“I’m fine, no need to go to the hospital. I’ll soak in the hot tub in the backyard in a while,” Leo shook his head.
“I’ll take you to the hot tub right now!” Sophia was anxious.
Leo nodded, then cast an icy glare at Paige and Alex. “You two can leave now. I don’t want to see you here when I come back.”
Once the mansion’s front door closed again, Jessica finally let out a sigh of relief. She quickly said to Alex, “Leo is capable of going crazy, as you’ve seen. You better return to your hometown as soon as possible.”
“We were planning to do that, Jessica, but about the money…” Alex brought up the purpose of their visit tonight.
Jessica’s face immediately showed a pained expression, but she fetched a backpack from a guest room and handed it to Alex. “Here’s fifty thousand. I see that Ethan’s not in great shape. Get him to the hospital for examination and treatment.”
Paige, who had been comforting Ethan, leaped up from the floor, seized the backpack in front of Jessica, and clutched it tightly. In Paige’s eyes, these fifty thousand dollars were exchanged for her son’s injured hand.
Now that the money was in hand, Ethan stopped moaning and managed to stand up while clutching his injured hand. In this moment, this quirky family of three had no desire to stay a second longer in this mansion.
Alex, carrying the backpack filled with money, led Paige and Ethan as they left surreptitiously.
Leo had already undressed and was soaking in the natural hot spring in the villa’s backyard, using the spring’s heat to mitigate the backlash of the evil fire.
Taking advantage of Sophia being in the bathroom, Leo picked up his phone and called Scar.
“Leo, what can I do for you?” Scar’s end seemed quite noisy, but it quickly quieted down.
“Scar, gather a few people and help me with something…” Leo briefly explained his idea to Scar.
History had a way of repeating itself, and hearing Leo propose a similar scheme, Scar couldn’t help but laugh. “Leo, your relatives are quite something…”
“Cut the chatter. Get it done cleanly and without a trace,” Leo said, then hung up the phone.
After tossing the phone aside, Leo’s lips curved into a cold smile. Fifty thousand dollars was a mere drop in the bucket for him now, and he wouldn’t even blink if he were to donate it. But for certain people, they didn’t deserve to have it.
Furthermore, Leo began planning to visit the martial arts trading market that Master Jennifer had mentioned. To completely eradicate the evil fire, he needed to find the Snowspirit Flower as soon as possible. Otherwise, with the weakening of the sealing power, the next time the evil fire flared up, it could be fatal.
Alex’s family of three left the Cloud Dream Mountain villa area, first taking Ethan to the hospital for treatment of his injured right hand before returning to their previously rented hotel.
Inside the hotel room, the backpack had been opened, revealing stacks of crisp one hundred-dollar bills. The three of them looked at the money, their eyes gleaming with excitement, and their heartbeats quickening.
It felt like they were in a dream because they had never seen so much money with their own eyes before.
Ethan couldn’t help but swallow hard. In the presence of this money, he even felt like his right hand wasn’t hurting as much.
Paige took a deep breath and exclaimed, “The smell of money is the most wonderful smell in the world.”
Amid the excitement, Alex wanted to be cautious, so he reminded, “With so much money, Jessica might change her mind. And that crazy dog Leo, what if he has second thoughts and comes after us? I think it’s best not to linger here; we should leave quickly.”
“Right, we shouldn’t waste time. Let’s go now!” Paige quickly agreed.
Just as the three were packing up and preparing to leave, the room’s door was suddenly knocked on.
“Who is it?” Alex and his family exchanged glances, puzzled about who would come this late.
They also felt a bit nervous, wondering if it was Jessica who had changed her mind.
The knocking on the door seemed persistent, so Alex reluctantly approached the door to open it.
When the door opened, Alex couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.
The person standing outside the door was not Jessica but a female hotel staff member in uniform.
“Is there something you need?” Alex asked.
The staff member replied with a smile, “Sir, hello. Today is the tenth-anniversary celebration of our hotel, and every guest staying here receives a complimentary bottle of Bordeaux wine.”
It was only now that Alex noticed the staff member holding a tray with a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, and three wine glasses.
“Thank you!” Alex took the tray from the staff member.
“Wishing you a pleasant evening,” the staff member said with a smile and left.
Once the door was closed, Alex smiled at his wife and son, saying, “Today is the hotel’s anniversary, and they’re offering complimentary wine.”
Hearing that there was free wine to enjoy, both Paige and Ethan became excited.
“Dad, open the wine so we can celebrate the fifty thousand we just got!” Ethan said with enthusiasm.
Paige also nodded with a smile. “That’s right, the three of us should celebrate.”
Alex used the corkscrew to open the bottle of wine and poured three glasses.
After a toast and a clink of their glasses, the three of them happily drank the wine.
When they returned to the sofa and sat down, after about a minute or two, Ethan began to feel his eyelids getting heavy, as if there were iron weights hanging from them.
In a daze, he thought he saw his parents lying on the sofa, asleep.
Ethan tried to keep his eyes open and reached out his left hand toward the backpack on the floor in front of him, wanting to grab it.
But he found that his left hand wouldn’t obey him, and his body felt utterly powerless.
In the end, succumbing to overpowering drowsiness, Ethan had no choice but to close his eyes.
The room’s door opened from the outside, and the staff member who had brought the wine entered. Seeing that all three of them were asleep, she used a walkie-talkie to make a call.
Two men quickly entered the room, zipped up the backpack on the floor, and quietly left the room with the backpack.
By the time Alex and his family woke up, it was over three hours later.
Ethan, being young, was the first to awaken.
He stretched and rubbed his eyes, then let out a yawn, muttering to himself, “Strange, how did I suddenly fall asleep?”
When Ethan’s gaze fell on the floor in front of him, his heart suddenly sank. “Where’s the money?”
He quickly looked around, thinking that his parents might have stored the money somewhere.
However, there was no backpack in sight, and it seemed that his parents were just waking up like he was.