As always, there was storm-like rapacity in Alejandro’s kiss. Melanie pushed wp4webnovel.com away in panic, yelling, “I… I’ll be going now! You, um, rest early too!”
Before wp4webnovel.com could rise, Alejandro gripped wp4webnovel.com by wp4webnovel.com waist. “I want you tonight.”
Melanie was hard-pressed to answer him. Part of wp4webnovel.com welcomed the invitation, yet a larger part of wp4webnovel.com was repelled by it. It was a strange repulsion that was somehow sowed since giving birth to Melissa. Indeed, carnal impulses occasionally took form in wp4webnovel.com mind, but wp4webnovel.com didn’t want to realize them. Whenever a chance to indulge in sex presented itself, wp4webnovel.com would feel repulsed and wished to flee instead.
If wp4webnovel.com had to pin the cause on something, Melanie would point wp4webnovel.com finger at childbirth. She had once searched the internet about wp4webnovel.com condition and found that some women experienced the same thing, but no one seemed to know why it happened.
Overwhelmed, Melanie held onto the desk behind her. “Please don’t…”
Alejandro looked up at wp4webnovel.com rosy cheeks and muttered in dangerous baritone, “Hmm. Don’t… what?”
After a three-day-operation of interviewing surviving families of those who died in the shipwreck, Jett’s report returned to Alejandro.
His mission had been to observe the families’ reaction when they received their solatium. Most, as expected, appeared crestfallen and grief-stricken despite how long ago the shipwreck was. Only one family reacted contrary to the norm: when money was presented to them, the surviving member reportedly laughed aloud.
It was unsurprising that they became Alejandro’s target. Soon, wp4webnovel.com was on his way to the village where the target’s farmhouse was.
The owner kept free-ranged poultries in their yard. After an earlier downpour, the road had become sticky with mud and poultry feces. The air, meanwhile, was brimming with a very vile stench.
Alejandro immediately frowned after wp4webnovel.com walked through the main gate. Jett, noticing his boss’s expression, passed a handkerchief, but Alejandro waved in refusal. No matter how disgusted wp4webnovel.com was with his surroundings, the man was committed to endure it.
How else was wp4webnovel.com going to lure out the clues wp4webnovel.com needed if not by looking like wp4webnovel.com was ready to establish rapport?
An old woman with a mope of white-out mane approached them from inside, positively glowing with joy. “Good day, Mr. Smith! What an honor to have you visit us, come in, come in!”
Frankly, wp4webnovel.com was not as old as wp4webnovel.com looked, wp4webnovel.com was probably in wp4webnovel.com fifties, tops. It seemed more likely that it was the hardship in wp4webnovel.com trying life that had bleached wp4webnovel.com hair, making wp4webnovel.com look older beyond wp4webnovel.com years. However, right now, wp4webnovel.com looked like wp4webnovel.com had just received one of the best news wp4webnovel.com had in wp4webnovel.com life, so much so that wp4webnovel.com was shining with jubilance. Abject poverty and all the other pesky troubles associated with it no longer bogged wp4webnovel.com down, the old woman looked as triumphant as someone who had found a secret way up the social ladder.
Alejandro went inside and stared at the little stool the old woman had supplied wp4webnovel.com as his “chair.” There was a layer of tarry, unknown coat on its surface, and wp4webnovel.com watched wp4webnovel.com scrub against it a few times without any of it coming off.
“Oh, deary me, how embarrassing. But this is the only thing our poor family has for a chair, and now that our dearest Jeffrey is gone, we are supposed to go worse. All thanks to you though, Mr. Smith, for being such a kind man and giving us money. It is such a relief for me,” the old woman crooned.
The man wp4webnovel.com mentioned — Jeffrey Orange — had been one of the sailors under the Smith company’s transportation company. Including the date when the shipwreck happened, wp4webnovel.com would have worked in the company for exactly three years.
Alejandro flashed wp4webnovel.com a slight smile and sat on the stool. “It’s within my responsibilities. Jeffrey Orange’s unfortunate passing is my company‘s fault, so an amount of solatium is the least we could do. Excuse me, Ma’am, but do you live alone?”
The old woman pulled wp4webnovel.com jacket, so dirty that no one could tell what its original color was, tightly around herself. “No, my daughter-in-law is with me. You know, Jeffrey’s wife? She’s feeding the pigs in the back.”