Chapter 391

Daren was slammed to the ground, officers pinning his arms as his knees grated against the gravel. Pain shot up his legs, yet he thrashed wildly, veins bulging along his neck like knotted ropes, refusing to surrender.

His bloodshot eyes blazed with fury as he bellowed at the man restrainedbeside him. "Sherwood! What the hell is going on? Who leaked the information?"

The roar shredded his throat, spraying spit onto the dirt.

Sherwood's chest heaved; his face burned crimson with rage.

His teeth ground together, tendons standing out against the corded line of his neck. Then, in a voice that cracked with fury, he shot back, "It was Luis!We've walked right into his trap!"

The words struck Daren like a hammer. His eyes bulged,blood flooding them red.

"A trap? This is a trap..." His lips twitched, his expression warped by disbelief and rage .Then, as if something inside him snapped, he threw back his head and let out a jagged laugh-wild,despairing, bitter enough to shake the night air.

"Well played, Luis Sampson! So ruthless! You never wanted to negotiate business. You just wanted the police to cage me in one strike!" His voice cracked into a feral scream, spitting curses into the sky. "Luis Sampson! You'll never rest easy. Even as a ghost,I'll come for you!"

"The number of people who want me dead is endless,Mr. Robles. You're nothing special."

A reply slid through the wind, low and mocking.

Daren and Sherwood whipped their heads toward the voice. Two silhouettes emerged, striding side by side,their shadows stretching long beneath the searchlights.

Luis,who habitually wore glasses at night, had frames that glinted coldly in the light, and the silver-threaded patterns on his tailored black suit caught the light,flashing like knife edges. Gravel crunched beneath his shoes, every step deliberate, echoing.

Beside him walked Isaac, hands sunk in his pockets,mouth set in a hard line. His gaze was glacial,depthless-a frozen lake that reflected nothing. He didn't even blink at Daren's roaring. The wind stirred the hair on his forehead, unveiling sharp brows and eyes that gleamed like unsheathed blades.

Daren slammed his knee into the earth, ignoring the pain, forcing himself upright against the officers' hold.His voice tore from his chest. "Luis! How dare you deceive me-"

Luis cut him down with a chilling laugh. "Daren, you parade as a businessman who lives dangerously, yet you can't tell predator from prey."

The strobing police lights caught his lenses, casting twin sparks across his eyes. "Did you really think you were striking a deal with me? Ha! Pathetic. From the moment you set foot in this city,your fate was sealed.You were always going to end up in chains."

The blood drained from Daren's face. His veins, once swelling with fury, dulled to a sickly violet. He sagged,body collapsing inward as though his bones had melted,leaving him hollow.

For a moment, the silence swallowed him. Then his lips moved, dry and mechanical. "Impossible... this can't be..."

Like a cornered beast, he erupted again, straining and thrashing violently until the cuffs cut into raw flesh,streaking his shirt with blood. His cries grew savage,broken. "I'll kill you, Luis! I'll rip every last one of you apart-""Ha-ha!"

Daren's rage was drowned out by a sudden shriek of laughter.Sherwood,still pinned to the ground,erupted into a sound so sharp it scraped the night air like nails on steel. Even startled crows burst from the trees above them and, wheeled into the sky.

Luis turned his head and fixed Sherwood with a cold,unblinking stare behind his glasses. The light caught the rims and made his eyes look harder than they were.

"Cough... cough-" Sherwood laughed until a fit of coughs ripped him in half, bending forward as if the sound could choke him. When he lifted his bloodshot eyes again, the smile on his lips had unraveled into something that might have been madness.

"What a serpent in the grass... now I know what it means." His voice was a gravelly thing,flecked with phlegm and old fury. "Well played-using others to do your dirty work. No wonder you grew up under my wing...you learned fast!"

Luis lowered his lashes and took in Sherwood's warped expression.

"Yes," he said, but that single word dripped with biting mockery. "I learned a lot. How so-called loyalty dissolves in the face of profit. How to dress cruelty in velvet and shove an enemy off a cliff. Those were your lessons-your 'teaching by example.'"

He bent a little closer, voice dropping. "But, the student sometimes outgrows the teacher. And when that happens, the teacher becomes a problem and must be eliminated."

Sherwood's composure cracked; for a heartbeat,panic flickered across his face, betrayed by the nervous bob of his Adam's apple.

He was grasping for an angle, so he tried to play hurt -the practiced victim.

"Luis, I never imagined you'd turn like this! I did so many things for you-showing you the ropes, helping you fight rivals. Have you forgotten my painstaking effort all these years? Without me, you wouldn't be where you are today, and Sampson Group would've been ruined long ago!" His desperate accusations ricocheted off the empty machinery, thick with years of buried grievance. "And now you repay me with betrayal, driving me to the edge?"

Luis stayed bent, the corner of his mouth tilted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"'Painstaking effort'?" he repeated,each syllable a cold rasp between his teeth. His voice cut across Sherwood's protest like a file. "Sherwood, you cast yourself as savior so often you must believe it yourself. Say a lie enough times and even you start to swallow it."

Sherwood opened his mouth; words rose and died.Luis' stare shut him down.

"You want to remember the past? You bribed the traffickers to carry my newborn sister away to the mountains. When that initial plan went awry,you colluded with a doctor so my sister ended up in someone else's arms. My parents couldn't bear the pain of losing their daughter. My mother cracked;my father's hair went white overnight. Sampson Group nearly collapsed. While my family fell apart, you wormed your way in, earned my parents' trust, and dressed your self-interest as 'support.' You just used me. All these years, you skimmed from the company,made shadowed deals-did you think you could hide that from me forever?"

The police lights washed over Luis' profile, carving his jaw into stone.

He straightened, looming over Sherwood. "For each of those betrayals, I could've punished you with more ruthless methods. Instead, I showed mercy. You should be grateful."

Luis' dismissal sent shame and rage warring in Sherwood's face by then. For a long, brittle beat he said nothing. Then, with a thin, bitter laugh that hardly sounded like a laugh, he spat the confession as if flinging a final, ugly truth. "If I'd known then what know now-l'd have killed you, you ungrateful bastard -years ago!"