Chapter 3

“Mr. Brooks, we just happened to run into each other.”

“Pah, who believes in your ‘just happened’? You already stole twenty years of my life. Now you want to steal my fiancée too? Are you disgusting or what?”

Faced with Ryan Brooks’s accusation, I really was in the wrong.

And with my current standing, if I fought her head-on, the only one who’d suffer would be me and Noah.

So I tried to reason with her politely.

“Ryan, what happened back then……I really am sorry. But please believe me, this time it really was just an accident. From now on, I definitely won’t interfere in your and Ms. Morgan’s lives.”

Ryan Brooks clearly didn’t believe me.

He asked bluntly,

“I really can’t tell if you’re stupid or pretending to be. Claire liked you so much back then. If you stayed with her, how much money wouldn’t you have had? But you had to run off with some foreign rich guy whose face looked like a dog’s head and a horse’s face, and I heard you even went to be a gigolo.”

“So tell me, how much money do you want this time?”

I shook my head hard, my voice tight.

“I don’t want money, and I won’t show up in front of you again.”

“Mr. Brooks, you really misunderstood me.”

“Misunderstood?”

He snorted and cut me off.

Clearly, he wasn’t listening to a word I said.

He casually took a check from his chest and stuffed it into my arms.

“Here. One million.”

“Disappear from Claire’s sight forever after this.”

I frowned and didn’t take it.

I didn’t understand why Ryan Brooks would suddenly become so generous.

I remembered that back when he kicked me out of the Brooks family, Ryan Brooks didn’t even allow me to take two extra sets of clothes. That day, it was raining heavily, and one kind servant had chased after me, trying to stuff an umbrella and a thick coat into my hands.

He stopped her in a shrill voice:

“Don’t give him anything! Which piece of clothing or accessory on this bastard wasn’t bought with the Brooks family’s money? Letting him take these few things is already charity!”

Seeing that I still hadn’t reacted, Ryan Brooks forcefully stuffed the check into my arms.

Along with it, he also handed over the utility knife.

I was stunned by his sudden move and subconsciously tried to pull the hot potato-like check out of my arms and give it back to her.

“What are you—”

Before I could finish,

“Help!——”

Ryan Brooks suddenly panicked and screamed,

“Robbery! Extortion! Help!”

“Don’t kill me!”

My whole body went rigid.

I instantly realized this was a setup Ryan Brooks had made.

Behind me, hurried footsteps and the security guard’s shouts were already coming fast.

“Don’t move! What’s going on over there?”

“Stop!”

“Put the knife down, I’ve already called the police!”

Everything happened too fast.

In the blink of an eye, the security guards and Ryan Brooks’s bodyguards rushed out.

I was kicked hard from behind.

Then my face was slammed into the ground and dragged across it. It burned like fire. In my mouth, I tasted dust and the smell of rust.

My body was pinned down tightly by a restraint fork.

I was fixed to the ground, my body twisted, unable even to breathe properly.

I had no dignity left at all.

“Let go, it wasn’t me……”

“Stay still! The evidence is conclusive!”

The security guard holding me barked harshly, drawing more hurried footsteps.

Pinned to the ground, I could only see a bunch of shoes nearby. And I could hear Ryan Brooks’s panicked voice “describing” the “robbery and extortion” and “knife threats” that had supposedly just happened.

The security guard had been paid.

He gestured wildly to the arriving police, telling them how I’d been terrifyingly waving a knife around to rob people.

When I was dragged up from the ground, I saw Claire Morgan arrive.

She strode forward a few steps and pulled Ryan Brooks into her arms.

In a low voice, she asked,

“Ryan, are you hurt?”

Ryan Brooks leaned into the crook of her neck and shook his head, but the tears kept falling even harder.

Only then did Claire Morgan turn her gaze toward me.

As if she had seen something disgusting, her eyes were full of revulsion.

“Ethan Carter, do you even have any shame?”

“It’s been five years, and you’ve already fallen this low? You sold yourself for five million back then. Now that you see Ryan’s easy to bully, you want to extort another payout?”

I was left alone and helpless, and tears of grievance spilled out as I explained,

“I didn’t……”

But tears couldn’t win Claire Morgan’s sympathy.

Instead, they only made her more disgusted.

She cut me off sharply.

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t have a knife? Or didn’t ask for money? Ethan Carter, back then you could sell yourself without hesitation for money and get a good price. Now, for money, you do even lower things. What’s so strange about that?”

“I really never thought you could be so shameless. You even did something lower than an animal. The way you are now, what’s the difference between you and a maggot in a sewer? Besides wriggling around at other people’s money bags, what else can you do?”

I still wanted to explain, but I’d already been shoved into the police car.

Armed robbery wasn’t a small matter.

That night, I was detained.