Chapter 5 "Mr. Gordon, you only got us to pretend to kidnap Miss Willow and scare her a little. But we were blinded by our greed. Miss Wendy found us and offered us a whole lot of money to..." "To do what?!" Connor was furious as he yelled. "Miss Wendy said that Miss Willow nearly drowned as a child, so she's afraid of deep water. She told us to kidnap Miss Willow and then throw her in the water. She said it will be fine as long as Miss Willow doesn't die." Connor's gaze was frigid. Kieran patted the trembling man down and found a recording on him. The recording was a video of the night Willow was kidnapped. It was what they had used to get their payment from Wendy. Connor felt heartbroken after he saw the video. "How much did she give you?" "Five million dollars." Connor should have realized this long ago. The way Horace treated Willow and Wendy was starkly different. When Willow had moved out, she could only afford a small apartment unit in the city. However, Wendy could spend five million dollars like it was nothing to hurt her own sister. It was no surprise that Willow would leave. It was the first time that Connor ever felt such pain. It was also the first time that he had ever hurt Willow so badly. Ever since Willow's mother passed away, she had seen Connor as the closest thing to family she had. She went through everything with him and stuck with him through all his ups and downs. She never once let him out of her sight, and she was nothing but gentle and demure with him. It was such a daring and open way of loving someone, so there was no way that Connor did not know Willow loved him. Suddenly, his phone rang. The ringtone was a special one he had set for Wendy. He picked up the call expressionlessly as Wendy spoke sweetly in his ear. "Connor, what time are you coming to the engagement banquet tonight?" "I'll be there soon." After hanging up, Connor left without looking back. "I will make these people pay tenfold what Willow suffered." When he arrived at Lidell Manor, it had been decorated meticulously. Servers holding trays of champagne weaved through the crowd of guests. Horace was beaming while surrounded by admirers and sycophants. It seemed as though no one remembered the eldest daughter of the family who had left. Connor went to the entrance of Wendy's walk-in closet and heard laughter from inside. "Oh, Wendy, has your useless sister really gone to Hurac to marry?" "Isn't that just signing her death warrant? Does she think that marrying that mafia don will give her a leg up? I'm pretty sure 1/2 she won't even survive it." "She's really risking it all for a chance to get somewhere in life." "She'll never be anything compared to you, Wendy. She's useless, just like her mother." Wendy was no longer acting like the coquettish sweetheart she was when she was with Connor. In her place was an unfamiliar, vicious witch. Every word she spoke dripped venom. "Willow is a fool. I spent some pocket change, and she felt so tormented that she came out of it like a ghost. And let's not forget how awful she looked after my bodyguards dragged her off to the airport. "So what if she and Connor were childhood friends? I can get him to believe me with just a few words." Connor scoffed before he knocked on the door. Everything would end on that night. It did not matter where Willow ended up; Connor would go to the ends of the earth to get her back. When Wendy opened the door, she wore a sweet smile. She was a different person from the vicious witch before. "Connor, I've been waiting for you for so long. Let's go." Connor also stuck a fake and doting smile on his face. He took Wendy's hand and led her to the banquet hall. The Lidell family was nouveau riche, but they were relatively young, having only grown in influence over the past twenty years. Although they had some power in the business world, they could not compare to an old-money family like the Gordon family. Their status shot up with Connor there. That night's guests were mostly people whose shadows Horace rarely ever caught glimpses of. Horace took Wendy's hand with a smile and walked forward. "Thank you, everyone, for attending tonight's banquet. I have some happy news to announce tonight." Everyone immediately started clapping respectfully. Everyone already knew that the Lidell family was announcing an upcoming wedding. At that moment, Wendy looked over at Connor with a shy smile. However, in the next moment, something showed up on the big screen that made everyone gasp.