CHAPTER 24: EXCEPTIONALLY TALENTED

Elara closed her eyes for a brief moment before opening them and putting on the goggles, noise-blocking headphones, and gloves to protect her eyes and hands.

She pulled the trigger, ensuring the gun’s rearward momentum was correct.

The loud, blazing sound of the gun firing and its bullet shells being thrown out of the barrel echoed in the environment, and Candice, who had never seen a machine gun operate before, closed her ears while looking at her friend in pure admiration.

Antonio, who had been looking for her, stood behind Andrew, looking at his boss in amazement.

His boss wasn’t just a girl interested in weapons. She knew how to operate them.

Elara emptied an entire coil into the target; her precision in moving the gun’s nozzle while handling it from the back and bearing the recoil on her hands as it fired was terrific, and Mr. Stewart nodded in appreciation.

Many businessmen also heard the loud sound, and they wanted to see who was testing a machine gun here. However, they were stopped by the exhibition staff as requested by the Stewart family.

Once Elara was done, she stood from the seat behind the machine gun, removing the headphones, and was about to go down when Mr. Stewart walked to her.

"Can you move it while firing? I mean, it’s not something anyone could pull, but that was the main aim of this gun. There are many machine guns in the market, but not one that can move with ease like that," He said.

He knew he was asking for too much, but he really hoped to see whether she could unlock the machine gun’s true potential.

"What will I get in return if I do it?" She asked.

Mr. Stewart froze for a second, then he nodded.

Right. How could he ask her to do it for free? She was practically risking her life.

"What do you want?" He asked.

Elara looked at Candice, who was at some distance, scared.

"You won’t threaten to take away her friendship from me again, and I need this place vacant. If I am really moving, anything can happen," Elara said.

Mr. Stewart nodded.

When the man didn’t move even after she stated her wishes, she narrowed her eyes.

"Why are you still standing here? I asked you to vacate this place," Elara asked, confused.

"You didn’t state your wish. What do you want in return?" He asked.

"I stated that already," Elara said.

Realization dawned upon Stewart, and he looked at Elara in a new light.

He then turned to his daughter and smiled. His daughter was fortunate to have made this kind of friend.

As he was about to move, Elara’s next wish stopped him.

"I will represent only if you assure my identity will be kept hidden and if you are feeling too generous, give me one of these when it’s ready at some discount," Elara said.

Her obnoxious request caught him off guard.

What could a girl possibly want this machine gun for? Until she was planning on blowing an entire empire.

"Alright," he agreed, and asked everyone to vacate the place.

They all stood on the upper floors behind the bulletproof glass partitions.

Elara sighed and sat behind the chair again before she pulled the generator’s string, which would move the chair the machine gun was attached to, like a robotic weapon.

Once it started, she placed her hand on the steering wheel and moved around, stopping in between to fire with her gun.

The way she would switch her hands between the steering wheel and the machine gun was truly admirable.

At one point, she stood on the seat, leaned back, operated the steering wheel with her foot while the machine gun was mounted upwards, and started firing.

"Even I didn’t know it could be arched like that," Mr. Stewart said.

His engineer had indeed said he had a surprise—one trick he did not show his boss. Maybe this was it.

He looked at Elara in pure amazement. This girl was not normal, not the kind he would want to mess with. If only he knew which family she belonged to, because judging by how she carried herself, it wasn’t an easy one either.

Once Elara was done, she stood from her seat and then winked at Candice, who looked at her wide-eyed.

Only this girl can make her heart flutter like this.

Elara removed her headphones and cracked the bones in her neck before taking her gloves off.

"Did you like it?" Elara asked Candice.

Since she was pretty far away, Candice couldn’t hear it, but Mr. Stewart’s man, who could read lips, told them what she was asking.

They furrowed their brows and looked at the targets she fired at.

Candice’s eyes widened when she realized she had literally written her name and put a heart after it on the targets.

"I am letting you marry a man only if he can pull something greater than this," Mr. Stewart said, chuckling at his daughter’s expression.

"The girl definitely has some rizz," he said.

At the same time, Andrew, who noticed everything, didn’t know what to think.

He had thought she was following him here, too, but the way she operated that machine said otherwise. Even at the horse riding arena...

He didn’t know his wife of three years had such an experience with weapons that could humble his entire team and family, even himself.

He swallowed hard.

This side of Elara... why did she keep it hidden from him? Why did he never see it before?

As he thought about this, he remembered Elara once picking a gun from the table when she had gone to the family house. At that time, everyone had scolded her for being so reckless and almost risking everyone’s life.

That incident now looked worthy of mockery. Elara must’ve laughed at them inside her head.

She was so talented, yet she never let it show.

Andrew’s thoughts turned into a mixture of guilt, surprise, and something he couldn’t pinpoint.

When he turned around, his gaze met with the man whom he had seen quite a few times with Elara.

He was looking at Elara, too.

"What is your relationship with her?" Andrew couldn’t help himself.

Antonio snapped out of his admiring thoughts and looked at him.

"I am her bodyguard. Why?" He asked defensively.

Andrew shook his head.

She even has a bodyguard now. Something they never gave her, even when her life was at risk as the daughter-in-law of the Lloyds. Then again, they never announced her to the world for real and never allowed her to go anywhere out of the house.

Guilty thoughts consumed him as he walked away.

"Andrew, where did you go? It’s Beatrice’s turn to demo." Sean pulled Andrew to the section, and Beatrice’s eyes glinted immediately.

She took the dismantled pieces in her hand and effortlessly mounted them into a rifle.

People around her praised her talent and called her a beauty with brains.

Beatrice’s gaze turned to Andrew, who gave her a stiff smile, his thoughts elsewhere.

"This must be tough."

One of the men commented to catch Beatrice’s attention.

"Of course, it’s hard. It takes years of practice to be good at such things," Beatrice smiled, unaware that her words made Andrew think about Elara even more.