Weston took a few more steps forward, the sound of laughter breaking the silence around him. “Did you argue with your dad again?” came the familiar voice of Xavier.
Weston glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrowing as Xavier emerged from the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere. Xavier’s eyes glinted with mischief, and he casually patted the dust off his clothes, the picture of someone who had never known fear. It was clear that Xavier had lived a life of privilege, his every action exuding a certain arrogance.
“You bastard!” Xavier snapped, his voice sharp with annoyance. “I did you a huge favor, and you dared to hang up on me?”
Weston didn’t even break his stride. He simply glanced at Xavier and continued walking, calm and unaffected. No matter how loudly or obnoxiously Xavier spoke, he was just another man to Weston, and not someone who could rattle him.
Xavier hurried to keep up, his tone shifting as he fell into step beside Weston. “I was serious about the question I asked on the phone,” he said, his voice taking on a more curious note. “When did you start messing around with women? And who was that woman on the road? Who is she?”
Weston halted abruptly, turning to face Xavier with an unreadable expression. “Let’s make a deal,” Weston said coolly, his voice flat but firm.
Xavier might have appeared friendly, but Weston knew better. Beneath that genial smile lay the cunning of an old fox. He’d seen it many times before, how Xavier could charm someone into parting with large sums of money, only for him to disappear without a trace, like smoke in the wind.
With that in mind, Weston didn’t feel the need to entertain Xavier any further. His mood was relatively neutral, so he didn’t mind the brief exchange. He walked away, heading towards his car.
Without hesitation, Weston drove to a destination far from his home, to a place that no longer felt foreign. Fern City was now as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He knew every street, every corner, and every route Stella would take from her house to her workplace.
He turned a corner and parked his car across from a small restaurant. A large tree shielded his car from view, casting it in shadows and hiding it from prying eyes.
His gaze shifted to the apartment building across the street. He noticed that one of the rooms, which should have had its lights on by now, was dark. Furrowing his brows, he wondered where Stella could have gone so late in the evening.
Just as he was about to pick up his phone and make a call, his attention shifted to the restaurant. He spotted Stella through the window, sitting with two men. She was dressed casually, her outfit relaxed, but the scene caught Weston’s attention. A few glasses of beer sat on the table in front of them, and they appeared to be in the middle of a lively conversation. The two men wore disposable gloves stained with reddish oil, a clear sign that they were enjoying something greasy and messy.
Stella, however, wasn’t eating. In fact, she hadn’t touched the food at all. She simply sipped her drink every now and then, her gaze focused on the two men across from her. One of them was Stella’s brother, Roger, but the other man was unfamiliar to Weston. He had a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, his demeanor gentle, almost out of place in the noisy restaurant.
Weston stepped out of the car, the cool night air hitting his skin. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the car door, his eyes never leaving the restaurant. As the cigarette burned between his fingers, the ember glowing in the darkness, Weston watched Stella’s silhouette through the window. Her face remained calm and composed, her posture relaxed as she listened to the conversation. From where he stood, he could only see her slender legs and delicate ankles, the soft white sandals she wore adding a sense of casual elegance to her otherwise simple look.
Then, something caught his eye—Stella laughed. It was a bright, uninhibited sound, and her eyes lit up with a radiant joy. In that moment, she seemed to glow, a beam of light amidst the dim, noisy surroundings. Weston’s heart tightened slightly at the sight. There was something undeniably captivating about the way she laughed, as if nothing in the world could dampen her spirit.
As the unknown man spoke, he occasionally glanced at Stella, his gaze lingering just a moment too long. Weston’s sharp eyes noticed this instantly. He wasn’t naive—he had interacted with enough people to know exactly what that look meant. Weston flicked the ash from his cigarette, exhaling a slow, deliberate breath of smoke. His eyes darkened, the ever-present calm in his demeanor slowly shifting to something more ominous.
He could feel the shift in his mood, a growing discomfort that gnawed at him. The man across the table from Stella clearly had an interest in her—one that Weston did not appreciate. He flicked his cigarette to the ground, grinding it under his heel, his thoughts consumed with an unshakable sense of unease.
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