“By the way, you have to be careful,” Gina warned the Talnamese. “He’s a martial artist or something.”
It only left the Talnamese laughing.
“Don’t worry, we’re all martial artists too!”
“Hell, Talc is Ascendant rank!”
“Oh, we’re really not worried about some Draconian martial artist. Not many people can best Talc in a fight, save for the Lord of the Southern Woods!”
For some reason, Gina felt a gnawing sense of foreboding as she watched the Talnamese joke among themselves confidently.
“You’re so smart, Aunt Gina!” Cindy praised.
“Shut up! It’s all your fault!” Gina snapped, and Cindy awkwardly turned away.
Gina was not about to play nice, and Cindy knew that after selling the ruby for just 500 million and spending everything in just a week.
In fact, the Talnamese planned to squeeze Cindy for five billion when they learned about the ruby falling to the black market, and they needed that much to buy it back. And since she did not have the money, she had to stage her own kidnapping to lure Gina to South Morhen, while getting the two billion dollar check Helen brought over for the mansion project.
Naturally, Gina could not afford the remaining three billion either and had to call Helen, staging yet another kidnapping like Cindy did.
However, there was no guarantee Helen could bring the three billion, so Gina sold out Frank as well just to be sure.
She did not care about him at all anyway, and her family might well have a lot less problems if he got killed.
That was what she told herself even as she called Frank and told him where they were.
–
Screech—
Frank jammed his foot on the brakes, stopping his Maserati outside one of the abandoned factories in South Morhen.
He and Ned alighted, managing to arrive quickly thanks to the details Gina had provided.
They looked around—there was no one in sight ready to ambush them, so the Talnamese must be here.
Ned then nodded solemnly at Frank. “My people are coming. They’ll hang back and jump in if anything happens.”
“Good. None of them must be allowed to escape,” Frank said bluntly, having a feeling his identity might be exposed.
Ned nodded again. “Understood!”
They strode into the factory together.
It was already evening, and there was nothing lighting up the interior of the factory, leaving it pitch black.
As such, the vast entrance appeared to be the gaping maw of some behemoth, and Frank and Ned appeared to be food walking right inside.
“Welcome, gentlemen. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
A hollow laugh resounded in the factory, and soon the interior lit up, flashing Ned and Frank for a moment.
Frank was immediately on his toes and only lowered his hand when he saw that no one was attacking.
Looking around, he asked quickly, “So you really are Talnamese. What are you doing here in Draconia?”
“What, you ask?” the voice from before asked in return before laughing.
