ask and what he shouldn’t.

When he heard that Lance also knew two senators, as well as some political and business figures, the envy on his face was undisguised.

The influence of senators on Federation politics was too great.

Many people believed that the president was the supreme ruler of the Federation, but in fact, the supreme ruler was never a single person, but a group of people.

When they gathered together, they were called “Congress.”

Congress could do almost everything the president could do, and even things the president couldn’t do, Congress could.

There were only so many senators in the entire Federation, and they all had their own circles. Any one of them had the potential to change the political landscape of the Federation.

After all, for this peculiar country of the Federation, public relations, lobbying, and the transfer of benefits were all allowed to exist legally in the political arena in various forms.

The more senators one knew, the greater their potential political influence.

Councilman Williams only knew four or five senators himself. He didn’t expect Lance to be almost catching up to him.

The only difference was that he could still contact these senators, while Lance had just met them.

Listening to Lance talk about what he had done in New Golden City, listening to some inside information about the Liji Group’s board of directors and shareholding changes that were not known outside, Councilman Williams and his two sons all showed looks of amazement.

Yes, Arthur was also at the dinner table today. His mother had persuaded Councilman Williams with her nimble tongue to let Arthur have a chance to grow at the appropriate time.

Arthur would not compete with James for anything, but he couldn’t be left with nothing either.

Councilman Williams, who loved his wife dearly, had been persuaded by that nimble tongue, so today Arthur was rarely able to sit at the dinner table.

“An amazing operation, but it fits their performance.”

“$40,000,000 in fines, changes in shareholding—every participant in every link ate until they were full.”

“Sometimes I think your luck is really good. The Liji Group has done these things not just once, but no one has ever tried to fight back, and no one has been able to maximize the benefits of fighting back.”

“You did it. You made them take a fall they had never taken before, a fall that left them black and blue.”

“Among all the things you have gained, the least valuable is, on the contrary, the $4,000,000 you wanted at the beginning.”

The least valuable was already worth $4,000,000. So how much were the valuable ones worth?

No one knew, but at the very least, they would be worth more than $4,000,000. Who knows, maybe someday they could be worth tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions.

Lance also felt that the whole thing was very dramatic. “Actually, at the beginning, I just wanted to get justice, to get back what they owed me with interest.”

“But you know, when we are pushing a stone ball down a mountain, at first it might be us pushing the ball, but soon it will become the ball pulling us along.”

Councilman Williams found it hard not to agree with his point of view. The two chatted for a while, and naturally, they talked about the issue of stationing troops.

“This time I heard a very special piece of news over there. They said the navy is going to set up a military base here in Golden Port.”

When Lance revealed this news, Councilman Williams looked at him with a very surprised look.

Not surprised at the news he had revealed, but surprised that Lance was actually able to hear this level of news.

Even within the Social-Democratic Party, at the senior level, not many people probably knew this news.

The reason Councilman Williams could know this news was because the Social-Democratic Party had nominated him as the next mayoral candidate for Golden Port and would do their best to push him into office.

In other words, he would have a direct connection with the military’s stationing plan, so he would definitely know about this.

But others, like Lance, who could not touch this level of things, could also hear about it. It could only be said that he had indeed come into contact with some remarkable people in New Golden City.

“Yes, the external changes are starting to put pressure on us internally. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for you, for me, for everyone.”

Stationing troops has its benefits, and not stationing them also has its benefits. Now that the external situation is becoming more and more chaotic, the benefits of stationing troops outweigh the disadvantages.

The two chatted for a while more. The butler knocked on the door, interrupting their conversation, saying that there was a phone call for Lance.

When he returned after answering the phone, Councilman Williams felt a little curious. “Is it something urgent?”

Lance nodded. “A friend’s wife is missing. They haven’t found her yet. They plan to expand the search.”

“You know, for my men to enter other districts, they definitely have to communicate with them first to avoid misunderstandings.”

Generally speaking, the disappearance of such a small character would not be on Councilman Williams’s mind. He just asked casually, “Have you called the police?”

“Should I have a word with Hunter?”

It sounded a little ridiculous, this statement, but in fact, Councilman Williams’s suggestion was indeed a good one.

People are not necessarily willing to have contact with gangs. Most people are still unwilling to have contact with gangs. So even if there are some eyewitnesses, when it’s the gangs who are questioning them, they will selectively forget.

Lance hesitated for a moment and agreed to his proposal. “Then I’ll have to trouble you. I’ll have someone send the description over.”

Councilman Williams became a little interested in this missing person case. He asked for some details in detail. For Councilman Williams, a person whose interests were highly tied to Lance’s, some secrets were no longer secrets.

He briefly explained Lisa’s situation, including Ponda’s situation. After listening to Lance give a general account, Councilman Williams suddenly asked, “Is there a possibility that she is in the Bay Area?”

“Her husband is a special agent of the Bureau of Hazardous Materials, and he was once considered your subordinate. With these two layers of protection in Golden Port, no one would dare to harm her casually.”

“Except for the Bay Area.”

“If you can’t find her in other places, you might as well try to find her in the Bay Area based on some previous clues. You might have some unexpected gains.”

“But there is one point: her previous work might be exposed. I don’t know if her husband will choose to forgive and continue to accept her, or…”

Councilman Williams chuckled lightly. “As people get older, they suddenly and inexplicably become interested in these small matters of family ethics. If there are any subsequent developments, I hope you won’t be stingy in sharing them with me…”

After returning, Lance took out the notebook they had found during the renovation of Red High Heels. In the notebook, he found multiple work logs related to Lisa. Besides a few clients who had only called once, the one who had called her the most was that Mr. Hoff.

He got Mr. Hoff’s phone number through some connections. Soon the call was connected, but it wasn’t Mr. Hoff who answered; it was his butler.

“I want to speak with Mr. Hoff,” Lance stated his purpose directly.

His butler gave a refusal. “Mr. Hoff is currently at work. He does not have time to take your call. You can leave your name, contact information, and the purpose of your call. I will inform him after he finishes his work.”

Inexplicably, Lance just had a feeling that Lisa was there.

(End of chapter)

The novel has already been fully translated up to the last updated chapter. You can access it on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair