Chapter 154 The Mastermind
Chapter 154 The Mastermind
"Relax." Sean stood up, walked over to her, and reached out to ruffle her hair. "Leave the rest to me. You just go to school and focus on your classes."
Three days later, a bombshell story hit the top headlines across major North American media outlets.
Alfie, the well-known Washington philanthropist, was ambushed by unidentified armed assailants while being transported by the FBI. His whereabouts remain unknown. No survivors were found at the scene.
The entire Capital University campus was buzzing about it.
Isabelle had just walked out of the chemistry lab, one hand in her jacket pocket, heading down the tree-lined path toward the gate.
"Isabelle! Don't you dare move!"
A sharp voice cut through the calm.
Lila came storming over with a few of her followers, planting herself right in the middle of the path.
Her eyes were red, locked onto Isabelle with pure hatred. Ever since Isabelle had humiliated her publicly at the auction, and then the Bonello family's cash flow took a hit from Alfie's downfall, Lila had been having the worst few days of her life.
Now that Alfie had gone missing, she immediately pointed the finger straight at Isabelle.
"Did you have something to do with Alfie disappearing?" Lila jabbed a finger in Isabelle's face, loud enough to draw a crowd. "You set him up at the auction with those fake documents, and now he vanishes out of nowhere. You had him kidnapped, didn't you!"
Isabelle stopped walking and looked at her with cold, blank eyes — the way you'd look at someone who wasn't quite all there.
"Get out of my way." Isabelle's voice was completely flat.
"I'm right, aren't I!" Lila took Isabelle's silence as confirmation and doubled down.
She spun toward the growing crowd of students. "Look at her! She's a murderer! She's got dirty connections, and she's the one who got Alfie killed!"
A few white guys in the crowd, the type who liked to play hero, decided they'd seen enough. They were big, the kind who threw their weight around on the school football team. Seeing Lila in tears, they stepped forward, ready to save the day.
"Hey, girl, you'd better come with us to campus security and explain yourself." The one in front reached out to grab Isabelle's shoulder.
Isabelle's eyes shifted slightly.
The moment his hand was about to make contact, she moved.
She caught his wrist with a reverse grip and wrenched it hard.
A sharp crack of bone. The guy let out a scream as Isabelle threw him clean over her shoulder and slammed him into the concrete.
The other two rushed at her, cursing.
Isabelle didn't step back. She drove a sharp side kick into the stomach of one of them, sending him flying two meters back.
Then she dropped low to dodge a punch from the third, and drove her elbow hard into his ribs.
Ten seconds. Three big guys were on the ground, writhing and moaning.
Dead silence.
Everyone stood frozen, stunned by how fast and clean it was. Nobody dared take a step forward.
Lila stood there, face white as a sheet.
She watched Isabelle close the distance, and the fear finally won out over the anger.
Her legs gave out. She crumpled to the ground and scrambled backward.
"What... what are you going to do..." Lila's voice shook.
Isabelle walked up and crouched down in front of her.
She looked at Lila's face, twisted with terror, and the corner of her mouth curved into something cold and cruel.
Isabelle leaned in close to Lila's ear and spoke in a low, slow, measured voice that only the two of them could hear.
"You're not wrong." Isabelle's tone was empty. "I took Alfie. I had him hanging in a basement, and I opened up his skin piece by piece with a scalpel, cut his nerves one by one. Then I sliced open his carotid artery. His blood went everywhere. The smell was awful."
Lila's pupils shrank.
The images Isabelle had just described flooded her mind. She looked into those cold, dark eyes, and something inside her completely broke.
She knew, with total clarity, that Isabelle wasn't making any of it up.
This woman had killed before. And she didn't even blink doing it.
The terror hit her all at once, faster than reason.
A warm, wet sensation ran down her thigh, soaking into her expensive skirt, spreading across the concrete in a dark, spreading stain.
She had pissed herself.
The crowd went quiet for a second, then erupted in laughter and gasps.
Phones went up everywhere, flashes aimed at Lila sitting in a puddle on the ground, shaking uncontrollably.
Isabelle stood up and glanced down at her with pure contempt.
She didn't give the pathetic girl another thought. One hand in her pocket, she walked through the crowd and left without looking back.
That afternoon, the video of Lila's public breakdown spread like wildfire across the campus forum and Twitter.
The hashtag #MissBonelloWetsHerself shot up to trending. The clip of her sitting on the ground was all over the internet. The Bonello family's stock took an immediate hit, and the whole family became a laughingstock in Washington's elite circles.
Lila locked herself at home, watching the flood of mockery online, barely holding it together.
Desperate to salvage what was left of her reputation, she went on burner accounts across social media and posted frantically, calling Isabelle a terrorist and describing in detail everything Isabelle had whispered to her, trying to expose her.
But the reaction online was nothing like what she expected.
Nobody believed a word of it.
People just figured she was a woman who'd had a breakdown and was rambling.
"LOL, calling a college freshman a terrorist? Did Lila's brain leak out when she wet her pants?"
"At least make it believable. A scalpel to the carotid? What is this, a Hollywood movie?"
"The Bonello family should just check her into a psych ward before she embarrasses them any further."
Lila's attempt to drag Isabelle down didn't land at all. If anything, it only made Isabelle's reputation at Capital University — the cool, untouchable academic — even more solid.
To contain the PR disaster, the Bonello family quietly had Lila committed to a private psychiatric facility.
Her attempt at a counterattack had destroyed no one but herself.
After the Lila incident, Isabelle became a legend at Capital University.
Nobody messed with the seemingly slight freshman anymore.
When she walked down the tree-lined path, students parted around her without thinking, watching her with something close to awe.
Isabelle was fine with that. Her days were lab and library, nothing more, and no one bothered her.
On the weekend, a black Maybach pulled up outside the Capital University gate.
Sean rolled down the window, something unusually heavy in his expression.
"Get in." His voice was low. "Grandma's critical. She wants to see you."
Washington's most exclusive neighborhood. Morgan Mansion.
The Morgan family was one of the oldest and most deeply rooted Chinese dynasties in North America, and its internal factions ran deep. The main house was packed with members of the extended family, each wearing a different expression, each running their own calculations behind their eyes.
Sean kept close to Isabelle as they moved through the crowd and pushed open the door to the master bedroom.