After all the guards had been assigned their duties, they disbanded from the main hall of the ground floor and went to attend to their various tasks.
For Con that task was patrolling the perimeter of the Nurain building. It was one of his favorite things to do.
Nurain's headquarters building was a fairly massive one. All of the company's new products would be displayed here first before they made their appearances at the company's smaller retail stores. Con always had a lot to look at whenever he was on patrol.
Since this fashion company mostly focused on female wear and especially beautiful females, they were quite known now in Glover city. There were always a lot of patrons around and Constantine always enjoyed watching the beauties as they shopped and had a nice time making themselves beautiful.
He was a shameless man, so he really didn't have any qualms with loving beautiful ladies so much, anyone who judged him for it could as well choke on their judgment.
This life was very different from the bloody one he was formerly used to. He sort of liked it.
Patrolling the building felt like a walk in the park and Con enjoyed the activity. Soon it was high noon and it was time for his lunch break.
"Aren't you going to come get your lunch Con?"
Constantine rolled his eyes as he heard Finn's voice behind him. The man never let anyone under his division miss lunch.
"I'll be coming to get it now."
Finn only nodded at him and disappeared as he went round the corner of the building. Con followed him and soon he had his lunch pack in his hand. He settled under the shade of one of the trees at the back of the building and he was joined by a fellow guard.
They ate in silence and halfway through the small meal, their walkie talkies started ringing.
Con looked at the other soldier and found he was also looking at him.
They both picked up their receivers and the same message rang out at the same time.
"All available guards are to report to the main entrance, i repeat report to the main entrance, the CEO is in danger!. All available guards report to the main entrance now, I repeat, report to the main entrance now!"
Con looked over at the other guard. He had gone back to consuming his lunch like he hadn't just heard that message.
"Aren't you going to heed to the directions of the order we were given just now?"
The guard simply shook his head and took a bite of his sandwich.
'"We have more than fifty guards stationed all around this building, I'm sure more than half of them are attending to her right now. We wouldn't be of any use if we went there."
Con simply ignored the guard's words as he stood up. Guess it was time for him to start fulfilling his promise.
The CEO and founder of Nurain Fashion corporation was none other than the stunningly beautiful Miss Adeline Firoan, a well endowed woman with the face of a goddess and the body of a vixen. She was smart, industrious, well grounded and a business monster. She was also the sister of someone he had lost on the battlefield.
Someone who he had made a promise to in regards to protecting his little sister.
Mark had begged him to protect her. He had made Con promise that to him as he breathed his last breath.
Con was a man that kept his promises.
She was the reason he had come to Glover city, he could have decided to do anything else with his life. He could have chosen to make the generals that had blamed him and disgraced him for what happened at the battlefield pay for how they stripped him of his position, he could have made them eat their words.
But he came here instead to fulfill his promise first before he did any of that. He wasn't even sure he would do much of that revenge stuff anymore, he liked living this life of a nobody, someone so low down the food chain that they were barely noticed or seen as a threat.
He would continue living like this if life allowed him.
Con walked with determination in his heart as he thought and soon he was at the gate. He could see all wasn't well.
A small crowd had gathered there already and they seemed to be watching the two small groups that now faced off against each other.
The people in the crowd parted for Constantine as he walked through, none of them knew why he was giving off such a serious and foreboding aura at that moment.
Con got to the front of the crowd to see that Adeline hadn't been hurt.
He was relieved to see that.
She wasn't alone too, she was surrounded by most of her day to day staff. The chief executive of fashion designers in Nurain and most of the fashion designers stood with her, all the essential staff and even John. He and Jane stood at the helm of the group and glared at the other group.
Con moved his eyes to them to see what they were up against.
The face of the man he saw tickled his memory a little but he couldn't place where he had seen him.
The man had silver blonde hair and an arrogant expression on his face, like what he was seeing at the moment annoyed him and he couldn't wait to get rid of it.
He was leaning against the door of his red luxury car in a deep ash suit and his eyes were specifically on the CEO of the company whose entrance he had parked his car.
"I want to buy Nurain."
The arrogance in his voice could literally be heard in every word he said, and much more than arrogance, there was hate and spite and conceit too.
"Who is he?"
The guard beside him didn't get the chance to answer before the silver haired man spoke again.
"My final asking price is twenty million dollars."
Con felt annoyance rush through him.
What?
Adeline had gone red in the face.Nurain was a company that had a more than thirty billion dollar total value asset. It was one of the leading names in fashion and one of the fastest rising companies in the metropolitan area that was Glover city.Nurain had a lot of potential, it would one day be one of the most known fashion brands in the world and it was just a matter of time before they went international.And yet here someone was publicly offering her twenty million dollars for her company. Twenty measly million dollars?Constantine wanted to know who this man was. He knew he had seen the face somewhere before, maybe on a poster or simply on the street one day. Con had photographic memory so if his mind was telling him he had seen this guy before, then he definitely had, he just had to think well and pinpoint where.Con closed his eyes and let his mind do the rest of the work. The memory came back to him in a second.He had seen this guy in a bar. His name was Jake Caswell, the
Everyone present knew who Jake Caswell was.Almost everyone in Glover city had heard of the Caswell family. They had a blood relation to the current mayor of the city and they were not a family to be taken lightly. They were seen as an elite family, with connections all over the globe and in all places.They didn't rule Glover city by any means, but they could do some things and no one would stop them.That was the reason why Adeline had felt a bit scared when Jake had told her she had no one backing her up before. That was true.She didn't have anyone backing her and she didn't have anyone looking out for her. She only had herself and her workers. Her brother was no more and neither was any other member of her family.Her brother had given her all their parents left for them and had gone off to join a mercenary group. The news of his death had been brought to her barely half a year ago and she was still trying to cope with that loss. This company and its employees had stuck with her
Jake and his men rushed their fallen comrade to the hospital. The small crowd was dispersed and Adeline was currently pacing the length of her office.That guard!Why did he have to do that?Of all the things for him to do he had to injure one of Jake's men so heavily.Constantine simply watched her as she paced back and forth. It seemed she had forgotten that he was even in the room, or that she had summoned him here almost immediately after Jake Caswell and his men left.Con wasn't complaining though.Adeline Firoan was a stunning woman to watch. She moved like liquid silk, exuding her femininity with each and every step she took and making him more and more entranced with every sway of her hips as she continued pacing.Adeline suddenly felt someone's hot gaze on her, like the rays of a scorching sun. She looked to see the guard staring at her boldly, without any shame or remorse at the sort of look he had in his eyes.What a shameless man.'"Hey didn't anyone tell you it's rude
Con didn't feel like himself for the rest of the day at work. Almost everyone noticed but they decided not to say anything to him about it. What he had done was brave and foolish at the same time, but it was also extremely cocky. Not at all the sort of thing that a security guard would do, especially when he was so low ranked. Con had proven his value though so everyone just stood back and let him sulk. They had all watched him break a man's jaw with a punch, and they had seen the people that had come to threaten their boss flee and rush their goon to the hospital. They had also seen the boss invite Constantine into her office so there was every possibility that he had gotten reprimanded for what he had done. That was probably why he was so gloomy. Con sighed and sat down under the tree he had been eating lunch earlier. He had a slight frown on his face and he looked deep in thought. What Adeline had said was true. He had just put everyone here at Nurain in danger. Jake Caswell
"Hello, am I on to Mr Jake Caswell?"Jake dropped the pic of Adeline he had been trying to jack off to and cleared his throat as he tapped on the button that would activate his end of the receiver.That bitch had put him in a bad mood."Yes, you're speaking with Jake, what do you want?"The annoyance in his voice was loud and audible, maybe even more so than his actual words.He still hadn't been able to get his mind off that piece of shit lowlife guard. He had the guts to hit one of his men!And break his jaw too.Now he was one guard short and he was all pent up.Whoever was calling better have a solid reason to be calling unless he would cuss them out and cut the call.Jake let his hands skirt over his open zipper. He was in his office, with the doors firmly locked and all his pending appointments canceled for the day.Jake heard the creak of a door opening on the other side of the line and he frowned.Had this prick just put him on hold while he was walking around? Fucking imbecil
Con placed a call on his phone as he walked down the street leisurely.The line rang for a while before the recipient picked up his call but Con wasn't annoyed. Xavier would be excited to see his call."Please tell me this isn't a dream boss?"The other man sounded like he had intense emotions rippling through him at the moment, like he was at the point of tears."Stop goofing off Xavier, I left but I didn't leave the face of the earth."Con heard Xavier choke on something that was either a laugh or a sob. Xavier was such a goof sometimes. Well all his men would naturally become goofs if he also placed a phone call to any of them, so Xavier wasn't acting that weird..Dadris and the rest of his inner circle would have dropped all they were doing and tracked him down the moment his call came through."Permission to track you down Commander?"Con scoffed, amused."Permission denied. Stay with your wife and kids, don't come looking for me."Xavier broke out into silent sobs again and Con
Con sighed and nodded his head."Is it up to thirty billion dollars? I don't really need to know the full amount, just tell me if it's up to thirty billion."Just mentioning that amount put a bitter taste at the back of Con's throat. Thirty billion dollars wasn't by any means a paltry sum of money. It was big money.Huge money that he might not even have a tenth of if he was to look into his account. He was even piss poor at the moment.Xavier was a lanky silver haired man that was good with guns. Con chuckled at that. Well they had all been good with guns on his team. That was a major requirement to be honest, and it was one all his men had met.But they all had their area of specialty and Xavier's was long distance shooting.Some soldiers could hardly shoot well at a very long distance, they always had to be some yards away from the enemy but not too far away.Xavier could shoot five men from fifty yards away and make it seem like he was taking a stroll.He could shoot ten men in l
Con walked the rest of the way home. His heart was in turmoil and his steps were hurried.How would he get two hundred million dollars?His current job barely paid him up to a thousand dollars per month and he could barely make a hundred dollars in a day.To get two hundred billion dollars he would probably have to work for the rest of his life, and he knew he didn't have that much time. Jake Caswell wouldn't wait for him to get that amount before he killed off half the people at Nurain.And Con would once again be held responsible for what had happened.No, that couldn't happen again. He had, at most a year to bring that Caswell guy to his knees, and that was what he intended to do. In the space of one year, he would bring Jake Caswell and his foolish companies down and then he would put him in the same situation he had just put Adeline in.He would make them beg for him to buy their stupid company.Or, he could just settle for bringing them down and he could leave the rest of the
Xavier stared at the files in his hands and tried not to get too scared by them. There was information on them, more information than he would have felt comfortable ever knowing but he could see what Con was so scared of now. He might even be sure that he had managed to see the things Con had not. To begin with, this world was not what they thought it was.At least it was not all they thought it was. It was much more than they imagined and the fact that Con had somehow managed to stumble on this clearly meant the cosmos was seeking their help, or rather Con's help. Somehow somewhere there was someone or something pushing Con towards making these decisions and he could feel it now. He was sure if he told Jane and Aubrey that they would plan to eat him up alive. Both him and that thing he felt was guiding Con into making the decisions he was making. Their world was under threat, and he would be damned if he just sat back and watched it all crumble.Xavier reached for his phone and tap
Con watched the hackers he had hired work and he came to the conclusion that he had undoubtedly made a very huge mistake.There was little he could do in terms of making them more coperative and oddly he got the feeling that they wanted to make him frustrated. One of them full on refused to listen to his commands and Con felt the urge to give the man a sound slap at the back of his mind. He had to resist it because the others were already working and from what he could see, they were doing what he wanted them to do. That was enough for him, but what he truly wanted was their total cooperation.From the way they had abandoned their jobs to go chase after money, he knew that he couldn't use them for any of the jobs he would have wished to. Since they had the basic knowledge he would need in the people he wanted to recruit, it would have been better if they had behaved and not messed up that way. It was not like he was that desperate that he would hire them despite whatever they did, but
Jake looked out his window and tried to assess his surroundings. He could tell people were trying to hack into the cyber security of the the hotel. The alarms had gone off the moment the breach was noticed and he had spent the past one hour trying to calm himself down and not fly into a rage. The fact that whoever this was thought he could mess with him and get away with it felt funny to him.The only problem right now was the issue of intention. The hackers seemed to be aiming for the security controls to switch them off. That was what they had been trying to do in the first place and he felt they might have done it sucesfully if they hadn't diverted to start hacking away at money. If they were petty thieves then he would make them pay. He would make them pay badly for having him all worked up for nothing, but if they posed a greater problem than than that then he would have to solve that problem, probably with the aid of some thugs and torture. He just bought this hotel. It was on
Xavier watched as Lisa and Clay kept their eyes on him like he was performing some kind of magic trick just sitting down there and doing nothing. He could already tell that it would be a long time before they left him alone and honestly, now he was up to the challenge. There was no way he was going to let them keep him in when he already had something he wanted to do.Lisa could be dealt with. He could persuade her with treats and make her feel he should be let loose to do what he wanted because he was her father and even he would have to admit that he let her loose to do what she wanted too sometimes.Lisa would let him do what he wanted to do because he also let her do what she wanted to do at times. It was an agreement they had both reached and he was sure she would honor her part of their agreement. The one was really worried about was Clay. The fact that the younger male just stood there watching him gave Xavier a funny feeling in his stomach. He and Lisa should have done off t
Con could swear that he had thought there was a chance of Xavier calling him on the phone and offering his help.He had been expecting that for a day plus now but yet nothing had happened and he was getting skeptical. Was he wrong to expect that his comrade in arms would come to him at this moment? And was he sure that he could pull off this operation with Xavier?Con stared at the building in front of him and turned to look at the others in the car. Two of the maids had revealed themselves to be hackers specially trained by the Black family. It seemed his uncle had also believed that one day he would need the help of such people so he had gathered them, from all walks of life, which to him probably meant the prisons. The man was a cheapskate. He couldn't hire professsionals who would get his job done for him, so instead he went to the prisons and got men and women who had been arrested and convicted of various internet crimes .He had bailed them out, paid the men behind the desk eno
Lisa stared at her father and tried to assess the level of damage she had done.She had one hand over her mouth and the other helping her prop that arm up.'"When the heck did my father become ebony haired?""Language Lisa.Lisa rolled her eyes and walked over to go stand near Clay."We did this didn't we?"Clay couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his throat. Somehow he had imagined that Lisa would have more information than he would on what was happening to her father. She had asked him to promise that they would both take the fall for whatever happened and when this happened, he suspected she knew about it. No just knew about it but expected it. He would not have been surprised if Lisa expected this to happen, but it seems she had not. She was just as surprised as he was, or she was now a great actress and she was faking all this, but he could tell there was no talent for acting in Lisa so he was sure it was the first one.Lisa was shocked, the same way he had been and it was fu
"What exactly did Lisa put in to make your hair this color?"Xavier could see Jane was getting distracted already. Her eyes were gleaming as she fingered his lock of hair and he could already see the longing in her.Jane wanted to cut his hair and take it in to be studied. He could proudly say that he had taught Jane as much as he could in the art of detectiving in a science lab. He had taught her how to determine how long a piece of fabric would retain its color if dyed, what mixture of dyes to use and what colors seemed to have an affinity for each other. In part he was a fundamental aspect to the success of Jane's clothing brand and he had felt a bit disappointed when she had abandoned their lab meetings to focus on leading her company, but now he could see that the spark wasn't totally dead yet.She looked at his hair with a clinical eye, from a scientific point of view. Lisa was asleep and he had asked Clay to leave her so she could take the rest she needed. Lisa rarely slept
Clay left Lisa in the room and descended to the lab beneath her to check for himself how her father was doing. Maybe it was because he had been there when the man collapsed or maybe because he had been just as scared when it had all happened, but he had a deep feeling of worry for Mr Frost. There wasn't much for him to do concerning the cure Lisa had administered to her father. She seemed sure of it and it seemed the cure had worked the way she said it would.The ice core had been repaired. By a bunch of black petals. It still surprised him as to how that happened but as long as Lisa's father was out of the danger zone then he would be happy. They were in enough confusion as things stood already and more confusion was not something he wanted for any of them. What he wanted at the moment was to confirm that Lisa's father was okay, and if he was then maybe he could ask if they could run a brain scan on Lisa. She had lapsed off into thought again and it was making him feel a bit scared.
Lisa could feel her heart slam into her chest the moment she heard the question. Her face turned red and she looked away, not because she was ashamed but because she was embarrassed."How the hell can you pop that kind of question on me so casually? Do I look like I have someone on my mind?""You look like you've been hella distracted and when girls are at your age they tend to think of boys twenty four seven. Can you see the reason for my curiosity now?"Lisa rolled her eyes and noticed how close she and Clay were. Closeness between the both of them had never bothered her, Clay was like a brother to her and she was like a sister to him, but he had grown these past few months and she wouldn't say she had failed to notice the changes in herself too. They had both grown a lot and somehow this kind of closeness made her extra aware of that.Everything around them was changing. Not just the climate or global warming, but mostly a lot of the other things, the more important things, the peo