CHAPTER 229: CHAPTER 228. REWINDING PAST

"Hmm..."

Austin stared at his phone, the little annotation of Sarah typing something. The text never came even after waiting for ten minutes, however, so he was plagued with confusion.

"Is something wrong?" Logan asked.

"No, just checking for a possible nagging text," Austin replied while scrolling through his call history to find Hajin’s number. Twenty seconds passed without any connection; it seemed like he was in the middle of another call. "This one doesn’t answer either."

Logan looked at his watch and glanced at the hallway. "Should we wait?"

"Nah, let’s just go inside," Austin shook his head.

Ugh...they couldn’t possibly in the middle of doing something questionable, right? He wondered for a second before returning his focus to the upcoming event.

Well...that would depend on what constituted as questionable. For example, being tied and blindfolded was definitely questionable no matter the place, whether it was on a bed or at the back of a car. Especially if it was a stranger’s car.

In Sarah’s defense, she didn’t do it willingly.

That being said, she had to admit that she was being careless. No matter how fast Aegis’s agents were, Sarah should have feel suspicious that they came less than ten minutes after Hajin left. She should have checked who it was from the peephole; even if they covered it, she could still rule it as suspicious. They didn’t even pretend to be a deliveryman, so really...she was being stupid.

Yeah, that was what happened when everything went so smoothly. She became too relaxed so close to the goal like a careless runner. A careless rabbit.

And a careless rabbit got caught.

Strangely enough, after admitting that it was her own fault, Sarah quickly accepted the situation instead of feeling frustrated. It helped her to see things with a clear mind and suppressed her flight or fight response.

Doing neither, she just raised her hands and let them take her. The moment she opened the door, the gun was right in front of her; even Hajin wouldn’t be able to dodge easily. Not to mention, there were three people there, two of whom were men bigger than herself. One of them immediately grabbed the door and another one slipped through the gap so Sarah wouldn’t be able to close it.

They weren’t your regular thugs, but a bunch of professionals; gangsters, perhaps, but more sophisticated. It was impossible to choose either fight or flight, so Sarah decided to just follow them. Didn’t seem like they wanted to kill her anyway.

At least, not right away.

It kind of felt like deja vu when she was getting blindfolded and tied, shoved inside the car--a van, it seemed. The thing was...she had been offending a lot of groups so far, so she couldn’t guess which one initiated this.

Did Henry realize she was screwing him? Was it Daesung? Did the first wife find out somehow? Or was it the leftover of the group they took care of in that mountain villa? There was also that group of rich kids in the Circle--and what if Joseph’s wife and daughter found out she was the one behind the old man’s disappearance?

It was quite a lot, actually.

Suddenly, Sarah recalled what Hajin said about someone taking revenge on them.

Ah...he was right. Knowing it might be a retribution against her made her feel calmer.

"You’ve thrown away her phone, right?" Sarah heard someone say from the driver seat. He sounded like the one who pointed the gun at her.

"Yes, Hyungnim. In the highway intersection as you told me," someone from the passenger seat side--the other man. "But..."

"What?"

"Why is she so calm?"

Sarah, who was fiddling with her tied wrist, tilted her head at the question and smiled subtly. Well...what else could she do? It wasn’t like screaming would help her; it would just prevent her from hearing something that might be useful. She could act scared, but she needed to focus on her spatial perception to feel where they were going.

And it was getting weird because she felt like she recognized this path they were taking.

The driver remarked. "Probably haven’t understood her situation yet."

"Or she thinks this is just a prank," the only woman in this band of kidnappers, tasked with dragging Sarah around, poked her cheek with what seemed to be the butt of a knife. "Don’t you, little princess?"

Sarah arched her brow behind her blindfold. Oh, how could it feel so different, that ’princess’ coming from another person. Thinking about the only person who could make that one word feel meaningful, Sarah found herself wondering about the accident that befell Chairman Yoo, and opened her mouth for the first time.

"Hey--"

"Don’t talk to her."

The driver, however, interjected firmly, and Sarah lost her chance because the other seemed to regard the driver as their superior.

"Okay, okay~"

Well...back to the guessing game, then. The path actually felt more and more familiar as she heard a lot of loud sounds after they exited the highway. Construction? Heavy machinary? She could hear the sound of trucks passing the van from time to time as they went deeper into the area.

The car finally slowed down at one point, and after a loud grating sound--like a gate that needed some oil--the car finally stopped. It was a quiet environment, perhaps because they were within a fenced compound. The woman dragged Sarah out and pushed her forward, through a dirt path and a concrete step, until they entered a building and shoved her to a chair.

Only then did they take off her blindfold.

Sarah blinked slowly to adjust her vision, and the moment she looked at the room, she recognized it right away. The high ceiling and exposed beam, the rows of metal shelf with sparsed item in between; a mixture of abandoned vibe and functional space...

It was a familiar warehouse that got her burst out laughing.

The kidnapper looked at her strangely. It was weird enough that she kept her calm througout, but she even laughed?

"What’s wrong with her?"

"Maybe she’s so scared she turns crazy?" the one who was in the passanger side, the slimmer one, draw circles around his temple. "You know, that--uhh...coping something?"

The burly driver pointed at Sarah, who was still laughing with shaking shoulders in front of them. "Does she look scared to you?"

"That’s why I said maybe she thinks this is a prank," the woman said.

"Then why don’t you show her that it’s not a prank?" someone chimed in, walking inside with a loud clacking sound from her stilletos. "Is that thing on your waist just a decoration or something?"

"Y-young Miss!"

The kidnappers immediately straightened their back and bowed at the newcomer, which got Sarah to stop laughing and raised her head. Thanks to that, no one needed to use their gun--although, even if they did, it wouldn’t stop Sarah from curling her eyes at this young miss of theirs.

"Hmm...I thought so, but it really is you," Sarah smiled at the woman she finally met for the first time in this second life.

Denise crossed her arms and looked at Sarah coldly. "Are you surprised?"

"Not really," Sarah tilted her head, still with a subtle smile that puzzled her kidnappers. "I knew it when I saw this warehouse."

Denise scoffed. "Stop bluffing."

"Am I, though?" Sarah curled her eyes, leaning back on her uncomfortable chair and looked around the nostalgic, large room. "Doesn’t this place belong to your uncle? These people too."

It wasn’t just Denise who widened her eyes in surprise--the kidnappers were also stiffening at Sarah’s words, including the one who came with Denise as her guard.

"How--"

"Shut your mouth!" the driver hissed at the slimmer kidnapper.

Sarah smiled, never cease her gaze from Denise’s face. "Well, I guess you don’t want people to know--I mean, I would too if I were a climbing politician and had an illegitimate brother working at shady stuff."

Denise clenched her jaw to steady her trembling lips. Even the kidnappers were turning pale a little bit. How? How did she know? It was something that both side had been keeping so secretively: the politician and the man who took care of his dirty laundry.

How could this petite, innocent looking woman in a plain sweater and jeans knew about them?

"Miss, I think we should kill this one--"

"But what’s this about?" Sarah tilted her head, asking loudly with a genuine curiosity. "Why are you...kidnapping me?"

She was not confused about what Denise was doing. If anything, it felt right; it felt like they came full circle. Perhaps she had set the past rewinding itself when she decided to involve Mason’s fiancee in her plan. It was almost poetic how she ended up in the same place at the same day--just a little early in the day.

Strangely enough, Sarah didn’t feel distraught or traumatized this time. Even she kind of weirded out by how calm she was, throwing questions at her captors who owned guns and knives without batting an eye.

Was it because of Hajin’s speech about how he didn’t mind retribution? Or was it because she thought ending up in this warehouse again after regressing was ironically hilarious?

Who knows? But she felt strangely at ease while fiddling with her bracelet. She was more curious about that woman’s reason more than anything.

"Haa...look at you acting calm when you’re screwed already," Denise clicked her tongue, looking at Sarah with clear disdain.

"Screwed?"

Denise smirked--ah...this, too, was nostalgic for Sarah. This disdain and coldness were reminiscence of her last night in her first life. Even the way she waved her hand dismissively to beckon someone was the same.

Oh. Sarah received a sudden revelation: she had been copying Denise when she was acting like a bitch.

Denise turned her head and snapped her finger. "Hey, explain it to her."

With a clear frown of dissatiafaction, Ruby walked inside cautiously. The place was far too suspicious for a daughter of a conglomerate like her, especially because she was there without any attendant or bodyguard.

Sarah arched her brow. "What are you doing here? Registering to be her lackey?"

"Shut up! Stop acting so mighty!" Ruby snapped and glared at Sarah, the hostility override the uncomfortableness of the place. "You won’t be able to smile much longer."

Sarah tilted her head. "And why is that?"

"Because you’ll never arrive at today’s board meeting," Ruby sneered. "And you’ll never sit in the chairwoman’s seat!"

Sarah raised her brows in surprise. Ruby sniggered, enjoying the fact that Sarah was tied and powerless in front of her, without that scary bodyguard around her. She added with a smirk.

"We’ll keep you here until the chairman gives up letting you have the Group."