Chapter 385: Chapter 385: How Had It Come To This?
Trenton was hiding behind a boulder. The infection and his many injuries had left him weak. If Lone Wolf had kept fighting, he wouldn’t have survived.
"Trenton, here." Cameron crawled out from a pile of bodies and helped him to his feet. As he did, he noticed Trenton’s cold glare toward the site’s exit.
"Tell the others not to let a single one of them get out alive," Trenton ordered.
Having been defeated by Chantelle earlier, Cameron was willing to take his revenge. "Roger. Our men have the mansion’s blueprint. There should be another exit."
He led Trenton to the door he had blown open earlier with explosives.
Trenton stood there, looked up, and smirked. "It’s just getting more exciting from here."
By the time Daniel returned to the mansion with reinforcements, the fight was still raging. Everyone seemed set on killing each other. His heart sank when he saw the destroyed entrance and overturned furniture.
How had it come to this? It was impossible. He had brought in a team of elite veterans, trained for over a decade in Carcosa. For Trenton’s men to break in, it would have taken a miracle, yet the chaos before him was clear evidence.
Panic gripped him as he ran into the site. The blown-up entryway made his chest tighten with dread. Chantelle and the children were nowhere in sight. Daniel grabbed one of the fighters, pressed a gun to his forehead, and demanded, "Where are the children?"
The man, clearly one of Trenton’s, only glared and stayed silent. A stray bullet ended his life before he could answer.
When the fighting finally stopped, Daniel’s men reported that Chantelle’s army had been wiped out, leaving only Trenton’s forces.
"Mr. Wilson, we’ve searched every part of the mansion, but we still haven’t found Chantelle or the children," a bodyguard said, moving to help Daniel as he stumbled into the research site.
Daniel stared at the wreckage, remembering when Kane and the other kids used to play there. Holding back his tears, he ordered his men to drag in Trenton’s people for torture and interrogation.
Screams and desperate cries filled the site. Daniel still couldn’t get any useful information from Trenton’s mercenaries. They had been hired in a rush and knew little about Chantelle or the children. Their only job had been to capture everyone in the mansion.
"Tell us everything you know, or we’ll make you talk the hard way!" One of the bodyguards picked up a piece of red-hot metal and walked toward a mercenary. The man’s eyes went wide, and he began to beg.
"Please! Don’t! I’ll tell you everything!"
"If you’ve seen the kids, speak," Daniel said, his voice cold as he fixed the man with an unblinking stare.
"All I saw was a little girl," the mercenary said quickly. "She was with a woman carrying a man who looked badly hurt. They left the mansion and got into a Land Rover."
Daniel’s finger trembled on the trigger as he asked, "What about the woman? Was she hurt too?"
"Her clothes were stained with blood, but I don’t know if it was hers or the man’s. The little girl seemed unharmed," the mercenary said, looking at Daniel with desperate hope.
Suddenly, Daniel moved closer and shot him. He didn’t dare ask about Kane and Railer.
Were they captured by Trenton, or had Chantelle helped them escape?
"Check the surveillance footage. Find Chantelle’s whereabouts," he ordered, forcing himself to stay composed.
"Yes, sir."
While some of his men followed his orders, others came back to report. "Mr. Wilson, most of the people in the mansion were Trenton’s mercenaries, but Chantelle’s side didn’t suffer many casualties either."
The low number of losses made Daniel wonder if there had been no one there to defend them. The thought of what Chantelle and the others might have gone through made him shudder.
Grabbing the arm of a dead mercenary, he said, "Find everyone with this tattoo and tell me how many there are."
He had detained two hundred men, far too many for Trenton to have gathered in such a short time. Soon, a bodyguard returned. "Twenty men, sir."
Daniel went to see them himself and saw that three of them were troop leaders he had assigned. There had been six in total, which meant the other three had led their squads in betrayal. He was stunned. These were men he had trained himself, men his mother had entrusted to him. Why betray him now?
Even so, Daniel was determined to hunt down the traitors and make them pay.
"Mr. Wilson, we’ve found Mrs. Wilson’s location," his bodyguards reported after returning from their search.
Daniel’s face lit up. He rushed out of the mansion, got into his car, and drove toward the private mansion his men had identified. As he sped along, he prayed for the safety of Chantelle and the children. If anything happened to them, he knew he would carry that regret for the rest of his life.
Chantelle paced restlessly around the room in the private villa, while Stephanie sat on the sofa looking tired.
"Lady, stop walking around. You’re making my head spin," Lone Wolf said, sitting next to Stephanie with his legs crossed. Since they had arrived, Chantelle hadn’t stopped moving, and it was starting to bother him.
"If you have nothing to do, then leave. I’ll do what I promised soon," Chantelle said, trying to calm herself down.
Lone Wolf stood up, walked over, and pressed her down to sit on the sofa. "I’ll go after you bandage your wounds."
"My injury is fine," Chantelle replied quickly. She didn’t have time to care about it now. When she brought Xander earlier, the doctor warned that his condition was serious and that he might fall back into a vegetative state.
She felt a heavy guilt in her heart. Xander had given her so much, and she could never repay him.
"If you don’t want the doctor to do it, I can," Lone Wolf said. "Come on, give me your hand." He reached out and was ready to take off her clothes.
Chantelle quickly stepped back. "Don’t mess around! Just leave now!"
"Hey, is that how you talk to your savior?" Lone Wolf frowned, unwilling to back off.
"Mommy, please treat your wound," Stephanie said in a trembling voice. She had been holding back her tears, but now her eyes brimmed with them. "If something happens to you, what will I do?"
Chantelle finally gave in and went with the doctor to have her wound bandaged.
When she returned, Xander’s ward was still closed, but Lone Wolf was nowhere in sight.
She asked Stephanie where he had gone. Stephanie explained that he had noticed someone trying to break in and went out to handle it.