Chapter 74 - Flock Of Birds

"Sparrow, I'm begging you, please don't involve my daughter in this. I already did what they ask me to do." 

She was standing in the middle of her hotel room. The organization middleman called her and threatened her to produce the drug they wanted. Her luggage was all packed and she was ready to quietly return to China, but he gave her a call informing her of the threat.

"You know that I don't have that drug. It was a different group of pharmacists and scientists who did it. I happened to be there, but I don't know anything about it!" she was almost yelling on the phone. But she knew from experience that these hoodlums have no soul and would do anything to get what they wanted. 

It's all business to them. They don't care that children - innocent children would get hurt in the process. 

"Listen, Liu Xichen, you had accepted the money. You don't expect them to treat you as an innocent bystander when you received cold cash from these people, do you?" 

She understood the harsh truth Sparrow was talking about. And she regretted it. But she got the money during the time that she thought she won't be getting anything from Noah. She fucked up! But it was so long ago, that she never expected that they would resurface and now twisting her arms and her neck to produce that drug.

"You had the drug from before, can we just give it to them?" 

She slumped on the edge of her hotel bed, surrendering the thought that she has the upper hand in the situation. 

"I no longer have the drug Liu Xichen. I had given them the last piece of that drug in my possession." 

"Then what do they want me to do?" she sobbed. 

The man named Sparrow didn't say anything. 

"They were asking why your ex-husband pulled out the research from the laboratory in China?"  He asked after being silent for a long time. 

"Because they found out that some data was stolen from that research! I stole them for them! Do they really have to ask that?" 

She shrieked losing it. She no longer cared about the shit they were asking her to do. She did steal those data from her ex-husband's company to give to that hideous organization.

"Liu Xichen, think of your daughter and your parents. We can't have you lost it." 

"You think I actually care? They probably knew that my daughter is currently with her father. And she is safe there. Tell them that they can't force me to do any more shit for them." she hung up the phone and went to the bathroom to puke her guts out. 

She was young. She was dazzled by the amount of cash they offered to her in the past. She was in a situation where she needed the money. She made a  mistake and she knew that there was no redemption for what she did. 

She made peace with that. But the nerve of those bastards to blackmail her with her daughter's life? She knew that Noah and the company were doing an investigation about the breach of confidential information about that questionable drug. 

She knew for a fact that even she was being investigated. It was to be expected. Everyone that was part of the research was being investigated. But they can't find anything on her. She made sure of that. She learned from her mistakes many years ago, to always keep her hands clean. 

She glanced up the mirror and saw her pale face. She opened her purse and retouched her makeup. She would do what she was supposed to do. And that is to return to Shanghai and go back to the laboratory. 

She was applying her lipstick when her phone rang and the number of the caller didn't register on her phone screen. Dread overcame her body. She was trying to act angry at Sparrow because she knew for a fact that he won't do anything to harm her or her daughter. 

However, the other people in the organization, she wasn't sure. 

Her hands trembled as she reached for the phone. She answered the call fearfully. A chilling voice was heard at the other end of the line before she could open her mouth. 

"Parrot, it came to our knowledge that you disagreed with some of the orders from the organization. Care to explain that?" 

Her knees buckled that she had to sit down on the toilet bowl for she can't steady herself to be standing up. 

"Owl." A whimpering voice came from her own mouth. "I-I don't know what to do…" 

"Do what you are told, and don't you dare disobey!" 

"B-ut Owl - " 

A busy tone stopped her in her tracks before she could finish her sentence. The call was dropped before she could explain herself. She hugged herself and closed her eyes as she pulled her legs up the toilet bowl. 

'I could ask Noah for help.' That thought was running on her head when her phone chirped with a new message. 

And when she opened it and saw the attached photos she wailed in the bathroom. She picked up the decorative vase on the lavatory countertop and hurled it to the glass shower door. In the confined space of the bathroom, the glass breaking from the impact was loud enough to bring her back to her senses. 

With her hands shaking, she opened the attached photos again. The picture was of her daughter and Noah on the tarmac of some private airstrip with Noah's private plane in the background. 

The photo has such a crisp clarity that can only be obtained from those expensive long-range cameras. Because, although the photo was taken in the distance, she could clearly see the green stone from her daughter's necklace. Her Yue was laughing in the photo, hugging her favorite panda stuffed toy that she carries everywhere. 

She opened the rest of the photo, and it was all her daughter's photos since they have arrived. The rest of the photos were of her parents who were staying in a log cabin somewhere in Switzerland. 

She bit her cheeks and with shaking hands, she dialed a number.