Villain’s Favorite 50

 

Chapter 50 Suspicion 

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And yet this supposedly ordinary businessman had defeated every single person Raymond sent after him. 

Some of them had even ended up dead under genuinely strange circumstances. 

That alone was enough to make him take this seriously. 

After several failed attempts, Wendy accepted she couldn’t touch the man directly. Rather than letting it break her momentum, she pivoted without missing a beat. 

She picked up a weapon and went after Thomas’s business partners instead. 

One or two associates connected to the Jacksons turning up dead might not have registered as a pattern. 

But as the numbers climbed, the more perceptive members of that circle began to connect the dots. 

At what point does this stop being bad luck and start being a death sentence? 

Even with enormous penalty fees on the line, a significant number of partners chose to pay the breakage and walk away. 

Money could be rebuilt. A life couldn’t. 

Thomas received the string of accidents and partner withdrawals with something less than total shock. 

After crossing Toby, retaliation had been an expected outcome. 

His operations took serious damage, and his cash flow tightened considerably, but the breach-of-contract settlements coming in from departing partners kept the books from collapsing entirely. 

Between those payments and the support of a few core assets he’d built over the years, bankruptcy remained off the table. 

Thomas understood clearly that none of this was sustainable. 

He had no time to recover. He threw himself directly into managing the crisis. 

And then, at the worst possible moment, his son decided this was the right time to deliver his commentary. 

“Why did you bring Kaia with you? 

“She’s nothing but a liability. Now both of you are laid up and useless. Are you satisfied?” 

Lawrence said it while an uneasy feeling settled in the back of his mind. 

He remembered that in his previous life, his father had come away from that party with injuries. But nothing that serious, nothing that had required him to manage business from a bed. 

And it certainly hadn’t triggered anything close to this scale of commercial fallout. 

He attributed it to the butterfly effects his presence in this timeline had created. 

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Chapter 50 Suspicion 

Still, out of caution, he decided to ask directly. 

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“I took two Clark children as leverage,” Thomas said, pressing two fingers to his temple. A tiredness showed on his face that wasn’t usually there. “The plan was to use them as a shield if things went wrong.” 

He hadn’t anticipated the two of them biting back the way they did. 

The moment Lawrence heard the Clark name, whatever amusement he’d been allowing himself evaporated completely. 

He did, in fact, know two Clark children. 

Toby and Alfred. 

Those two names weren’t unfamiliar to him. 

One was volatile and arrogant. The other ran cold as stone. 

In his previous life, Toby had killed a considerable number of students at Harmony International School. 

Come to think of it, Kaia attends Harmony International School, doesn’t she? 

Lawrence had no intention of warning her about anything. 

The ideal ending involved all of those people being gone. Every last one. 

As for Alfred, though… 

That one had left an impression. 

They’d been something like friends, which sounded strange when you factored in what Alfred did for a living. 

But Alfred wasn’t some indiscriminate killer who couldn’t be around people without calculating their vulnerability. 

He’d show up at Lawrence’s house in the middle of the night after finishing a job, sit down, and just talk. 

Lawrence had spent a lot of time silently baffled by the man’s complete disregard for the concept of privacy. “Getting real comfortable at my place now, are you? Why do you show up whenever you feel like it?” 

“Your security system is horrid,” Alfred had told him. “That’s not an insult directed at you specifically. The security on every wealthy household I’ve encountered is terrible.” 

He wasn’t singling them out. He had equal contempt for everyone. 

Lawrence was quiet for a moment. “Are you actually good at what you do? 

“Good enough to handle a job for me? I can pay.” 

“Obviously.” Alfred hadn’t hesitated. “Our family is very poor.” 

Lawrence said nothing to that. 

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Chapter 50 Suspicion 

The man’s organization charged rates that bordered on astronomical. 

The word “poor” had no business being anywhere near that sentence. 

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“Is there anyone you’d like removed?” Alfred had said. “Ten million, and I’ll handle it. Friends’ discount, so I’ll knock one percent off. 

“I’ll need three million upfront as a deposit.” 

Removal. 

Lawrence’s mind had gone immediately to his father. 

He’d considered it. Hiring Alfred to eliminate Thomas and clearing the path for himself to take over.. 

In the end, he’d held back for various reasons. 

He’d also been too young then. 

Young enough not to see that the actual source of his sister’s suffering had been Kaia all along. 

He’d been operating under the naive belief that if he worked hard enough and eliminated enough of the people making her life painful, everything would get better. 

“There are quite a few people I want gone.” Lawrence had gone through the list of names, everyone who’d made his sister’s life worse, and then looked at Alfred. “Can you handle that? I’ll find the money.” 

Alfred had listened to the whole plan without expression and then delivered his assessment. “The reality is you don’t earn anywhere near what it would cost to hire us.” 

That was simply true. Every contract in their organization was priced against the profile of the target. 

Lawrence, at fifteen, had nowhere near the resources. 

“If you really want to protect your sister,” Alfred had told him, “you could always kill yourself. You said your father has no other children and can’t have more. If you’re gone, your sister becomes the family’s sole heir.” 

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This Time. I’ll Be the Villain’s Favorite Daughter