QT: Against My Will-Chapter 545 - 8.62 - Out Of Tune - Monster Heist

◦ Elera felt frustrated with the idea of justice in this world. It felt unjust that the main characters (Victor, Nathaniel, Shina) seemed to get away with everything.

◦ The influence of Leon Rusell weighed heavily on the authorities, compelling them to place Victor and Nathaniel under strict surveillance until they found the culprit responsible for Bertha’s situation.

◦ While Victor did nothing to defend himself (knowing nobody could do a thing to him even when found guilty), Nathaniel presented a series of evidence that shifted suspicions toward Shina Night as one of the main suspects, revealing her past identity as Silvia LeClere.

◦ The authorities were left dumbfounded. How could someone undergo such a drastic metamorphosis?

◦ After each piece of the puzzle was carefully examined and interconnected, a startling revelation emerged: Shina Night, was in fact, Silvia LeClére.

◦ The revelation spun the investigation into a whole new direction, as they grappled with the enigma of how an omega had managed to change into an alpha.

◦ One might expect that the shocking revelation would lead them to subject Shina to a battery of tests like a lab rat.

◦ However, the reality was quite different. Shina Night, with her newfound identity, seemed to become untouchable. She said that she was always a mix of alpha and omega, and openly admitted her past. She emerged unscathed from the situation due to the power and connections she accumulated along the way.

◦ The top clans didn’t want to interfere. Even when Bertha woke up, she began to defend Shina. The truth was, none of them wanted to see Shina being locked in prison or confined to a lab for testing.

◦ Elera couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the female lead’s seemingly never-ending string of lucky escapes. Despite being in situations where anyone else would face certain death, the female lead managed to avoid it, making her appear almost unreal in her ability to defy fate.

◦ Even the authorities seemed to understand the unspoken strategy the top clans took. Nathaniel Hauxley and Victor Egerton had amassed considerable power, and to slow their ascent, they needed an unassuming figure like Shina Night. Someone, who didn’t have any ties with the top clans, yet possessed the audacity to challenge the duo’s dominance.

◦ What even were Silvia’s past crimes? Someone leaked her intimate videos; she even documented a couple herself; a true attention seeker. She gained notoriety for tormenting her twin brother and pursuing Nathaniel, though her attempts always backfired spectacularly.

◦ Amidst all this chaos, she embraced the public outrage and seemed to consistently draw the short straw, often ending up injured or embarrassed. As if that wasn’t enough, she dabbled in some shady dealings too. Oddly enough, she still managed to shine academically!

◦ The multitude of efforts to tarnish her reputation benefited none other than Riley, Victor, Damon, and Nathaniel. If Shina and her team could navigate the tempest created by the combined efforts of those four people, then there was no limit to what she could achieve if she got the backing from the top clans.

· · ────────── · ⊱❈⊰· ────────── · ·

Current time.

As evening fell, the rest of Shina’s team gathered at Alain’s place to trade a few items in the city’s market.

Within the confines of a living room, Douglas snapped a cheeky photo of his unshaven armpits, in response to the photos and videos someone had sent to Shina Night.

Juliet read the most recent text and scoffed quietly, "This can’t possibly be a real person."

In the photo, the focus was solely on the man’s captivating lower face and body. The content didn’t show his whole face, but one could see it could easily rival Nathaniel’s features.

In one of the photos, the man’s lips were slightly parted, with his teeth gently biting down on his bottom lip, adding a touch of subtle sensuality.

His thumb tugged at the waistband of his pants, the lighting highlighting the contours of his muscular chest. It cast subtle shadows that added depth and allure to the composition.

"Did he send new content? Show me, show me!" Laura exclaimed, eagerly wanting to feast her eyes on the enigmatic Adonis. However, her excitement turned to a frown of disgust as she laid eyes on the picture Douglas had just sent—a close-up of his hairy armpit.

"But seriously, who is this guy?" Aria took the phone from Douglas and walked into Alain’s house basement. She knocked on the door before stepping inside, "It’s me, Aria. I think we should talk about this guy and his fixation on you."

"Who?" a muffled question came from behind a cloth screen.

Aria reached out to slowly pull it aside to reveal Shina lying on a padded table, her head down, and her shirt off.

The place was adorned with various tattoo equipment and soft music played in the background, creating a calming atmosphere.

Sitting on a chair, Ru Quan’s hands moved with a steady and confident precision as he gently pressed the tattoo needle against Shina’s skin. With each stroke, his vision slowly materialized into a mesmerizing composition.

Aria was momentarily captivated by the tattoos that fully covered both of her Shina’s arms, "What happened to Victor?"

"Ah?" Bing Shi answered, "Resting... probably?"

"..." Aria’s attention quickly shifted to Victor, who was sitting on a couch at the other side of the room, and immediately got into a defensive position, "!!!"

Did they ambush Victor just for Shina to leave him unattended? Aria had anticipated a grand spectacle of torture and interrogation when their Lady ordered them to capture him. Yet he sat there, devilishly handsome as ever, seemingly unscathed.

"Let Victor have a look," Bing Shi said, "He is really good at tracking down people, he might help you with it."

Aria cautiously approached Victor, eyeing him suspiciously. She extended her hand, holding out her phone toward him. "We need to find out this man’s identity," she said, her voice laced with skepticism.

Victor nearly choked on his drink when he stumbled upon his own pictures being circulated among Shina’s team. {"Explain this, Nora."}

The images that had surfaced were from a bygone era when Victor had dabbled in the world of acting and singing with another body and identity.

{I know you deliberately invite chaos into your life just to feel less bored, so I saw no problem in making it even more complicated,} said Nora, recalibrating herself to her sisterly mode, {’I made you believe that Silvia was a stupid whore to keep you busy during my absence. Kept your lazy ass engaged, didn’t I?’}

"..." Victor asked Aria to send him the pictures and gritted out a sarcastic thank you to Nora.

{"You’re welcome,"} Nora replied, her tone laced with proud smugness.

Victor was a brilliant man, intelligent beyond one’s imagination, yet he chose this path of recklessness. It was not due to a lack of self-awareness or an inability to make calculated decisions.

On the contrary, he possessed the clarity of mind to realize that entangling himself with Riley would lead him to a dead end.

In fact, he could have saved Riley instead of Silvia, but he chose not to. The most annoying thing in the world was the love between soulmates like Riley and Damon — it was something he could never obtain — and something he had tried to get, by taking a fragment of Bing Shi’s soul under his care (because she didn’t have a soulmate at that time).

Nora’s brows twitched at the amount of spam she received from Shina’s team, ’Who hands their private phone to their underlings to play with as they please?!’

No matter what anyone did, it didn’t seem to affect Shina in the slightest, and Victor had probably figured it out.

Victor dragged his fingers through his hair, leaning his back against the couch as he observed the new tattoos on Shina’s skin, "So you made them drag me all the way here to get my tattoos fixed? It must suck to be your underling."

"Uh-huh," Bing Shi hummed, "I didn’t expect them to get you here so fast. Do you mind waiting until I get my ink first, or do you want to get yours done first? I already showed Leon your canvas."

A vein throbbed visibly on Victor’s forehead, his irritation mounting at her casual demeanor, "Did the phone that girl just brought in contain those photos?"

Bing Shi paused. The brief moment of silence stretching out between them, "Uh-huh..." Then, with a blithe response, she said, "It’s time for my beauty sleep...Bye!"

"..." Victor’s gaze was sharp, almost burning a hole into her with its intensity. No amount of beauty sleep could salvage the mess she had become...he wanted to retort this more to himself than to her.

Bing Shi had initially perceived Victor as a significant threat, but his actions — or lack thereof — caused her to reassess. Victor didn’t subject Bertha and Ru Quan to the same torment that Silvia had to endure, which said a lot about his moral compass.

After confronting so many shades of evil, she decided that Victor fell somewhere in the choir of angels, albeit a bit out of tune.