Chapter 41 - Dropping a bomb

Meanwhile Lina had been taken hostage by Victor Tachibana and his Jagdkommando combat knife.

Lina felt a massive headache coming on as she got stressed and worried.

Why did this man scare her so much? She had freaked out the first time she saw him too.

"Victor, you're clearly not Dr. Yoshi's assistant. You came to the Moshi mansion with another purpose."

"Very good! You're still astute as ever!"

His tone was scornful.

"You have no idea the trouble you caused me, you selfish little bitch!"

His words agitated her, and made her want to kill this man.

Lina grit her teeth and retorted.

"What the hell is your problem! Why don't you explain yourself if you're so angry?"

"Explain myself?!"

Victor scoffed again.

Lina's headache got worse. Did he not understand that he wasn't making any sense to her.

'Tachibana....Tachibana...' she repeated his name mentally. Why did it sound so familiar?!

"Lina..." his voice suddenly changed and there was a pained look in his eyes. It was as if a massive load was weighing on him. "You have no idea what these last months have been like..."

With her stress levels going off the charts, Lina closed her eyes as the throbbing in her temples became unbearable.

She saw a blinding flash of flames in her eyes. It disappeared as quickly as it came. As she tried to focus her vision, she could only see black spots.

Victor continued speaking.

"He's not even really your husband...you don't know what you forced me to do..."

Lina was beginning to feel faint, her vision blurry. But Victor didn't seem to notice.

"What are you talking about...you're not making any sense!"

Her voice was trembling, but Victor didn't seem to care about her distress.

"I've had to cover up for you for so long, just because I cared too much. And you just get to sit in your big home with your rich, fake husband and play house? How could you forget me and everything I've done for you?!"

Lina shuddered. Why did this man keep telling her that Shen wasn't really her husband!

"What do you mean 'fake' husband?"

All she wanted were concrete answers but he just cared about venting his frustration at her.

"He was just a mission! Try to remember. Stop playing dumb!"

Victor was getting angrier by the minute. It didn't matter if her amnesia was real or not. His feelings had been pent up long enough. She just needed to be pushed a little, in his opinion.

Lina was now shivering all over. She felt like her chest was tightening and her throat was going dry. She desperately wanted to be with Shen. She needed his comfort. Only he could make the pain go away.

She had just begun to develop her sense of identity, find her place in this life, regain her confidence. She didn't want to get lost again. She held tightly onto her ring finger to feel the comfort of the platinum ring tying her to Shen.

Victor, noticing her actions, finally lost his temper.

He violently grabbed both her arms and shook her angrily.

"HE IS NOT YOUR HUSBAND, I AM!"

Lina's head snapped up, and she stared into his eyes, petrified.

That sentence triggered something deep inside her and a single word came to her mind.

As she stared at him thunderstruck, the word fell out of her mouth.

"Tachi..."

As soon as she uttered the syllables, the man in front of her let go of her arms and stared back at her shocked. A faint smile appeared on Victor's lips.

But, in the next second, the smile vanished. It seemed as if he had heard something or someone closeby, as his whole body went tense and he began to look around furtively.

With a single, longing glance at Lina, he whispered, "I'll find you again."

Then he took off like a rocket. He moved faster than a cat being chased, jumped over the wall she was leaning against and disappeared.

As Lina stood in her spot, frozen and overwhelmed, she heard a familiar, comforting voice at the end of the alleyway.

"Angel!"

*******

-- at the Moshi mansion --

Shen brought Lina home, asleep and exhausted in his arms.

As soon as he had found her in the alleyway, she had collapsed.

He had found her in almost no time. After Mei pulled up the footage in the office building and from all the cameras surrounding it, Shen had used James' hacking skills to track her through the city's traffic cameras.

James didn't dare to oppose Shen. He had become an obedient dog. He even wore a dog collar, with a small bottle attached to its end. The bottle contained his own, preserved cut off tongue.

Having found Lina's Lamborghini unlocked, he found traces of their spilled coffees that she had bought up to the entrance of the alleyway.

His heart hurt at the sight of her terrified, shivering figure.

He had wanted to immediately question her about what had happened, but she collapsed the minute she saw him approach.

After Shen settled her and tucked her in bed, he stormed out of their bedroom. Clearly, someone had gone after Lina after she bought the coffees. But he didn't know enough to figure out who it could be.

Ro-kun and Ayu waited obediently for him outside the bedroom.

"Ayu, you're off HR duty. Ro-kun and you will be dedicating yourselves full time to investigating Lina's past before I met her. I want to know everything that could possibly hurt her. Leave no stone unturned. Am I clear?"

Ayu and Ro-kun glanced at each other. If the boss was putting both of them, his right and left hands, onto investigative duty, he would leave himself exposed!

But they knew better than to argue. His current investigative team hadn't gotten too far regarding the assassination attempts on Lina and now he was getting impatient.

"Yes, boss."