2️⃣7️⃣
Mason couldn't help but raise his brows slightly, suddenly feeling impulsive deep down inside. It was a bizarre sensation because it had been years since he last felt something like that.
He thought he had already successfully banished those emotions which could take a toll on his rational thinking. Little did he know, this young woman just made him experience something he had not felt for a very long time.
"My instinct told me so," Janet remarked, a nonchalant expression on her face.
"Well, my instinct tells me we should be together." Mason squinted his long and slanted eyes as he curled the corners of his lips into a crafty smile.
Staring at the man who rarely smiled, Janet thought of the thing she had been wanting to tell him. As he looked very attractive when he smiled, she wanted to stop him from smiling too often; otherwise he might just make girls fall in love with him, yet at the same time, break their hearts by not dating any of them.
"Young Master Mason!" Sean approached him and whispered something into his ear.
Realizing that she shouldn't disturb them, Janet left after saying goodbye. Looking at her back which was slowly vanishing into the darkness, the gentleness in Mason's eyes disappeared in an instant when he asked Sean, "Did you find anything?"
Sean answered in a respectful tone, "Young Master Mason, Miss Janet was attacked near her house by a group of assassins from M Group in Sandfort City."
"M Group?" Mason narrowed his long eyes slightly in contemplation. Since he had never heard of it, he supposed it was a newly established organization which must be desperate to do anything for money. "Where are those assassins now?"
Sean answered him truthfully, "We've captured and locked them up in Mason Vault."
Upon hearing, Mason parted his lips slightly and instructed, "Let's go."
…
It was a chilly night that evening. Suddenly, the door of one of the underground cells in Mason Vault was kicked open with an ear-splitting sound, echoing throughout the entire underground space. The black trench coat Mason was wearing fitted his tall and muscular body well and gave him an icy and bleak aura that made him look like the Grim Reaper.
"Young Master Mason!" The assassins' eyes lit up with hope the moment they recognized the pair of mysterious and cold eyes. "Young Master Mason, please help us!"
"Help you?" Mason drawled, then narrowed his eyes into slits and looked at them murderously. "Why should I help you?"
"Young Master Mason, we've realized our mistake! Please let us go! We were only temporarily tempted by the money!"
Looking down, the crooked smile on Mason's face vanished as he questioned them, "You guys were paid?"
"Yes. Young Master Mason, please forgive us because we didn't really cause any harm to that girl and we promise we won't do anything against the law in future!"
Mason sneered in response. "Which hand did you guys use to fire the gun at her?"
"What?" The assassins were confused by his question.
"I asked, which hand did you use to fire the gun?"
"I used my l-left hand." What came next was an agonized squeal—the assassin had one of his hands chopped off.
Mason sized them up, his eyes brimming with menace. "Tell me, who paid you guys to do the job?"
The assassins stared at Mason dazedly with wide eyes. Stroking the gun tied to his waist threateningly, Mason snapped, "What's wrong? Are none of you going to say anything?"
"I'll talk! I'll tell you!" One of them caved in and came clean. "It's a girl with the last name Lewis and she is studying at Star High School. She paid us five hundred thousand to kill that girl."
Mason narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Sean, go and investigate that Lewis girl."
"Yes, sir!" Sean nodded in acknowledgement.
Looking at the group of assassins, Sean asked cautiously, "Young Master Mason, how should I deal with them after we've got what we need?"
With a cold smirk, Mason responded, "Keep them here for some time and make sure they get the best 'treatment'."
Sean was speechless. Casting a glance at the bunch of assassins, he couldn't help thinking it was better being killed straight away rather than being kept alive at Mason Vault.
2️⃣8️⃣
Janet contacted the organization as soon as she got back home and within the same night, the organization managed to trace the owner of the gun through the bullet casing. She soon received a message from someone within said organization.
Lara: 'Janet, we've found something.'
Janet: 'Who is it?'
Lara: 'It belongs to a newly established organization which does jobs for money.'
Janet: 'Where are they now?'
Lara: 'We just tracked their location to an underground cellar named 'Mason Vault'.'
Janet: 'Thanks.'
After closing the conversation window on her laptop, Janet went to her wardrobe and took out a long black dress with a nametag 'Shadow 1' embroidered at the chest area. Opening the window, she vaulted through and landed on the ground. The hem of her long back dress formed a beautiful arc, swaying along with her movements.
It wasn't long before the security guards at Mason Vault slumped to the ground, unconscious. Janet made her way to the group of assassins and they were so horrified to see her that they immediately cowered in fear. "Why are you here?" they gasped.
Flashing them a crooked smile, Janet countered, "Why can't I be here?"
"Please spare our lives; we'll tell you everything. Don't you want to know who hired us? I'll tell you everything right now."
Janet switched on the voice recorder on her phone and one of them started confessing, "A girl with the surname Lewis hired us to kill you for five hundred thousand."
They were first paid half of that amount as a deposit and would only be paid in full if they got the job done. At first, they thought they would be able to make a quick and easy buck out of it thinking that the target was just a young girl. However, they clearly had not expected the girl to be physically trained and stronger than any of them.
Just like that, Janet knew that it was Jennifer Lewis, the campus belle of Star High School, who hired the assassins to kill her. "What were her orders?" Janet asked.
The assassin who confessed just now stammered, "She wanted us to snap some of your nudes and post it online so that you would leave Star High School out of embarrassment. If we didn't manage to do that, she wanted us to finish you off."
Upon hearing, Janet narrowed her eyes in confusion. Since she didn't really have a huge fallout with Jennifer, she couldn't believe Jennifer really wanted her killed over something so trivial. Tsk, tsk, tsk. How vicious that woman is! She always thought that she could stay out of trouble as long as she kept to herself and didn't offend anyone. However, there were still people out there who resented her and wanted to punish her. "How did she pay you the deposit?" Janet queried.
The man answered in a quivering voice, "She transferred the money to my bank account."
"Give me your name and your identity card number," Janet demanded.
Hesitating, the man read aloud his details at such a slow speed that by the time he finished, Janet had managed to remember all the numbers by heart.
"You aren't allowed to tell anyone about what happened today."
"Yes! Of course!" The man nodded his head vigorously.
Just as Janet took two steps out of their cell, the horrifying images of how she was nearly killed by them came back to haunt her again. Spurred by the terrifying memory, she turned around and made up her mind to take her revenge. Soon, what remained in the underground cellar was the agonizing squeals and painful shrieks that echoed in the air.
Meanwhile at Lowry Residence, the branches and the leaves rustled in the gentle breeze as the temperature dipped, a hint of early spring in the air. The moon was obscured in the overcast sky and could only be seen vaguely. In the darkness, a man with a tall and slender body was sitting leisurely on a sofa made from genuine leather.
A man in black dashed to him hurriedly and said, "Young Master Mason, all our men guarding Mason Vault were left unconscious and that group of assassins have died of excessive bleeding."
The moon was starting to find its way out of the clouds and managed to illuminate the man's face. He was extremely attractive, a charming but wicked smile playing on his lips. "Really?" He curled his luscious lips upward into a sly smile and remarked, "Seems like they have plenty of enemies."
Who could have broken into Mason Vault and killed those guys? What could have been the motive?
"Can we see the person's face from the CCTV footage?" Mason asked.
The man in black answered him straightforwardly, "One of our men checked the footage and found that someone hacked into the system and deleted all the records."
"The only thing they managed to see is that those guys all died a horrible death. The tendons in their legs were removed and they all died from excessive bleeding."
Mason narrowed his eyes contemplatively as his face turned serious. Could it be Shadow 1? It was a widely known fact that every time Shadow 1 was out on a mission, his or her opponents would end up either being handicapped or killed.
To top it off, Shadow 1 had a preference for removing their tendons so that they would not be able to run away and get help. Although Shadow 1 was a vicious killer, he or she had only killed those who had offended him or her, but never for money. Was Shadow 1 active in Sandfort City again?