Chapter 201



.

After driving for over thirty miles, Hayden and Joseph arrived at Sea View.

Hayden, who was sitting in the passenger seat, had dried tear stains hanging at the corners of her eyes and had fallen fast asleep.

Joseph couldn’t bear to wake her, but he also knew they were running out of time and needed to fix things here to get back as soon as possible. So, after parking the car, Joseph patted her on the shoulder.

“Hayden, here we are.”

Hayden opened his eyes. He stared at Joseph with his sleepy eyes for a while before looking out the window as if in a trance.

The sun was shining so bright it almost burned his skin.

ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇꜱ ɪɴ ɢᴀʟɴᴏᴠᴇʟꜱ.ᴄᴏᴍ Hayden took two steps forward after getting out of the car. As soon as he looked up, he saw Joseph standing next to him with a black umbrella and asked him very nonchalantly.

“Where do you want to go?”

She regained consciousness and pointed to the grocery store in front of her.

“I want to go there. Alayna asked me to contact the store owner when I arrived. She told me that it’s the only store in this town that has a pay phone.”

He saw from his scenery that Ningpo had never been prosperous, especially Sea View. It was a poor and remote place, as if the economy there had not improved since the last century, and the residents still practiced habits from the last century. In this town, it was common to see fishermen crouched in the sun at the entrance to the store, smoking homemade cigars.

After introducing himself to the grocery store owner, the owner quickly remembered that Hayden was the woman he had spoken to earlier. He called his wife to watch the store and then took both Hayden and Joseph to look for Dante Bruke.

“Dante lives by the sea. He’s a bit strange, since he doesn’t associate with anyone in our town.”

“Is that so, why do you say he’s strange?”. Hayden followed the store owner, asking him curiously about the designer Dante.

“He doesn’t want to live the good life in the city and came back to this poor place to suffer, isn’t that weird enough?”.

Hearing her words, Hayden smiled, “Sir, a lot of people are like that nowadays. There’s too much noise in the city, so it’s pretty good to go back to the country.”

“I don’t know, but Dante still does a lot of weird things. Two years ago, the mayor of our town took us to develop a seaside resort, but he ruined the plan.”

“Oh? Why?”

“He said he didn’t want tourists to come to town and bother him, and he said the plan would pollute the town.”

“Even the mayor can’t do anything with it?”.

“Dante is educated and is the only one in our town who has studied abroad. Most people in our town listen to what he says, we don’t understand much about developing a resort, so we just go along with it.”

Sea View was remote and cut off from the outside world, so Dante, who had gone abroad, was like an authority figure, and even the town mayor respected him.

However, Hayden frowned.

Wasn’t this Dante preventing the townspeople from improving their lives for his personal gain?

If tourism was developed in the town, the whole town would have a new look and its development would be accelerated immediately.

After walking for almost two hours, Hayden’s legs and stomach were shaking before he heard the store owner speak something.

“Here we are.”

The grocery store owner pointed to a house boarded up on the beach.

“Dante lives there. I’m not going there. If you want to spend the night here, you can go back to town. If you can’t find your way to town, call me on the store phone and I’ll ask my daughter to come get you.”

“Okay, thank you.”

After thanking the store owner, Hayden and Joseph headed one after the other towards the unique house by the sea.

The beach was not developed at all. There was no fine, soft sandy beach, and the scenery was not very pleasant. The sea breeze smelled of fish and shrimp.

The blue and white clapboard house was surrounded by a white picket fence and had three rows of wooden shelves with salted fish and men’s clothes hung out to dry.

A swarthy, bare-chested man boiled water in the courtyard, with a pot set in the open air and using the simplest method of distillation.

It was very primitive.

Hayden and Joseph exchanged a glance and smiled as if they knew what the other was thinking.

“Excuse me, is that Mr. Bruke?”.

Hayden stood at the fence gate and asked the man politely.

The man turned and looked at her. His eyes were cold and distrustful. “Who are you two?”

“I’m a friend of Alayna’s. She asked me to come find you. I heard that you and Alayna are alumni of St. York University, and you’re older than she is.”

“Alayna?” The man stood up, wiped his hands, and walked toward the patio door. “Are you the boss that Alayna was talking about, the one with the Downey Family?”

Hayden nodded and pulled out his business card, handing it to the man.

The man didn’t reach out to take it. He still looked cold. His swarthy face was like the bottom of a pot, glowing a deep black. He looked at Hayden for a moment, before looking at Joseph.

“So, who is he?”

“I’m his bodyguard.”

Before Hayden could answer the man’s question, Joseph, beside him, said that, which surprised Hayden very much.

Hayden looked at him angrily.

“What a bodyguard nothing. You’re not… I’m sorry, you’re my assistant.”

Who would bring in a bodyguard when she was trying to recruit a talented person from the field to work for her? Wasn’t this clearly distrusting of the person?

Hayden sensed that Joseph was trying to get her in trouble.

The man shot a glance at Joseph and unexpectedly yanked open the fence gate, “Come in.”

Looking at the man’s tanned shoulders, Hayden sighed in relief and followed him inside his house.

“Mr. Bruke, I know you’ve been living here alone for a long time. It’s a shame for such a talented designer to waste his time here, so I think you might consider coming back to work as a designer for my company.”

Dante didn’t even look at her. He sat in front of his pot. The fire made his face look glowing, and his voice could be heard mingling with the ‘crackling’ sound of the flames.

“I live alone, so there’s no place to sit. Make yourselves comfortable.” Then he said nothing more.

Hayden inwardly cried out in anguish, for Alayna wasn’t lying to him, Dante really was a strange person and he knew she would have a hard time recruiting him to work for her.

Seeing that Dante ignored them, Hayden could not take it anymore. She stood in place.

She couldn’t just stand there until nightfall, could she?

As she thought, Joseph advanced a few steps and his deep voice echoed across the courtyard.

“Mr. Bruke, I think it is not difficult to ask people to help us do something, as we only have to give the person what they need. This process requires communication between two parties. There is no point in leaving us out here in the sun if you don’t tell us what you want.”

Hayden quickly tugged on Joseph’s arms, but what had been said could not be undone, just like the water that had been spilled.

Dante turned and looked at Joseph.

“Sorry about that…” Hayden quickly apologized to Dante.

Dante turned around again, still with his back to the two people.

“Your assistant is right. Giving the person what they need is paramount, but I don’t need anything.”

“Then why did you have me come here?” Hayden was slightly annoyed.

“I made you come here?” Dante looked at her and continued to look at something in the pot, “I remember what I told Alayna was not to come looking for me, since I wouldn’t go even if you came.”

.

.

.