“Miss Powell, are you alright?”
At this moment, Elisa’s gaze had become unfocused. She hung her head low, feeling weak and powerless. After a while, she finally raised her eyes and looked at the empty wine bottle on the table.
She had been drugged.
When she entered, she was already on guard. After all, no matter how tough she pretended to be, she was still a defenseless woman. It would only take a slight squeeze to kill her.
But she didn’t expect her opponent to be shameless enough to drug her. And the wine bottle on the table was brought in by a waiter when she arrived. She had been observing her surroundings, and they couldn’t have drugged her right under her nose. That could only mean…
The waiter had drugged her from the beginning and brought it in. She had fallen into their trap since she entered this private room.
There was a commotion behind her, and Elisa collapsed on the floor, supporting herself on the coffee table as she turned her head.
Ivan, who had just fallen to the ground, was untied by someone and stood up. He kept his head low, his eyes darting around, but he didn’t dare to linger on Elisa for a second.
“You can leave now.”
Ivan bowed his head meekly. “Mr. Bell, I’ve given you my sister. As for the money I owe…”
“Forget about it.” Lukas gestured to his henchman beside him.
The man took out a check from his pocket. “This is the ten million our boss promised you from the beginning.”
“Tha-thank you…” Ivan stiffly accepted it.
“Alright, now get lost.” The man gave him a disdainful look. Someone who could deceive his own sister and hand her over to others had no future, just a worthless coward.
Ivan turned around resentfully, clutching his abdomen. He had some sympathy for Elisa at first, but when he thought about the kick she gave him, he gritted his teeth and quickened his pace.
She didn’t even consider him as her brother, so what did it matter to him whether she lived or died?
“Ivan! Elisa mustered all her strength. Her mind was already starting to blur, and everything seemed like a double image. She shook her head and bit her tongue, trembling as she spoke, “Brother, are you really… going to abandon me… and leave alone?”
Ivan paused in his footsteps, his hand on his thigh tightened.
It had been a long time since he heard Elisa calling him “brother.” Her voice was so fragile, trembling and unclear.
He remembered that when Elisa was just learning to speak, the first word she said was “brother.”
Ivan covered his abdomen and lowered his head, his ears ringing and his mind filled with images of two little people fighting.
“Hurry up and get lost!” Lukas’s henchman behind him impatiently berated him.
Ivan automatically blocked out the sound. He didn’t care about her. He hated Elisa. It was because of her that his mother died, and now his father too. She was a disaster!
Suppressing the panic surging in his heart, Ivan fled in a panic.
Elisa’s vision grew increasingly blurry, and her face turned ice-cold.
She had been betrayed by the person closest to her.
She risked her life to save him, using up all the money she had, only to be met with disappointment and betrayal.
Elisa laughed coldly, a smile uglier than tears on her face. She clutched her aching abdomen, feeling increasingly weak.
Now she was at her wits’ end. She knew she couldn’t escape her fate tonight.
Elisa propped herself up on the coffee table, attempting to sit up, but no matter how hard she tried, she kept collapsing on the floor.
“Stop struggling.”
“Mr. Bell… aren’t you afraid of offending Hamish?”
“Hamish has some ability. He managed to become the richest man in Bankshire in just a few years. But have you ever heard a saying?” Lukas sat down beside her, crossing his long legs in a relaxed posture. “A powerful dragon cannot suppress a local snake.”
“I don’t like to force people. It’s your own choice.”
When did she ever have a choice? Elisa looked at the IOU she had just signed on the coffee table, her chaotic mind quickly flashing with something. She reached out, but in the end, she was too slow.
One of the henchmen handed the IOU on the coffee table to Lukas. Lukas glanced at it, the handwriting was still neat. He mumbled and read one of the lines.
“Voluntarily accompany someone for a night, repay Ivan’s debt. It’s clearly written on this IOU.”
When shestarted drinking, they secretly changed the agreement. Indeed, they had been waiting for her from the beginning. Ivan was just a decoy, a bait to lure her in.
Elisa didn’t want to accept her fate. She wanted to buy time and wait for someone to come and save her.
“Mr. Bell, you’re so generous. You not only made Ivan repay his debt but also gave him an additional ten million.”
“Ivan is not worth that money, but you are. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to taste the flavor of Bankshire’s number one beauty for a long time.”
Elisa had survived this long mainly by enduring. She leaned back on the sofa, half-closing her eyes, and weakly said, “Mr. Bell, you didn’t need to go through all this trouble to drug me. I already knew that when I came here today. I also know that I won’t be able to escape tonight. You’re right, I prefer willingness over coercion.”
Elisa was like a rose with thorns. Carelessness would lead to injuries.