Free Web NovelChapter 364: Chapter 362: Will You Give Up on Me?
Yates Donovan always said those men couldn’t take good care of her.
But now he was in Jynsia, and the accident had happened right under his nose.
He wasn’t any better than them.
’What a bunch of useless fools.’
’They should have been more careful. With so many people around, how could they let a perfectly fine girl end up in this state?’
Mia looked at the time, confused. "Weren’t you supposed to have taken off?"
"Forget taking off. If something happened to you, I’d parachute back if I had to."
"..." Sometimes, you just had to laugh when you were left speechless.
She had to admit, though, that his joke had caused the invisible hand clutching her heart to loosen its grip.
The oppressive weight on her chest seemed to lighten.
Yates Donovan bounded up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. Seemingly ignoring Hayes Hughes beside her, he grabbed her arm and looked her over from every angle.
"How are your injuries so severe?"
"Are you bleeding?"
"Those bastards... they lied and told me you were fine."
He turned her this way and that, making her sway, and forcing Hayes Hughes to release the hand he was holding.
Mia suspected that had been Yates’s true intention all along.
She slapped his hands away. "Stop shaking me. I’m really fine."
"It looks worse than it is. It’s really nothing."
Mia saw him staring at the gauze on her face. Her brow furrowed, and she instinctively raised a hand to touch it, but Hayes, who was beside her, quickly stopped her. "Don’t touch it."
Mia snapped back to reality and obediently lowered her hand.
"What are you looking at!"
She glared at Yates. "My face is ruined. I’m disfigured. Are you happy now?"
Yates frowned, unhappy with her words.
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?"
"Who curses themselves like that? Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey. Unsay it, you didn’t mean it."
"..."
Just like that, the inexplicable anger in Mia’s heart was extinguished by his childish words.
In truth, she didn’t know why she had said something like that either.
She just didn’t like the way he was staring at her face.
A sudden, malicious thought surfaced, as if taunting him: ’Look, the face you like so much is ruined now. Isn’t that a pity?’
Mia forced out a breath. "Sorry."
Yates froze, shooting her a strange look before glancing away, clearly a bit uncomfortable. He turned to Hayes. "Is her head really okay?"
"She’s fine." Hayes held up the X-ray films in his hand.
Clearly, Yates didn’t believe a word Mia said. And as much as he disliked Hayes Hughes, he had no choice but to trust his words right now.
"Really? She seems to have rattled her brain and started spouting nonsense."
Mia resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "You should hurry back. You can probably still make your flight."
Yates’s first instinct was to say he was in no mood to leave. But then, for some reason, he nodded. "In that case... you take good care of her."
He said this to Hayes.
Then he stepped aside, adopting the tone of a father whose daughter is all grown up and leaving the nest. "Go on, go on."
"..." Mia thought he was being very strange. Her lips parted, but in the end, she only said, "Text me when you land."
Things were hectic for him overseas, so it was normal for him to be in a hurry to get back.
So she didn’t say anything more, just urged him to hurry back to the airport.
Yates was headed in a different direction, and soon, their respective cars disappeared from each other’s sight.
In the car, Yates took Mia’s medical reports and looked through them carefully.
Only after confirming several times that she was alright did he put the papers aside.
"Is Wallace dead? Why hasn’t he called me back after all this time? Does he still want to be president or not?"
On the way to the hospital, Mr. Payne had called the university administration and asked them to send over the surveillance footage.
It was unclear if they were actually busy, but there had been no update, so it was no wonder Yates was losing his temper.
"Wallace was probably at the hospital just now. I’ll call and check again." Mr. Payne went to hurry them along.
Five minutes later, the video finally came through. Mr. Payne adjusted the settings and pulled up the footage on the car’s television screen.
7:57 AM.
Mia appeared within the camera’s frame. She wasn’t fond of carrying a backpack, so she was cradling her textbooks, holding a sandwich in one hand and a carton of milk in the other, walking slowly behind her roommate.
Perhaps because of the crowd, she kept her head down, carefully watching her step.
Overhead, a potted plant on a third-story windowsill was dislodged by the wind and came crashing down.
Yates already knew what happened next.
But watching it happen, his heart still lurched violently in his chest.
In the video, someone screamed, and the once-orderly crowd of students instantly descended into chaos.
Fortunately, the bodyguards who were undercover as students sprang into action immediately.
Even though they answered to different bosses, they had all become familiar with one another over time. At this moment, they acted with perfect unspoken coordination, diving swiftly into the crowd.
Some of the bodyguards cordoned off the area, forming a protective circle around Mia.
Others called for an ambulance and collected the evidence from the ground; Hughes Private Hospital was nearby, and getting her there via ambulance would be much faster than driving.
Besides, the extent of Mia’s injuries was unknown, so they didn’t dare to move her rashly.
At the time, Mia had been completely stunned. The bodyguards spoke to her, but she didn’t respond at all.
Finally, Mia seemed to want to say something, but the ambulance had already arrived.
"Is this the only clip?"
After watching it, Yates was still displeased. "Tell Wallace to send me all the surveillance footage from the past week."
"The whole week’s?"
"Are you going to watch all of it, sir?"
’That would take forever to get through.’
Mr. Payne was taken aback.
"I want to know when that potted plant first appeared there."
"It was perfectly fine, and then it just happens to fall at that exact moment—not a second sooner, not a second later."
"You can’t be *that* unlucky."
But Yates refused to believe it was a coincidence.
But they watched surveillance footage for the entire ride, and everyone who needed to be questioned had been questioned.
The facts proved that, yes, someone really could be that unlucky.
Yates fell silent.
Then he remembered Mia’s talk about having a "blood calamity."
Tsk.
’So it’s truly impossible to guard against,’ he thought.
When it rains, it pours.
With a final sigh, Yates told Mr. Payne to go make a donation to a temple.
"How much should I donate?"
"A million. That should be enough for them to do some renovations on the temple."
Mr. Payne agreed and hurried off to make the call.
A moment later, the voice behind him spoke again. "On second thought, make it more. We’re spending money to ward off disaster."
"And tell them not to be idle in their spare time. They should say a few extra prayers for Mia. She’s been rather unlucky lately."
That day, a certain popular temple in Jynsia recorded a donation of exactly five million.
Mia, for her part, was completely unaware of any of this.
At that very moment, she was having a meal at Hayes Hughes’s home.
It was too late for breakfast, yet too early for lunch.
Mia hadn’t let him cook. On the way back, she’d bought two steamers of soup dumplings from a roadside stall for them to share.
Mia ate just four before putting down her chopsticks.
She stared at Hayes for a long time before asking, "Hayes, if one day you had to make a choice... and one option was me, and the other was an offer that was incredibly tempting and advantageous to you... would you give me up?"
