"Why would I lie to you?" Alex said coldly. "The truth is that your father has been kidnapped, and you're also in danger. I'm responsible for protecting you. For the next three months, you have to do everything I tell you, or I can't guarantee that I can keep you safe."
"What? What's happened to my dad?" Heidi cried out. She started sobbing.
He had been told to keep what had happened to Heidi's father a secret, but after some careful consideration, he decided to tell her everything. He didn't want her to jump to any wrong conclusions.
He felt that he owed Heidi something and was therefore willing to protect her. However, he wasn't going to get involved in any of her adolescent issues or dramas. As long as she cooperated with him, everything would be fine.
Alex's train of thought was interrupted by his phone ringing.
He answered it and the voice on the other end said, "Mr. Ambrose, what you said just now is breaking the terms of our agreement. You can't tell Heidi the truth."
Although the words were spoken very politely, they annoyed Alex very much.
"Fine. What do you want me to do? You can rescind our agreement immediately, and I'll leave Oak Ridge high school right now," Alex said impatiently.
"No, Mr. Ambrose. I'm sorry. You misunderstand me. Please continue."
As Alex ended the call, Heidi watched him with wide eyes.
"What's going on?" Heidi asked. She wondered, "What's happened to Mr. Ambrose? Is he finally admitting that he's attracted to me?"
"What are you doing, I'm not—" Heidi wanted to reject him but her heart wasn't in it. Instead, she felt really happy.
Heidi really was a very attractive young lady. However, Alex didn't have any romantic thoughts toward her at all. At that moment, all he felt was a trace of anger. The people he was working for had obviously planted a hidden recording device on Heidi and were monitoring everything they said.
He was convinced that he was right. How else could they have known so quickly what he had said to Heidi? It was obvious that they had heard the conversation between them.
After ending the call, he checked Heidi's body for the monitoring device. As he searched her, he thought about how wrong they were not to want to tell Heidi the truth. Lying to her was certain to cause him problems. How could he persuade her to follow his orders if she didn't know what was going on? And how could he explain what he was doing to everyone else?
"Just do your duty", he told himself, "Don't worry about anything else."
Heidi was standing in front of Alex with a glow on her cheeks and adoration in her eyes. She couldn't believe how handsome he was.
Alex continued to search her dispassionately. After a few seconds, he saw something and he quickly reached toward her chest, grabbed a pendant from around her neck, and slammed it onto the ground. The monitoring device instantly stopped working.
When he pulled the pendant off her, Heidi's first instinct was to try to dodge out of his way but he acted too quickly for her to avoid him.
Shocked, her heart thumped and she refused to look at him.
"Tell me how my father got kidnapped. Who kidnapped him?" Heidi demanded, still avoiding any eye contact with him.
She knew that her father was at the forefront of cutting-edge biotechnology research, but she didn't know if that was related to how distantly he seemed to be behaving lately. She was desperate to know what had happened.
Alex shook his head. He wasn't completely clear about the answers himself, but he was also concerned about how much he should tell her.
All he knew was that he was there to protect Heidi. He didn't feel that he needed to know anymore.
Heidi looked down at the pendant. It was still very new and she remembered that her aunt had given it to her at her father's laboratory.
She had no idea that everything she did was being watched.
"Go back to your class," Alex ordered her sternly.
"Okay," Heidi agreed after taking a long breath. She would be happy to get back to class and stop thinking about everything that was happening.
**
Outside the door of Class 6, Billy was waiting for their next act of rebellion.
Next to teach the class was home economics teacher, Lynne Bowen. When she arrived at the classroom door, she found several teachers waiting for her, including Billy, the teaching director. Lynne had a very low opinion of Billy. She had once spent a night with him and hoped for more but he rejected her. She quickly learned that he was a womanizer.
Afterward, Billy had made the excuse to her that he was drunk and regretted what had happened, but Lynne couldn't forget that night.
She nodded to him and the other teachers out of politeness as she walked past them.
Billy stopped her and said smugly, "Miss Bowen, I don't think you should go into your classroom. The students are in an uproar. They're planning to hold some kind of strike to protest their dissatisfaction with Alex."
"Yes, we all heard about it so we came here to help deal with it," one of the other teachers agreed.
The teachers all pretended to be concerned, but Lynne was disgusted. She knew that Billy and the others were all just there to entertain themselves.
She smiled and pushed her way through to the classroom, determined to face whatever was waiting for her inside.
"Hey, wait. It will definitely kick off soon. What will happen to Alex then?" Leonard said. He didn't like Alex and was enjoying the drama.
Billy despised Alex. He said, "I don't understand how he got this job. He must know someone on the school board. Not only is he the head teacher of Class 6, but he's also the new PE teacher. He's a weakling, how can he be qualified to teach PE?"
He still based his impression of Alex on when he knew him as a poor student back in New York. He had no idea that Alex's pitiful situation had been forced on him by his family as part of his poverty training. Billy just assumed that he was better than Alex in every way.