Chapter 112
I have to say, Jeffrey really is something.
After I took Oscar around for a tour and came back—over an hour later—when I opened the heavy door of the dark room again, what appeared before me was a bloody mess of a person.
His entire face was so swollen that his eyes were squeezed into slits. Blood was gurgling thickly from his open mouth, all his teeth had completely disappeared, and half of his ten fingers had their nails flipped outward, a bloody pulp.
Oscar looked at the two bodyguards who were drenched in sweat. They just silently shook their heads at us and quickly stepped aside.
I instinctively turned to look at Oscar, too. If he still wouldn't talk after being beaten like this, getting him to say anything would probably be pretty difficult.
Oscar walked forward, still wearing that gentle smile on his face, bending down to look at the person sprawled on the ground: "I didn't expect this—you actually have some backbone. Fighting this hard, you must have something more important in someone else's hands."
Jeffrey's originally calm expression moved slightly. He seemed to try lifting his eyelids to look at Oscar, but only the muscles in his face twitched before quickly drooping down again.
Oscar let out a soft laugh: "How about I take a guess? You joined Solstice with Mark when you were ten, started running drugs at thirteen, had a daughter with a woman from the compound at twenty-one—she should be about sixteen now, right? So I'm guessing your daughter, who's studying abroad, has been taken, hasn't she?"
Jeffrey struggled to lift his head. His words were somewhat slurred, but I still made them out. He said, "Come at me if you dare, leave her alone."
Oscar smiled innocently: "Looks like I guessed right. Oh, I have an interesting video here you might want to see. Not sure if you'll recognize her after all these years, though."
Oscar pulled out his phone, scrolled through it, pointed the screen at Jeffrey, and hit play. The video was pretty dark. A young girl was violently thrown onto a bed. A man who looked to be in his thirties pinned her down hard, grinning viciously as he tore off her clothes and brutally thrust into her. The girl's piercing screams filled the entire room. Jeffrey, lying on the ground, lunged at Oscar like an enraged old wolf, his bloody hands clawing viciously.
Oscar stepped back half a step, closed the video, looking all innocent: "Oh, I showed you the wrong one. This is what my people filmed when they went to find her. Let me show you the next one."
He swiped his finger, and in another video, the girl was wrapped in a sofa blanket, with obvious bruises on her face, trembling as she looked at the camera, tears streaming down as she cried: "Daddy save me, daddy save me."
Jeffrey let out a hoarse, muffled roar: "What the hell did you do to my daughter?"
Oscar's voice was cheerful and relaxed: "Now you've got it wrong. My people saved her. Instead of being grateful, you're yelling at me?"
Jeffrey's face was covered in what could have been sweat or tears, snot mixed with blood from his mouth dripping in a long trail: "Your people were already there, why didn't they save her earlier? They could have saved her..."
Oscar's eyes grew colder bit by bit: "You tried to kill my fiancée, and you want me to save your daughter? Aren't you asking for too much?"
Oscar stepped back to my side, the smile long gone from his face, his voice colder than I'd ever heard: "Now you have one more chance. You can choose to keep your mouth shut, and I'll take good care of your daughter. Girls sixteen or seventeen are the most popular in Solstice—you should know that better than me."
"I'll talk, I'll tell you everything, just don't touch my daughter." This time, Jeffrey didn't hesitate at all.
Oscar turned to me with a slight smile: "See? He can talk after all."
I gave a disdainful laugh: "This is the first time I've seen someone who needs to suffer before they'll talk. Jeffrey, who sent you to kill me?"
Jeffrey swallowed the blood in his mouth hard before slowly saying: "You can probably guess—the person who sent me to kill you was naturally Benjamin. The moment you called the police, he got the message."
While this answer sounded reasonable enough, the fact that he said it so easily made me think there might be something else: "Why don't you think carefully again—is there anything you've left out? Just what you've told us so far, keeping you alive seems like a loss for us."
Oscar just glanced at me once and quickly understood, pulling out his phone as if to make a call: "You're still not being honest even now? Then don't blame me for being rude. I'll send someone to pick up your daughter right now. Nothing beats home, right?"
Jeffrey had been in Solstice during the years when Oscar was rising to power. He knew perfectly well that this seemingly kind person was actually vicious.
He waved his hands frantically. The blood made it hard to see what expression was on his face—it looked like he might cry, or maybe it was fear: "No, Mr. Lopez, please, I've really told you everything I know. I'm just a nobody—how much could I possibly know?"
Oscar casually sent a voice message: "Take her back and auction her off—"
"I'll talk, I'll talk—" Jeffrey shouted urgently.
My face showed some impatience: "I don't have time to waste on you. You'd better tell us everything you know."
Jeffrey quickly said, "Besides Benjamin, there's another person—Mr. Lopez should know him."
Oscar looked puzzled: "Who?"
Jeffrey hurried to say, "It's Adrian Campbell. He got me out of prison, got me a new passport, sent me to Lumaria, and then Mr. White found me. He told me that as long as I listened to Mr. White, I'd get a big payout in the end."
Not only did Oscar know this Adrian person, but I'd also met him a few times.
If you asked who deserved the most credit for Oscar's rise, Adrian would definitely be the top choice. In fact, he could be considered Oscar's mentor, guiding him on what markets to develop.
If I were Michael's counselor, then Adrian was Oscar's right-hand man. He maintained the operations in Solstice, and now everything there was managed by Adrian.
I looked at Oscar. Clearly, he was also surprised by this answer, losing his usual composure, his face darkening: "Jeffrey, you should understand the consequences of lying."
Jeffrey kept bowing: "Mr. Lopez, everything I said is true."
"At first, I wasn't sure who it was either. He only contacted me by phone. But that day, when someone was helping me with my documents, that person happened to take a call on the street, and he called him Mr. Campbell. So, how many Mr. Campbells are there in Solstice?"