On Matthias’ way home, Heather initiated a call to keep him company—something she rarely did. With her usual dull tone, she chatted with him about whatever came to mind and before they realized it, Matthias had already reached home.
When he entertained her with a joke Lara once told him, he could hear her subtle chuckle. Then, she stopped her giggle to inquire, “Are you home yet?” All along, she was sitting at her study desk, reading a book while chattering with Matthias.
“Yup. Just got to park real quick.” Having much left to say to Heather, Matthias was reluctant to end the call as hearing her voice made him feel like she was right beside him. Swiftly, he parked the car into the garage and grabbed his phone as he got out of the car. Unexpectedly, Heather didn’t hang up on him. What a pleasant surprise! he thought to himself. However, given the pile of mess they had gone through that night, nothing else could intrigue him anymore.
“Heather,” he ecstatically called out. There were only two people in the world that would call for her in such a manner, and Matthias wished to be the third. To his surprise, not only was she not upset, she even hummed a response, and that got him excited.
“Aren’t you tired?” Since it was already late, Matthias didn’t want Heather to stay up, lest she lose sleep. After all, she lived a strict healthy lifestyle.
“I’m used to it.” Recently, due to many reasons, one of them being insomnia, she had been pulling all-nighters.
“You better get some rest, then. There’s a lot ahead of you tomorrow.” Anticipating hecticness awaiting the next day, Matthias couldn’t help but be concerned. Despite having bribed the reporters to shut up, he couldn’t guarantee the absence of other paparazzis.
Before going to meet her, he had ordered Evan to deal with the journalists possessing Heather’s photos by tomorrow through social media. Judging by how Evan was still managing it, the matter must have been really troublesome, making Matthias worried for the day that hadn’t even come.
“Do you mean to say that I’ll be dragged into the bombing incident?” Having considered the possibility of her being involved due to the atrocious nature of tragedies such as bombings, she had already prepared herself for whatever would come.
The fact that she drove recklessly like a madman earlier could be linked to the incident, leading to the birth of more scandals. Besides, recalling her impulsive embrace with Leon and his mention of his family, she hoped the reporters of Bradfort City wouldn’t find out about his background.
“I have no idea how many people have possession of those photos,” Matthias expressed his concern about how that one photo would be the root of countless issues.
Pulling up the photo on his phone, he gazed at the picture, thinking about how the explosion occurring upstairs could have demolished the building into two. And then there was Heather, with her worried face while hugging Leon. The picture was taken from such an impeccable angle that one could see every detail of her expression. In contrast, Leon’s face was left in the dark so there was no telling what his expression was like.
Consequently, Matthias found an oddity in the photo. Indeed, the picture was targeted to emphasize Heather, but it strangely seemed like it was trying to protect Leon given how blurred his mug was in the shot.
Upon coming to that realization, he shared his opinion with Heather. “I may have discovered something else after going through the photos again. Well, more like a speculation, really.” After stating that, he contemplated how to express his thoughts to her.
“What is it?” Heather curiously questioned, seeing nothing fishy from the picture.
“In the photos, your face is so clear that I can even see the worry in your eyes. However, Leon’s face is so blurred, as if the angle from which the photo was shot was to protect him,” Matthias voiced his thoughts. Why did the photographers protect Leon? That was indeed an insightful question.
“Send them over. Let me see for myself.” Feeling the discovery was worth something, Heather wanted to study the photos herself.
After receiving the images from Matthias, she zoomed in to study each of them. True enough, no matter the angle of the shot, Leon’s face was always hazy and was even more pixelated upon zooming in. One could only figure it was a man while staying clueless to his ethnicity.
“Someone must have been pulling the strings behind this. With what we have on our hands, we can’t determine if it was done by one man, a few people, or factions of them. If anything, there might even be an organization that’s manipulating everything,” Matthias claimed, thinking the entire occurrence was a complicated ruse. If there was only one party causing the explosion, no one could tell whether they intended to kill him off or simply send him a warning.
On the other hand, if it involved many parties, then one of them must be aiming to shield Leon. Considering the possibility, Matthias instinctively scowled. Given how things were escalating so fast, he couldn’t even tell if it was a business dispute or something else.
While Heather remained silent, Matthias quizzed, “What do you think? Are they coming for you or Leon?”
Previously, she was unable to make her decision and suspected it was someone from the Moriarty Family given how they had been abnormally quiet. “Initially, I thought it was me but after hearing some things from Leon, I started to think it might be a warning to him instead.”
As it was getting late, Matthias decided to halt the discussion with Heather and reluctantly advised, “We shouldn’t be racking our brains this late at night. Rest up now, alright?”
Still reluctant to end the call, he waited for Heather to hang up first. However, seeing how she wouldn’t hang up, he couldn’t help but think perhaps she had more to chat about.
“Go to bed if you’re tired.” Hearing no further words from Matthias in a few seconds, Heather hesitantly hung up.
Staring at the end-call screen, Matthias felt a little upset with how needy he was, wishing to never part from her even for a moment. Thanks to the incident, he was even more determined that he in fact adored Heather and wanted to spend his life with her.
Meanwhile, thousands of words narrowly packed on a page entered Heather’s eyes, yet none went into her mind. Whenever she felt troubled, she would always grab a book and mindlessly turn its pages as if that was able to calm the conflict in her mind.
For some reason, Matthias’ unusual lack of clinginess made her feel a little odd. Hell, he even asked me to go to sleep! Unlike earlier, the Matthias she knew was headstrong, doing whatever he felt like and forcing his wills onto others. Now that he had learned to take care of others and respect their opinions, Heather felt somewhat comforted. Perhaps his once-detestable side was indeed salvageable, after all.
Acknowledging how there were many sides to a person, Heather couldn’t bring herself to hate on Matthias as she got to understand him more. Essentially, his concerns for her were genuine as he would notice little things she had never even paid attention to, and this tended to move her.
Swiftly, Heather reached the last sheet of the book. Since the book contained less than ten thousand words, it didn’t take her much time to finish it. Besides, underneath the pitch-black night, Heather got gradually drowsy and felt a little ache surging on her back. Hence, she headed to bed.
When she finally lay on her bed, she felt her aches disappear. Rolling around, she wished for the light of the day to come later. Since her destiny was bound to arrive, she had already predicted the disastrous headlines on the papers. She tossed and turned on her bed repeatedly, forcing herself to sleep with her worries.
Meanwhile, Matthias was still up awaiting Evan, who had just returned home with a chilly aura. Immediately, Matthias approached him and asked about what had been worrying him most. “How is it?”
“So far, we’re unable to determine how many people had taken photos of the scene,” Evan expressed with a glower. Regardless, he had done all he could, looking for people and “persuading” them to keep their mouths shut.
“So there are too many to handle?” Matthias inquired anxiously. He had expected that there were only a few that possessed Heather’s photos but on the contrary, there were actually quite a number of reporters that had already received the news.
“Yes. Bunch of amoral imbeciles.” Thinking how many of them had dared to make demands, negotiate and take advantage of him, Evan grew more furious.
“I just fear that we’ve missed some of them,” Matthias voiced out in distress.
“That’s a no-brainer. It’s an ocean of fishes out there. There’s no way we can net them all up at once.” At the time, Evan was somewhat hesitant to pay any more bribes as he was conscious that his effort would go in vain with just one whistleblower.
“Never mind. It’s merely a matter of money and we’ve done what we can. Besides, once we have paid them, they’ll no longer interfere in this matter. Thus, they are no longer a problem to us,” Matthias claimed upon seeing how it pained Evan to hand out bribes. Despite his gifted, beguiling charm, Evan was, deep down, an avaricious calculator.
“I didn’t really mind because it’s your money anyway.” Evan rolled his eyes at Matthias, who tended to turn into a brainless fool in love that would do any stupid thing for his obsession—in this case, Heather.
“Have a rest now,” Matthias urged Evan, feeling somewhat sorry for him after his day of hard work.
To be fair, Matthias cared very well for his peers and subordinates and would seldom cause them any difficulties or trouble. Hence, whenever he voiced his desires, Evan and Nikolai, and sometimes even Lara, would assist him toward his goals without any question.
“You should get some sleep too, sir. If this actually blows up tomorrow, you’ll really have no time for rest then.” Knowing Matthias wouldn’t sit still, Evan expected him to clean up the mess faster than Heather would.
Matthias hummed in response and he carried a perturbed heart with him upstairs. Ah—such a hectic day! The day, however, wasn’t all fruitless. Recalling Heather’s rather welcoming attitude toward him, Matthias was on cloud nine and his commissures would instinctively lift themselves.
Indeed, he had become a fool in love. It was already three in the morning yet he was still grasping his cellphone, sending a goodnight text to Heather. Seconds later, Heather, who was tossing around in bed, heard her ringtone and immediately turned on her phone, only to be let down by the word ‘Goodnight’.
Unlike a mysterious text out of nowhere she fantasized about, it was merely a text from Matthias. Given that he was still texting at this hour, it seemed like he was insomniac as well.
‘I can’t sleep.’ Heather typed three words down. But when she was about to send the message, she decided not to and deleted it.
Feeling that the three words were rather attention-seeking, she laid her phone down as she contemplated what to reply to him with. No matter what she came up with, everything just felt odd. After pondering for a while, she decided not to make a response at all as she put her phone away.
“Calm before the storm, huh…” she muttered to herself as she lay back in bed.
It was three in the morning and the air was stifling. What plans could God have set up in the next morning that awaited everyone?
