29 Manipulating

I couldn't believe my ears, I knew she hated me, but never to this extent. Why would she want to kidnap me? I felt the rage and anger begin to well up within me, but I calmed myself.

For years I bore with the preferential treatment my father gave to her and my step brother over me. I bore with the domestic torture she would always put me through.

I bore with the constant abuse and slander she would do to me and I bore with not having a family. But I could confidently say that out of everything she'd ever done to me, this was the height of it.

I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe she would change someday and be a better person, maybe she would even love me like a mother would to her own son.

But not anymore, my hatred for her had finally reached its peak and I was done making excuses for her, my father, brother or anyone else.

I made up my mind right there and then that i would get my revenge on them for all the years of abuse, negligence and torture.

But first of all, I needed to get to the bottom of this. "Why did she ask for you to kidnap me?" I asked.

"We don't know, our instructions were to just keep you here until a certain date had passed, then wipe all knowledge of this event from your memory." He said.

"And what date was that?" I asked.

"The 29th of August" he said.

'The 29th?, why that day of all days to choose from' I thought. Then it hit me, I couldn't believe that this was what she wanted, so this was her plan all along.

My entrance exam to Columbia university were coming up on the 28th of August. She wanted me to miss my exams so I would be marked absent and ultimately, fail.

This must have been her revenge for the episode that occurred between us, when I went back home.

"Why did you then involve the girl in all this?" I said.

"When we got to your place and couldn't find you, we called the boss and asked her what the plan was, she said to take her and use her as bait to lure you in and then wipe both your memories." He said.

It wasn't the worst of plans, but she made two mistakes, one was bringing Ariel into the issue and the second was underestimating me.

She should have left her out of this, but she would make us both fail because she had a personal grudge with me? That was wrong.

I stood there thinking and it was obvious they were waiting for my response, Noelle would make up soon anyway so I had to wrap things up.

~Ding!~

*New quest unlocked*

<The system once again reminds you of your quest to kill these men.>

Reward: 1000 SP

Whoever was sending me these quests really wanted me to kill these men, I felt like I was being closely observed and that they wanted to see the decision that I would make.

'1000 SP is a lot. Infact, it's priceless for me right now. But I'm no killer, at least not yet. System, I'm declining the quest once again.' I thought.

'These men could be useful to me, I would need eyes and ears in the crime world as I was going into business, I could also use them against my stepmother and control the information passing between them. They had too many uses as of now.' I thought.

After waiting for a while I finally spoke. "So here's what's going to happen, I'm very sure you have to report to Gloria soon right?" I said.

"Yes" he simply responded.

"Good, now from now on I control the information that passes between the both of you, I tell you what to tell her and you tell me however she responds." I said.

"So what do we do when she asks if we've gotten you?" He said.

"You tell her that you haven't made contact yet, say you went back to my place to search for me but couldn't find any traces and that you were still on the lookout for me." I said.

"And the girl?" He asked.

"You say she's still in your possession, you tell her that sooner or later I'm going to come looking and reassure her, give her absolutely no hints that the plan you had failed." I said.

"But why should we listen to you? I could oblige you right now and just double cross you when I finally speak to her" he said, a defiant look in his eyes.

"Need I remind you that I have all your information, your families, your criminal records, I could leak them all out." I said.

I walked up to them and pulled my phone out from my pocket and began to video their faces. Some of them tried to look away or dodge but I made sure to get clean looks on all of them.

I then proceeded to make a video of the building and also Noelle who was knocked out.

"And now I have video evidence of your criminal activities." I said.

"You're a terrible person," he said, defeated.

"Now here's what could happen, I'd release this video under an anonymous persona to the police and the Everglade family. One of them would find you first and you first and you better hope it's the police. You have criminal records that would be enough to put you in jail for years and this kidnapping would be the cherry on the top. Now I can assure you then when my stepmother finds out about you being exposed, she would end all dealings with you, even if you try to expose her as your boss you would lose, the Darhk and Slater family are an absolute alliance and then you'd become their enemy. Now you'd have to face the wrath of the Darhk's, the Slater's and the Everglade's and I promise you, you're not getting out of it alive. Taking you all out would be of little consequence to them and trust me what you're witnessing right now is just a fraction of the criminality that these people involve themselves in." I said.

He simply nodded in response implying for me to continue.

"Or, you could work for me, whatever my stepmom offered you, which I'm sure is not a lot. I would pay more, I'm sure you don't doubt my abilities by now and trust me, I'm just as stable financially. Now you should even be honored that I'm not asking for you to work for me totally, I'm asking for an alliance. You would benefit way more from working for me and as I said earlier, if you ever think of double crossing me, trust me I'd know and I will put you guys away, for good. So now do we have a deal?"

The battle was over, my manipulation techniques were top notch and there was nothing he could say or do now to resist.

I was offering them way more money than Gloria and to these types of guys, money was their most important drive. It didn't take long for him to respond to me.

"Fine, we will work for you." He said, reluctantly accepting defeat.

"Good, now let's get to work." I said.