Chapter 233: EVEN THE SHADOW HAD THE DARKEST SPOT
"Oh, you strange couple," Rize said with a grin.
In this enclosed room, the stench of blood and disinfectant was nauseating, but Hazel didn’t show it on her expression, nor did Ranon, who was standing next to the door.
"If you come to collect information from me, I am sorry. I have little to share. As you can see, I am bound to stay here for months before I can truly heal," Rize groaned. "This place sucks."
"So, what little information did you get?" Hazel asked. She sat down on the only chair there, crossing her arms like her husband.
Rize then looked at Hazel and Ranon, back and forth, as if asking if it would be alright to let Ranon hear this.
"It’s fine, speak," Hazel answered the unspoken question impatiently, but Rize snickered instead.
"Both of you should have worked together from the beginning." Rize then told them about what Arthur was doing in Goscht Country. And it was just like what they thought; he was there to get the support from Elise’s family. "That’s the only report I have. I have not yet met with my informant."
If Hazel hadn’t met Luther and talked her way out to get the information about Rize’s whereabouts, she wouldn’t have known this place. Rize knew how to hide himself well, and his adoptive father wouldn’t breathe a word of his location.
"What happened to you that day?" Hazel’s other intention to come here was to hear about what happened in the Candy Shop. The report about it on the news was not reliable.
Rize cursed under his breath, but his eyes suddenly fixed on Ranon. He wanted to lash out, yet he held himself back because there was Hazel in the room, and he was not sure whether Ranon had the same sentiment with his wife.
"Go on." Ranon gave Rize a green light to vent out his anger in front of Hazel, which meant he would spill what he had been doing for Ranon.
"Fuck you, Ranon," Rize hissed with hostility. "You persuaded me to look into Rafael Scar, and I told you that I didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but you and your sweet mouth managed to convince me with your money!"
"You are right." Ranon raised his brows. "But your incompetence is not my fault. I should have burned my money on Crumbs instead."
Crumbs was an organization with the same line of business as Rize’s; they had been at each other’s throats to gather information and collect business partners.
However, with Rize out of business, Crumbs grew prosperously in the past few months. Needless to say, Rize lost his avenue and men to his business rival.
"I shouldn’t have listened to you," Rize grumbled and cursed a little bit more until he was satisfied, while Ranon was exceptionally patient in listening to him.
Meanwhile, Hazel just learned that Ranon asked Rize to dig up information about Rafael Scar. What did he want? Rafael was one of Ranon’s business partners, but Ranon didn’t need to use Rize for his information.
Because usually people came to Rize with difficult requests. Something that you couldn’t ask in the open. Ranon could have asked his men to know more about his business partner; there was no need to do it through Rize’s channel.
Did Hazel miss something? She knew Rafael because he did business with Arthur Lozen to ship illegal items, but those dirty deals were common things in the business world. Everyone was a fallen angel at this point.
"I know that man is more dangerous than he appears to be."
"How so?" Hazel raised her brows. Aside from a dirty businessman with illegal shipping, Hazel didn’t really know about Rafael and his other activities, since she acted as a middleperson at that time between her family and his company.
Rize narrowed his eyes at Hazel and then glanced at Ranon, as if to see whether it was right for him to speak about it in front of Hazel.
Hazel admired his professionalism, even though he looked as if he wanted to strangle Ranon for getting him into this mess.
And when Rize saw Ranon didn’t say anything, he blurted out the information that sounded like a complaint.
"He runs a human trafficking business. The type of people that I don’t like to mess with, but your dear husband managed to convince me to look deeper into it."
"Human trafficking?" This was the first time Hazel learned this information about Rafael. "He does drugs, not human trafficking."
"He does both," Rize said as if talking to a child, which Hazel didn’t appreciate, but she was indeed in the dark about it. "Don’t you know a few years ago, he shipped human organs to Goscht Country? You are looking for Arthur Lozen, right? Yeah, that same Arthur who helped him get the raw products."
"They shipped drugs." Hazel became a little bit defensive, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Ranon, as if she was there, the one who handled everything, which was why she knew about it for certain.
"Drugs and human organs." Rize was too engrossed in his own story to notice Hazel’s strange reaction. "The Lozens are a family of mercenaries; like I said before, they provided them with the raw materials."
What Rize meant by raw materials was obviously the dead bodies.
"The Lozen family only killed important people based on a mission."
Rize chuckled. "You are so naïve." He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly but then winced in pain. "I don’t blame you; you came from the Rose family. This kind of business is out of your imagination."
Hazel was annoyed when she heard that. "I know that the Lozens are a mercenary family, but they don’t kill randomly."
"Even the shadow has the darkest spot, you know," Rize said nonchalantly. "The high rank in the family would get the most ’noble’ missions. But what do you think those Lozen’s men on the street were doing? I remember in their golden days, Lozen’s men covered the whole street in Aspen City and some cities nearby."
Learning this information made Hazel’s brain run for miles. She tried to remember if her father was involved in that kind of business. No, she couldn’t remember, even though she handled most of his paperwork.
Arthur Lozen... He was indeed very cunning. He hid this side of the family from River. But then, River was too obedient; she wouldn’t do something that her father didn’t tell her to do.
This revelation shocked her, leaving her quiet with her own thoughts.
Meanwhile, Rize didn’t see anything wrong with that; he only wondered why Hazel even cared in the first place and what her relation with Arthur Lozen was.
But then, Rize continued his conversation with Ranon, who looked at him with an impassive gaze.
"Why don’t you go to the hospital?" Ranon asked. "You can recover faster there." He wanted this man to go back on the field quickly.
"Rafael Scar owns the Central Hospital now," Rize said. "If I were you, I would not go there. Medical errors can happen, and after a few meaningless lawsuits, he will leave unscathed. Especially against a nobody like me. No thanks. I don’t want to end up as one of his raw materials."
Hazel remembered this fact. Rafael had the highest position in the Central Hospital.
"I will arrange a hospital that has no ties to him," Ranon said. "I want you to finish the job immediately."
"I am not your subordinate," Rize complained.
However, Ranon grabbed Hazel’s hand, indicating that the conversation was over and it was time to leave.
Standing up, Hazel followed Ranon out of the room, but before they left, Hazel remembered one more request that she had for Rize.
"Have you figured out who ordered the hit on the Leightons?"
"I am working on it. It’s hard to track them down."
Hazel nodded.
They had to extract this information first, because even if the McKennas and the Barlowes were out of business, the people who put the hit on the Leightons would try another mercenary too, and Hazel was not going to make her daughter fatherless or live under such a threat.
With that, both of them left the room.
And being true to his words, Rize was allocated to a hospital seven cities away.
Outside Cassie’s brothel, Ranon and Hazel walked side by side; none of them talked, but the bustling city was helping to fill in the silence between them.
They walked toward their car, which they had parked a little bit far away from the street, but then they looked at each other in tacit understanding.
Some people were following them. They had been followed ever since they left the brothel.
***
Laurel was sitting next to Carl’s bed, and this gave her a sense of nostalgia. She always did this whenever Carl was sick. There were only the two of them, because James would be busy with business.
Looking back now, most of the time, it was just Carl and her. She didn’t know how to say it, but it was a bittersweet memory for Laurel.
She stared at Carl’s bandaged wrist and felt this pain in her chest. She was still angry and disappointed with him, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but blame herself for taking part in Carl’s self-destruction.
"Do I let you down again?"
Carl’s hoarse voice cracked the silence that descended inside the room, and when Laurel looked at him, he had opened his eyes and stared at her.
"No, but you make me sad."