Chapter 46

Connor's POV

The orange sun slowly set in front of the car, the scenery next to the car flew by, but I was not in any mood to enjoy the sunset, just keep driving towards the west.

Suddenly a text message beeped from my phone, probably Locke.

I stopped the car at the side of the road and opened my phone. I couldn't imagine that it was Ivan's text message, but it didn't say anything, only a location.

What was he doing sending me a location? Could it be that he knew Lydia's whereabouts? That's too much of a coincidence, right?

I opened the map to check, and the location also happened to be in the west. Maybe he was worried about Lydia's safety, just like me, and had been sending people to secretly observe Lydia.

I didn't spend much time thinking about it, I chose to trust him and believe in his love for Lydia. I opened the navigation and drove towards that location.

The scenery around me was getting desolate and the sky was slowly getting darker.

I came to an abandoned house.

Out of concern, I looked around first, while sending the location to Locke, in case something happens to me he will be able to find me quickly.

Soon, I found a computer on a stone, the computer was still open, and it showed a picture of Lydia being kidnapped, which looked like an auction.

In order to determine the authenticity of this image, I exited the computer to the desktop, the wallpaper was surprisingly a photo of Ivan and Lydia together, I mentally already understood that this computer was Ivan's, he followed Lydia to here, and now he was perhaps kidnapped by Peter together with Lydia.

Based on the surroundings, I deduced that they should be in a basement, then most likely under that house.

I picked up my phone and sent a text message to Locke, briefly explaining the situation and asking him to hurry up and bring someone over. Then, dialed his number again and didn't hang up until he put the call through and confirmed that he could see my message.

Then, I took a pocket knife and walked into the house. After walking around the house and seeing a staircase in the corner, I hurried down the stairs, hoping to get Lydia out before they did.

At the end of the stairs, I saw a fallen man in black, which confirmed my previous thought that Ivan had not been kidnapped with Lydia, but that he had been keeping a close eye on Lydia's whereabouts as I had recently, and had come to Lydia's rescue after finding out that she had been kidnapped, but had finally been discovered and arrested.

I don't know if the man in black had fainted or died, I didn't dare to alarm him, lest I bring trouble on myself.

After walking for a while, a male voice came to my ears: "50,000 first time! 50,000 for the second time! Package delivered to your home!"

Damn! Lydia is about to be auctioned off, I couldn't care less and took out my pocket knife and ran straight to the source of the voice.

There it was! It was the place I saw in the computer, Peter and his men were inside.

I went over and took down one of his men, but Peter didn't panic at all.

While I was fighting with his men, he said slowly, "I haven't finished you yet, but you've come to me."

It seemed he was confident in his men's fighting skills, but I wasn't as weak as Ivan's boy, who could easily be beaten by them.

After a few rounds of tangling with those black guys, seeing that they were about to be done with me, Peter suddenly rushed forward and took advantage of the gap in my swing to kick me in the chest, knocking me straight into the wall.

My head slammed into the wall and I felt a wave of dizziness.

I didn't even have the strength to get up, let alone run away, when I saw Peter pick up the knife I had just dropped to the floor and walk towards me.

"Now let me put an end to these messy relationships of yours!" Peter raised his knife and walked closer and closer towards me.

"If you kill me, you'll never get the other part of Carter Group's core information." I sneered as I negotiated with Peter.

"The lesson of losing your son last time is not enough, and you still want to play tricks with me?" From his tone, he sounded very angry, and then he turned his head to Lydia, "See? This is the man you went to so much trouble to steal from your sister, for money, and once again, played you for a fool."

Lydia's mouth was stuffed with rags, no sound could come out, she could only whimper and shed tears on the side, she must be so disappointed with me right now.

"As long as you let Lydia go now, I'll tell you the rest of the core information." I continued to negotiate with Peter, stalling for as long as I could hoping to wait for Locke's arrival.

Peter seemed to be tempted by this condition of mine, perhaps he was also considering in his heart that releasing Lydia would be more cost-effective than releasing me, after all, it was much easier to kidnap Lydia than to kidnap me.

But soon, his expression shifted again: "You are dying, even if you lie to me, I can't do anything to you."

"If you don't believe me, you can now have your men go to my office and open the safe to get it." I offered a more feasible method to him.

Although I knew that he already had all the core information of the Carter Group today, I still bet my life, Lydia's and Ivan's lives on Locke, and as long as Locke came to this house before Peter found out that he already had all the information, all of us could be saved.

"That's not a bad way to go." Peter thought about it and quickly agreed.

"First, give me the combination to the safe." Peter quickly added.

Hearing this from him, I realized that this was a good time to solve my questions about the theft of DQ Group's documents, and I decided to set a set of his words.

"Claire didn't tell you the password when she stole the DQ Group files last time? It seems she's still defensive of you, her own father." I taunted the man in front of me.

His face was as colorful as a neon sign in a bar, changing and changing, and finally holding a knife to my neck and saying viciously, "Cut the crap, or I can get Claire to get the rest of the files for me just as well if I kill you now!"

From his words, I surmised that Claire should have fallen out with him by now and had no intention of helping him anymore, and the matter of the safe's password also confirmed what Lydia said last time in Washington, that Claire had written down the time after peeking at her diary.

Claire this woman is really too scary, if Lydia in the diary to write about other things about me, it is likely that she has also written down, no wonder and she always have a very good understanding of my feeling when she gets along with her.

This series of thoughts flashed through my mind, in order to avoid Peter's suspicion of me, I did not have time to continue to think deeply, I had to hurry to tell the password of the safe.

After learning the password, Peter took out his cell phone and called his men.

At that moment, a "freeze" made everyone turn around.

Luckily, Locke arrived with his men just in time.

The police with guns quickly subdued the gang and took us out.

After being untied, Ivan and I both rushed to Lydia first. She looked at us both blankly, seemingly still in shock, or maybe she didn't know who to choose, and finally she cowered in the corner.

Ivan and I couldn't get close to her, so we had to let the police carry her into the car.

After taking a statement at the police station, I decided to charge Claire with theft of trade secrets.

Not out of hatred or lack of pity, but simply because this was the way it had to be done in order for the Carter Group to be cleared of the charge of leaking trade secrets and for the outside public opinion about the leakage of DQ Group's information to be truly put to rest.

Fortunately, with Peter's surveillance video in the underground auction house as evidence, it didn't take long for Claire to be arrested for the crime of stealing trade secrets and leaking them.

I thought it would end here, but to my surprise, shortly after Claire's arrest, I received a phone call from the prison saying that Claire wanted to see me.

I had done something wrong in the relationship, and out of a man's basic responsibility, I felt that I should go there whether she wanted to reprimand me or seek a reasonable explanation.

When I came to the room where the prisoners were visited, Claire was wearing a prison uniform and her face was devoid of cosmetics, and her whole body looked very haggard.

"Connor......" Claire took the lead in a tone that made one pity, "If there hadn't been that car accident in the first place, and none of these things that happened afterwards, we would have lived as happily as we did before Wouldn't we?"

After saying that, tears appeared in her eyes.

The sun was shining along the window of the visiting room, and the shadows of the railing fell on both the table and Claire's body, and at this moment her tears intertwined with the guilt in my heart, causing me a little heartache.

But my sanity told me that I couldn't give her false hope at this time, that the busyness of prison would heal her.

"I'm sorry to be telling you this now, but in our marriage, there was no love from beginning to end." I know that there was guilt in my eyes when I said that.

"After more than ten years, not one iota?" She looked at me almost pleadingly, as if hoping to hear the word "yes" from my lips.

I shook my head apologetically at her, "I never thought of you as anything but a sister."

"What about Lydia?"

"I thought I thought of her as a sister at first, but it wasn't until you disappeared that I realized that I had fallen in love with her, so much so that I couldn't stop loving her, and all the torture I did to her was to get her, and it was a silly thing I did to hide my true feelings."

"Then why should she be able to get your love! I'm not worse than her at all!" Claire's eyes were filled with resignation.

This question made me wonder how I should answer her, and I could only ask her back, "Then why do you love me?"

The same question stumped Claire as well. She looked at my face, and her eyes gradually became hollow.

I sighed softly. It's true that no one can escape from the word "love". The deeper the love, the crazier the person, whether it's Claire or me, or even Lydia and Ivan.

"You see, love is like that, blind, no reason, at the moment of being shot by Cupid's arrow, you never know why you fell in love with that person."