The Unveiling of Secret Queen

Chapter 777: You Don’t Have This Face _1

Lincoln Hoffman... If it weren’t for that near miss with joining the Red Alliance, he would have faded into obscurity years ago. The Hoffman Family is just adept at marketing. By touting the reputation of Lincoln Hoffman as the number one hacker and their slight connection to the Red Alliance, they’ve been cozying up with all the major families in Beijing. Frankly, the real extent of Lincoln Hoffman’s relationship with the Red Alliance is unclear!

He noticed that the Red Alliance hadn’t given a damn about the Hoffman Family and Lincoln Hoffman over the years.

Caryn Zachmann was again at a loss for words, not knowing how to reply. Sadam Vinson didn’t want to embarrass her too much, but Caryn Zachmann’s rush to seek him out was a bit too much, and he wasn’t very tactful. He looked at Caryn Zachmann and said, "Don’t worry about Phoebe Hoffman’s issue. If Amadeus has told her to get lost, there must be a reason for it. There’s no need for you to ask me to plead on her behalf; I won’t help her. I don’t have the clout with Amadeus, and you have even less."

—I don’t have the clout with Amadeus, and you have even less!

That sentence hit Caryn Zachmann like a slap in the face, leaving her seeing stars and her mind going blank. She knew Sadam Vinson didn’t raise his voice and that Govert Griffin and the others might not have heard. Even if they had overheard, a smart guy like Govert Griffin would pretend he hadn’t. Yet her face still burned with shame as she stood there, unable to move for a long time.

Sadam Vinson didn’t bother with her anymore and took out his phone, curling up on the sofa. He pulled up Nathalie Quinlan’s profile in WhatsApp and checked it out.

Nathalie still hadn’t replied to his message.

He entered the game first, then shared a team-up link with Nathalie Quinlan and went off to play something else.

*

The Ninth Institute, Nathalie Quinlan had just returned to her room.

The moment she closed the door, her phone screen started to flicker on and off.

She didn’t rush to look at it. First, she took off the men’s scarf around her neck, laid it on the bed, then stared at the scarf for a few seconds before walking over to the fridge. She opened the fridge, searched inside, and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. Twisting off the cap, she tilted her head back for a drink.

The cool mineral water flowed down, calming her restless heart quite a bit.

But the recent scene of being pinned to the wall and having her hair touched was vivid in her mind, and she felt that someone had been getting increasingly brazen these days.

It felt like overstepping boundaries.

Yet he acted so naturally, it was as if that was the kind of relationship they had.

Nathalie Quinlan couldn’t make heads or tails of it, yet she felt something was off but couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. She simply took the water bottle to her desk, sat down, casually crossed her legs, and leisurely took out her phone.

She immediately saw a new message.

It was from Sadam Vinson again.

An invitation to play a game.

He sent her a link as well.

Nathalie Quinlan tapped her finger on the screen, half-squinting her eyes, and didn’t reply.

After spending some time with him, she realized that Sadam Vinson was the kind of guy who, ’if you just interact with him a little, can engage you in chit-chat all day long without repeating himself.’

She always avoided trouble, and since Sadam Vinson was only asking to play a game which wasn’t anything important, Nathalie Quinlan simply ignored the message.

Her gaze still locked on her long legs, she turned her attention back to WhatsApp and brought up Jhovany Sullivan’s message that she hadn’t finished reading before.

[Nathalie, have you heard in Beijing... Audrick Zachmann seems to have hit someone during a recording session.]

Jhovany Sullivan had always been a fan of Audrick Zachmann, something Nathalie Quinlan learned later on.

Apparently a fan of the motherly sort.

But... Audrick Zachmann hitting someone?

Nathalie Quinlan furrowed her brows, turned on the laptop sitting on her desk, booted it up, and found the computer’s interface even cleaner than her phone’s. She then brought up the search box and entered ’Audrick Zachmann hitting someone’ as keywords.

A slew of news articles popped up instantly.

She leaned back in her chair, squinted her eyes, clicked on one of the articles to skim through it, then logged in to Twitter to check the situation there.