Even if Jensen’s confidential information was heavily encrypted, as soon as Ernest’s men got their hands on it, it only took them several hours to decrypt the whole thing.
Everything regarding his cash flow was exposed.
Based on what they found, they determined that Jensen definitely had connections with the Harris family.
The Harris family was established in the Riverside City few generations ago. They were basically nobles of the city, and their nationwide influence was nothing to scoff at, either.
The head of the family loved collecting all sorts of weird and wonderful treasures and rare commodities. Thus, there was a high probability that they had also collected some Cocos throughout their collector career.
So, they speculated that Jensen was from the Harris family.
In order to obtain more detailed information, Ernest would have to get his men to follow up on this case. At the same time, he would also have to get people to follow and spy on Kieran to see what his next moves were.
If he chose to go back to his home to ask for help, it would still favour Ernest as it would make it clear that it was that specific Harris family that they had speculated about.
Because of that, Ernest was not exactly rushing to get the whole thing over with, but he was not lazing about, either. He had to execute his actions right on time, not earlier, not later.
“Collin, you’re more familiar with these older medicines, so you should look through what Zack has collected over all these years.”
If the rare, precious medicine was abundant enough to be recorded, some of it must have been auctioned off, so there must be some records of it somewhere in the world.
Moreover, Collin was an extraordinary doctor, he also paid a lot more attention to rare medicines than an Average Joe. Thus, it made sense to appoint him to look for the medicine.
For that, Collin went to Ernest’s study.
Without hesitation, he nodded and said.
“Very well, leave that to me.”
The other reason for investigating Zack’s preference when it came to precious medicine was so that Ernest could find out what he liked or what he needed.
If he knew what Zack desperately wanted, he could use that item to trade for the Cocos from Zack, which was not that bad of a choice, either.
However, there was one condition for this trade to work, which was if Zack did not care about Jensen’s well-being.
Collins sat in front of two laptops and a pile of books.
He drank a cup of coffee and prepared to start working.
“Click” sounded as the door swung open, the person clearly not bothering to even knock on the door once.
Stanford walked into the room and stopped in front of Collins. With his height towering over him, Stanford looked down at Collins with a gloomy gaze.
Collins shivered in fear as his heart started racing.
‘Isn’t he together with Phoebe? Why is he looking for me now, then?’
Thinking that, Collins watched his words and asked, “Are you looking for me, Mr. Fraser?”
“Yes,” replied Stanford monotonously.
Silence followed after that.
Three seconds later, Collins could not stand the awkward silence and asked, “How can I help you?”
“Something,” replied Stanford in the same dreadful monotonous voice as before.
Collins was rendered speechless by his response.
‘Are you for real right now? Of course I know that there’s ‘something’ that you need help with, but the least you can do is tell me what is it exactly that you need my help with, man.’
To save his hide, he asked cautiously.
“Mr. Fraser, we can’t afford to waste any time when it comes to dealing with Kieran. I’m researching about Zack Harris as we speak, so is the thing that you need my help with urgent?”
Of course, the meaning behind his words was, ‘If it’s not urgent, don’t bother me.’
Stanford pursed his lips, as his expression turned cold and stern.
After he spent some time to think about it, he replied with his deep voice, “It is urgent.”
Then, he added, “Teach me, what is love, or rather, how is it like to love someone?”
Collins was once again rendered speechless.
Bewildered, he stared at his boss with wide eyes.
‘This classifies as ‘urgent’?’
‘This, classifies as ‘urgent!? Are you having a laugh?’
Collins felt hopeless, as he refused to nudge from his seat.
Stanford waited for two seconds before becoming irritated in an instant and said with a much colder voice.
“Follow me, now.”
Stanford did not wish to delay this matter any further.
To him, the concept of ‘love’ was entirely unscientific, like the object known as ‘love’ between Ernest and Florence, as all he wanted to do to their love was to crush it with his own hands.
Looking at the mountain of books in front of him, coupled with not an insignificant amount of gigabytes of information in the laptop, Collins could not help but feel as if his brain was being torn apart from the information overload.
He thought, ‘Men who fall in love really do lose their minds, huh. He can’t even separate important matters from trivial ones now.’
To Stanford, matters concerning women meant the world to him.
With a heavy heart, Collins tried to struggle one last time and said, “While I’m no stranger when it comes to dating women, I’ve never fully committed myself to any of them. To me, women are just that, women. I’ve never truly loved any one, so I can’t exactly tell you what ‘love’ means.”
“Heh.”
Stanford chuckled, as a menacingly cold aura started emitting off him, “I thought you liked running that big mouth of yours all the time, going around preaching about your values or what not. Now you’re telling me that you don’t know anything about love? Well, since you’re now useless to me, I might as well send you to Country A to mine coal, then.”
Understandably so, Collins was startled.
He bounced off from his chair and put on the most disingenuous smile ever known to mankind, “I do recall about some of my experience. Let’s go, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Upon hearing his plead, Stanford suppressed his menacing aura slightly.
Then, he turned around stylishly and left the room with a brisk pace, as if he was about to miss a flight.
At the same time, a despaired Collins was left with a pale face as he wondered why was he forced into becoming a love consultant despite being a legitimate doctor.
‘Come on man, I’m not even remotely qualified to talk about this.’
“Urgh.”
He sighed, as he unwillingly dragged his body outside to act as the love expert for his boss.
As Collins closed the door behind him, he left behind Ernest, Timothy, and the basically untouched mountain of books.
Timothy hesitated for a while before asking.
“Sir, should I start looking into Zack now?”
After Collins’ unexpected departure, he hesitantly offered to take Collins’ place.
Ernest looked at the door gloomily, smiled slightly, and said as if he had figured everything out already, “No need, Collins will be back before you know it.”
Confused, Timothy asked, “May I ask why? I’m pretty sure that Mr. Fraser has no absolutely no clue what love is, from what I’ve seen so far. If Collins was to explain everything to him, I doubt that he will be free to go in a short while.”
In his opinion, when it came to talking about love, both sides would have much to talk about, especially since they would have to talk about themselves and whoever they happened to love.
Which was why being caring ‘big sisters’ and love consultants were not easy tasks.
Ernest smiled playfully as he replied, “Do you think that a playboy would have much to talk when it comes to love?”
Upon hearing his response, Timothy felt like a switch in his brain was flicked, as he understood what Ernest meant in a flash.
‘Oh right. Collins never had a proper girlfriend to begin with. He definitely doesn’t have any experience when it comes to intimate relationships, and even if he does, it’s probably some experience that’s as shallow as a kiddie pool.”
‘What’s more, he probably has a flawed view on love as a whole.’
Thinking of that, Timothy asked worriedly.
“If Collins isn’t as knowledgeable as Mr. Fraser made him out to be, if he was to teach Mr. Fraser about love, wouldn’t he mislead him very easily? What if he really did mislead Mr. Fraser?”
Ernest stroked his chin, as he said with a laid-back tone.
“If nothing supernatural happens, he will probably be misled.”
Timothy was speechless.
He could not believe when his boss knowingly refused to stop Collins from leading Stanford down the wrong path, as if he was waiting for some bizarre stories to unfold in front of his eyes.