QT: Against My Will-Chapter 570 - 8.87 - Interwined Destinies - Monster Heist
Bing Shi took a quick look at the photo Victor had shoved her on his phone, "I’ve printed a few and sent them to your family."
"Is that the best you’ve got?" Victor let out a mocking laugh, "Your petty games have no effect on me."
"I would have gladly sent them the footage of me beating the crap out of you with my team," she continued, "But someone conveniently deleted the video from my bus camera. I wonder who," she taunted, her eyes behind her mask narrowing around him in suspicion.
"I’ll tell you if you surrender your heart to me," Victor ordered Nora to retreat. This banter seemed to be their default mode, didn’t it? Every time he thought she had changed for the better, he would be ultimately proved wrong.
"Alright, give me your hand," Shina extracted a marker from her chest pocket. She delicately took hold of Victor’s hand and drew a black heart on his palm, "Here is my precious heart. Now tell me."
{"She is flirting with you?!"} Nora exclaimed. Her hopes were quickly crushed when Shina paused momentarily before etching their initials, S+V=✝, within the heart she just drew on Victor’s palm. {"Keep going! Don’t you dare give up brother!"}
"..." Victor’s grip on Shina’s left hand remained almost crushing, not expecting that response, "It was Leon. Keeping a proof of an assasination attempt on an Egerton wouldn’t be the wisest idea." Not even in the million years would he reveal Nora’s identity to Shina. His sister deleted the video not to protect Shina, but to prevent the Egerton clan from interfering in his business.
"Oh, how silly of me to never think of that consequence. I just pictured the uproar if it got leaked: ’Victor Egerton, Shina Night’s new pet, was tamed and domesticated in a single session," Shina handed him the marker, "You are welcome to give up your heart for adoption too if you want."
"..." In a moment of intense frustration, Victor briefly considered drawing a big "X" on Shina’s monkey mask, but instead drew a small heart under its eyes, like a playful beauty mark.
He leaned in closer, their faces mere inches apart, and asked with a hint of flirtation, "Should we seal this moment with a kiss?" He took her hand and returned the marker.
Shina swiftly kicked Victor away when he refused to let go of her hand, "I’m still mourning," and threw another kick.
"For how long?" he deflected. She kicked, he dodged.
"As long as I want," she said and lunged at him. They met with a thud that sent shockwaves through the air as he blocked her first two jabs. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"If you’re this good at mourning, I wonder how lively you’ll be if you get your shit together," Victor said and launched a kick.
Shina spun and kicked him to the ground, but he bounced back up to his feet and went straight for her.
"You love to flirt with widows, don’t you?" she asked, intensifying the effect of her barrier around his head.
Victor laughed and grabbed her arm in provocation. "What are you gonna do? Stay calm and play it cool again?" He smirked and twisted her around, "Or have you already picked your next target who will kill your boredom?"
Victor thought he liked a good challenge when it came to pursuing hard to get women, but this individual took it to another level. She made herself hard to love on purpose, yet Leon, Ezikiel, and her team went absolutely crazy for her. It was like she was playing a game of love on the hardest setting, "What if I fall maddly in love with you? Will I die too?"
"If that ever happens, I’ll make your death look as charming as you are," Shina flipped over and tried to sweep him up, but he stepped on her leg and pinned her against the wall.
"If you keep speaking like that, I’m gonna get turned on," he teased.
Shina pushed him away, grabbed his leg and swung him around in the opposite direction, "Then get a boner and die, you ass!"
The sheer momentum sent him hurtling past the wall, and he collided with another building, the collision echoing in the alleyway.
His back cracked as he groaned in pain, "Damn, this is not how you make a man surrender his heart!"
"Do I look like I care?" Only hubby could pin her against the wall like that! Shina jumped and landed on his chest, holding him down with her left foot and stomping on his chest with her right foot, "Don’t ever make a move on a mourning widow again." Her voice sounded relaxed, but her actions looked far from it as she attempted to stomp on him again.
He grabbed her legs and rolled her over, causing her to trip and fall on the ground. His movements were so fast it happened before one could even blink, "Then stop giving me so many openings," he warned, punching her stomach hard enough to break the ground beneath.
They both stopped.
’My tattoos! There is no way I’m allowing him to destroy my tattoos!’ was what Bing Shi was thinking before she focused her will to make his mind divert his energy into the earth beneath her. Her body was strong enough to withstand a punch from a regular person, but Victor was no mere mortal.
"You good?" he asked, realizing he went overboard with his powers.
"..." Shina looked down at her intact stomach and the huge, scarily deep crater she laid in, "I was this close from meeting my late husband in the afterlife," she pinched her thumb and pointer together dramatically, ’Heh, Victor’s impeccable control over his powers and strength is his greatest weakness. Just like my hubby’s.’
"You attacked me first, I’m not one to just stand there and take a beating," Victor argued. He couldn’t help but think she must have undergone some form of cultivation or body fortification to emerge this unscathed.
"You flirted with a mourning widow," said Bing Shi.
"You gave me your heart," he observed, his eyes narrowing slightly. He couldn’t pinpoint her cultivation level or sense any qi around her, which made her look all the more powerful and more dangerous in his eyes.
"I wrote a big dead cross on my heart after I gave it to you, which was my way of telling you to die," she countered.
"You know I’ll keep on living just to annoy you, right?" Victor slowly stood up. He just wanted to tell her that he was looking for a way to retrieve Leon’s soul. The fact that it had escalated into a fight between them left him bewildered.
"Annoy? Me? If that is your goal, you might want to consider a career change. That isn’t your forte, Victor."
"..." Victor swore on his life that he was going to kill her one day, "Fine, I’m leaving! Happy?"
"You better! Yeah, super happy!"
"Fine!"
"FINE!"
’Fine!’ Victor grumbled internally. It’s not like he missed Leon in any way, but it was so incredibly difficult to be in the same room with Shina without that man acting as the middleman.
Bing Shi took a deep sight.
["Kuro, sent the footage to Nathaniel."]
[Yes, host.]
’~I think you should keep the provocation down. Do you remember what happened to you when you rejected a man too many times? You got locked up in a basement, got your legs broken, and...’
’If you didn’t nerf our soul before sending it into the reincarnation cycle, none of that would have happened to Biyu,’ Bing Shi shot back harshly, ’You always chose the safer path, yet your fate still turned out worse than all of mine, Xue Bi’s and Biyu’s combined. Maybe it’s time you listened to me for a change, instead of me always listening to you.’
Dai An pursed her lips, the directness and intensity of Bing Shi’s words catching her off guard. It was as if her wings had been clipped, and she was grounded while Bing Shi soared higher, commanding the direction of their intertwined destinies.
· · ─────── · ⊱❈⊰· ─────── · ·
The atmosphere was heavy with tension as Victor’s and Nathaniel’s respective families (each within their own estates), glared disapprovingly at the materials that were being constantly sent to them, by none other than Shina Night herself.
Nathaniel’s grandfather, a stern and traditional figure, slammed his fist on the table as he saw his own son kissing a monkey mask.
"He is out of his mind!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing in the room. "Entangling himself with Shina Night, an Alpha? It’s sheer madness!"
· · ─────── · ⊱❈⊰· ─────── · ·
Inside another part of the city, Victor’s mother was equally adamant.
"Has he lost all sense of responsibility?! He had already brought us enough shame by pursuing that beta! Now he wants to embarrass us again?" she scolded, watching a video of her son pinning Shina Night against a wall.
If Shina hadn’t defended herself, her son might have done something even more reckless right then and there!
"Bringing this kind of chaos into our clan, it’s unforgivable!" The murmurs from other family members echoed the sentiment. They exchanged disapproving glances, shaking their heads in unison.
If other clans sensed weakness or division, they would seize the opportunity to ascend in status.
It became more apparent as they witnessed how Shina Night actively aided other clans with promotions and, in the process, deliberately excluded their clans.
Pushing their sons away may lead to a divide that their families may never recover from. But what stung even more was the thought that their sons might not even care about what would happen to them at all!
╔════════════════╗
To the Esteemed Elders of the Egerton Clan,
I do not share this information to bring shame upon your family. It is my hope that we can work together and avoid the eventual downfall that looms on the horizon.
I implore you, as respected leaders of your clan, to consider disowning Victor Egerton. His actions are getting on my nerves to the point where I’m starting to feel sorry for his own family.
With utmost respect,
Shina Night
╚═════════════════╝
"..." Crumbling the letter, Victor’s mother had already thought about disowning her own son a few times already!
"There’s no sugarcoating this," she began, her voice cutting through the tension in the room. "That boy needs a wake-up call! Close down all of his businesses and cut off all of his streams of income! Also, bring here that Elera Mai, or whatever her name is!"
