Even in the middle of this dangerous situation, his first concern was making sure she was completely safe and comfortable.
A sea of black-clad figures stretched along the entire edge of the cliff. There had to be at least a hundred men standing in perfect formation. They were wearing traditional martial arts clothing and black cloth masks that covered their faces, making them look exactly like the Serpent Society assassins from earlier. They remained completely silent and motionless, but their presence felt like a storm cloud ready to unleash its fury.
Every single pair of eyes was locked onto Elliana and Cole with ice-cold intensity. The weight of their collective stare was almost suffocating.
The scar-faced man, standing at the front of the black-clad figures, took a confident step forward. A cruel, twisted smile spread across his lips as he looked at the couple standing before him.
“How absolutely touching this is,” he said, his voice dripping with false sweetness. “You two are so devoted to each other. I suppose that you would like to be together even in death.”
Cole felt a surge of murderous rage building in his chest, but he forced himself to stay in control. His voice came out sharp and dangerous when he spoke. “Stop playing games with us. What the hell do you actually want?”
The scar-faced man turned his head slightly to glance at Taylor, who still stood frozen like a statue behind him. Then he looked back at Cole, and his cruel smile grew even wider.
“What we want is really quite simple. We want you to die in his place instead.”
Both Elliana and Cole narrowed their eyes. The pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place. So the promise of “business negotiations” had been nothing but a complete lie from the very beginning. This entire situation was an elaborate trap designed for one purpose only: to murder them both.
The scar-faced man raised his arm and pointed toward something at the edge of the cliff. “Do you see that device over there? That phone has been recording everything that happens on this clifftop since the moment you arrived. The footage is being streamed live to our people in real time.”
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Following the direction of his gesture, Elliana and Cole spotted a black tripod standing near the cliff’s edge. A smartphone was mounted on top of it, and the small red light of its camera blinked steadily like a malevolent eye.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” the scar-faced man continued with obvious pleasure. “If you jump off this cliff in Taylor’s place, we guarantee that we’ll send him back to Ublento completely safe and unharmed. But if you refuse our…”
“Generous offer…” He paused dramatically, savoring the moment. “Well, then you’ll have the privilege of watching Taylor take that final dive instead.”
His wicked grin stretched wider across his scarred face. “And we’ll make sure to post the entire video online for the whole world to see. Everyone will get to watch how the great and mighty head of the Evans family is actually nothing but a coward who was too afraid to die for his own cousin. Let’s see how you manage to face the world after that kind of humiliation.”
It was a threat of such pure, twisted cruelty that most decent people couldn’t even imagine thinking of such a thing. Yet the scar-faced man spoke about it as casually as discussing the weather, clearly taking great enjoyment in their situation.
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