Second Chances

On the other side, Liam was in his office, which featured a huge floor-to-ceiling window, outside of which hung a bright and solitary full

moon.

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Liam gazed at the moon, his emotions a tangled mess. ‘When were those photos taken? Why are there such nasty photos of Emma circulating

outside? Emma…’

Suddenly, his phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. Seeing the caller was Levi, Liam answered with a frown, “What’s up?”

“Mr. Hall, Mrs. Hall just drove out. Has she arrived yet?” Levi asked.

“What?” Liam had tasked Levi with keeping tabs on Emma’s whereabouts, so as soon as Emma left the Icovine Estate, Levi called Emma.

The person on the phone was the real Levi, who currently had no idea where Emma was. For Emma’s safety, he called Liam to confirm. “Mr. Hall… hasn’t Mrs. Hall arrived yet? She’s been out for over an hour.”

“Did you tell her I’m here?” Liam questioned.

“No…” Levi sounded hesitant.

“Then how does she know where I am?” Liam was getting more impatient.

Levi’s face was grave, stuttering, “She couldn’t be…”

Both of them had a bad feeling brewing in their hearts. Liam immediately hung up and called Emma, only to find that Emma’s phone was already turned off. “Find her immediately!” He gave Levi an order.

“Will do.” Levi stood up to make arrangements when Liam suddenly added, “Send out Team Thunder. Find her as soon as possible!”

“Mr. Hall…” Levi hesitated. “Team Thunder members are all confidants guarding you. If they are dispatched to search for Mrs. Hall, and someone launches an attack on you during that time, the consequences would be disastrous.” Levi couldn’t believe that Liam would mobilize Team Thunder to rescue Emma, trying to dissuade him.

But Liam’s voice was low and resolute. “My wife’s safety is my safety! If anything happens to her, Team Thunder might as well scram!”

“Got it.” With Liam’s mind made up, Levi immediately made the arrangements.

At the same time, Emma was already badly injured. She took another hit of anesthesia in her right leg.

To force herself to stay awake, she kept tearing open the wound in her palm, blood gushing out. But even so, there was a limit to human endurance. She was about to give out.

Several of the dozen or so black-clad assassins had already fallen. They were all wary of Emma. Without the anesthesia, they wouldn’t stand

a chance against her.

Even so, Emma was at the end of her rope. “Come on, let me guess, who’s so eager to take my life? Is it the Rossi family from Antgem? Or the Ide family from Nionheim?”

“What do you think!” The leader of the black-clad men, holding a thick rope, approached her.

Emma quickly recognized what it was a brutally thick, hard whip covered in barbs. Being strangled by such a whip around the neck would cause suffocation, extreme pain, and a gruesome death.

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“Too bad.” Emma sneered, “This used to be my most proficient weapon. Trying to kill me with that? Come on, man.” Finishing, she leaped into the air and landed a kick squarely on the man’s wrist.

The black-clad assassin winced in pain, his grip slightly loosening.

Seizing the moment of his lapse, Emma swiftly snatched his whip away.

The black-clad assassin quickly tightened his grip on the whip as soon as he realized what was happening, trying to trap Emma. However, Emma only let out a cold laugh and used the force to twist the whip around. As a result, the barbs on the whip began to twist along with it, each steel barb piercing into the man’s palm. As Emma twisted the whip, it turned into a meat grinder, gouging out the flesh from the man’s hand.

The guy was in so much pain that cold sweat was pouring down, white bones beneath the flesh revealing in his palm. Emma took advantage of his momentary lapse and swiftly moved behind him, wrapping the whip around his neck.

“Captain!” Another black-clad assassin rushed over upon seeing this, fiercely kicking toward Emma’s abdomen.

Finally exhausted, Emma had no strength left to dodge. She merely shielded her vital areas with her arms, and she was sent flying the next second. Her head hit the stairs, and she fell into unconsciousness.

A black-clad man hastily removed the whip that had been wrapped around the captain’s neck, but when he went to check the captain’s breath, extreme terror dripped his face. “The captain… is dead!”

“What?”

“Captain!” Instantly, the crowd of black-clad men erupted in fury, yanking out a massive blade and slashing straight at Emma’s abdomen, one slash after another. Blood spurted out, and the woman on the steps quickly ceased to breathe.

“This isn’t right!” Suddenly, someone noticed something off. The person on the ground wasn’t Emma, but one of the female assassins Emma had knocked unconscious before.

The man slashing with the blade growled in agony, disbelieving he had killed his teammate, someone he had worked with day and night. He roared in rage, his mind lost in madness.

The woman on the ground was wearing the same clothes as Emma. No one could have imagined that Emma had stealthily used a diversion tactic and swapped clothes with her in such a short time.

The man wielding the blade had been too excited and didn’t look closely before he hacked the woman to death. Now, Emma was nowhere to be seen around.

“Get her!”

“She’s badly injured. There’s no way she could have gotten far!” The remaining few black-clad men immediately split up to search.

Meanwhile, with her abdomen in excruciating pain, Emma was desperately crawling through the underbrush. In her past life, through fire and water and experienced even more fatal situations.

she’d

gone

But fighting alone today, she knew she couldn’t hold on for long. That last kick had damaged her internal o**ns. And the anesthetic could knock her out at any moment; her vision was already blurring, her limbs barely under control.

“I see her. There she is!” Someone noticed the rustling in the bushes, aiming a dark, ominous object at Emma.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

Sensing her cover blown, with no way out, Emma gritted her teeth and leaped, diving toward the valley behind the Watery Garden.

The silence returned in an instant, broken only by the flutter of a few startled birds taking flight from the valley after something fell.

12:58 Fri, 5 Jul

E

“There’s actually a cliff here,” remarked a black-clad man.

“Come on, let’s go down and take a look.”

“Let’s go.” The black-clad men, relentless, linked hands and began their descent toward the cliff’s base one by one.

Meanwhile, Emma was curled up, hugging her knees beside a mound of dirt, her body wracked with severe pain.

Drawing on her memories of her past life, she knew of this mound’s existence, which allowed her to survive the leap from the cliff.

The fire in her past life had left the pathways in front of the Watery Garden on the verge of collapse, forcing her to detour through the mountains on the back. In her memory, there was indeed a spot that could provide a cushion.

As she was thanking God that she didn’t end here, she heard the black-clad men drawing closer and closer.