Villain’s Favorite 217

Chapter 217 Change the Plot 

After the system confirmed it, Maya bit her lip and ventured, “Can you tell me the exact timing?” 

“The exact date isn’t something I can share. Roughly within a week. Prepare yourself.” 

The system’s tone shifted into something noticeably more sober when it addressed the matter directly. “Maya, if you want to change the outcome, you cannot ask anyone for help. You cannot tell a single other person. That is not permitted under the rules.” 

The moment Maya so much as entertained the thought of telling someone, her mind went completely blank. 

For a brief stretch, she couldn’t even remember what she’d been about to do. 

She bit the inside of her cheek. That was a vivid demonstration of what the plot’s hold actually felt like. 

“Understood,” she said. 

“You cannot stop him from taking his next step. 

“Remember, Maya. The ending can be changed. The process cannot.” 

It had made that perfectly clear. 

Maya turned it over quietly. “So even if he’s walking straight toward something terrible, I can’t step in and pull him back?” 

“Correct. Because this is the original storyline, and it has nothing to do with you. If you want to intervene, you do it alone.” 

The system had no particular investment in anyone else’s fate. 

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The reason it had volunteered this information at all was because it was genuinely curious what Maya would do with it. 

She didn’t sleep at all that night. 

First thing the next morning, Maya worked her way through a string of people and found that nobody had George’s contact information. 

After an exhausting chain of favors and roundabout conversations, she finally managed to extract his number from Edric. 

She called. He picked up quickly. 

But he was clearly not in a great mood. 

“Who is this? I’m not buying insurance, I’m not buying anything, I’m not signing up for anything, and if you call me again I’ll end you.” 

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Chapter 217 Change the Plot 

His voice was drowsy and a little soft at the edges, but the threat at the end carried a very real edge to it. 

Maya stared at her phone. 

“George. Where are you right now?” 

He recognized her voice then. 

“At a private base. Can’t tell you the location.” He was hunched over his desk, mouse still moving as he pulled together research for an upcoming operation. “What is it?” 

“Something came up,” Maya said, improvising quickly. “Grandpa keeps throwing me into the mountains out back every day, and I’m losing my mind at home. I want to come stay with you.” 

“Wait, what?” 

The surprise jumped into his voice before he could stop it. 

He noticed his colleagues glancing over, swiveled his chair around so his back was to the room, and let out a quiet, short laugh. 

“Are you actually serious right now? Maya, you’d probably go hungry staying with me. I hope you know that.” 

His tone lacked the easy warmth he usually carried, and the refusal in it was understated but absolutely 

clear. 

George’s cheerfulness was a performance and his warmth was mostly surface. At his core, he ran a little darker than either suggested. 

He and Maya hadn’t spent a tremendous amount of time together, and the time they had spent together had been fine enough in short bursts. 

But he genuinely doubted he had the patience for an extended cohabitation. 

Besides, when the organization got busy, things got relentless. Most of the time they were surviving on instant noodles in the base just to cut down on logistics. 

If he somehow let Maya starve, his mother would take it out of his hide. 

Going hungry? 

That did contradict Maya’s mental image of high-glamour criminal life a little, though when she actually thought about it, contract operatives were just workers grinding through their days like everyone else. All that stakeout planning and strategic scheming wasn’t that different from an ordinary job. 

One group did it professionally, the other did it out of pure malice. 

“It’ll be fine,” Maya said, her eyes dropping, her words coming quick and light. “I’ve already mapped out our whole future. 

“If you’re completely broke, we can panhandle together. A matched set of Clark family disasters, a legendary sibling duo of absolute chaos. 

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10:14 Tue, May 12 

Chapter 217 Change the Plot 

“I’ll handle the crying, you handle the hollering. 

“As long as we’re getting through life together, nothing else matters.” 

That particular vision of the future startled a genuine laugh out of him. 

Begging in the streets together. 

Strangely appealing, actually. 

“Give me a minute,” he said. 

He didn’t have anything pressing at the moment, and the base wasn’t too far from her. 

Once the call ended, they arranged a meeting point for the evening, and he simply walked out and collected her without making a single announcement about it. 

The hour wasn’t particularly late. Back at the base, the team was gathered and chatting, and one of the female members leaned back in her chair and waved without turning around. “Hey, George. I ordered some drinks. Want one?” 

George grabbed a cup almost automatically and then, as if something had just occurred to him, shifted slightly to the side, revealing the small girl standing behind him, backpack on her shoulders, craning her head to look around the place with unabashed curiosity. 

“I brought someone,” he said, his tone completely casual. “Don’t let her starve. Remember to give her some of whatever you’re eating.” 

In his view, taking care of a child basically just meant keeping them alive and fed. 

That was, after all, how his own parents had raised him. 

In the early years, Wendy had been the one bringing in the money while Raymond stayed home with the 

kids. 

And Raymond took care of them like they were dogs before they grew a bit older. 

When George was small and the noise got to be too much, Raymond would simply put him in a dog crate and call it building character. 

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