Her silence was tantamount to a confession.

"Jean Grant, speak!" he said, staring at her with a cold, severe tone. "Tell me, are you really a child of the Grant family? Say something, do you hear me?"

Jean Grant just kept her head down, utterly silent.

"Have you considered how Mom and Dad would feel? How I would feel? Jean, you’re six months away from graduating college. It’s not too late to turn back now. If she dies, Ethan Ellsworth will die too. Jean, please, spare Ethan. Tell me, where did you take Chloe Marshall?"

She suddenly looked up, tears streaming down her face. "I didn’t want to kill her. I just wanted to make her go far away from Ethan Ellsworth and never come back."

Quentin Grant pressed on. "Where did they take her?"

"She should still be at sea. They were heading due south." Upon hearing this, the police immediately deployed their rescue teams to search the southern waters.

Ethan Ellsworth even went to search for her himself.

Jean Grant was young, after all. She just sat there, crying endlessly. Ever since she’d arranged for Chloe Marshall to be taken away, she hadn’t been able to sleep at night. She was consumed by fear.

The agony she felt was hardly less than what Ethan Ellsworth was going through.

When Mrs. Grant heard Jean Grant confess the truth, she was so furious that she broke down crying several times. She couldn’t believe her own daughter was capable of such a thing.

After discussing it with her husband, she demanded that Quentin Grant, under no circumstances, let word of this leak out.

Subsequently, the Grant Family also dispatched people to search for Chloe Marshall.

Now that they knew the ship’s general direction and most likely destination, several search parties prepared to give it their all.

After seeing the news online, the men on the boat knew they were trapped between a rock and a hard place—interception teams ahead and pursuers behind. If they were caught, the Valiant Club would torture them, and they’d likely end up in prison.

The men conferred and decided to abandon ship and head for shore.

At an unknown stretch of coastline, they brought the boat to shore and forcibly dragged Chloe Marshall off. One of the men was left behind to pilot the boat further out to sea, continuing on its course, before he jumped overboard and swam back to the others.

The men watched as the boat quickly vanished into the open sea, then dragged Chloe Marshall into a nearby forest.

They tied her to a tree and hoisted her up. Dusting off their hands, one of them said to her, "You’re a liability. It’s too easy to get caught with you around. Whether you live or die now is all up to fate."

With that, the men left.

The forest fell silent, leaving no one but Chloe Marshall hanging there. Her ankles were locked in shackles, and her wrists were bound tightly in handcuffs.

She was completely unable to free herself.

A rope was tied securely around her handcuffed wrists, hoisting her up and making it impossible to get down.

Chloe Marshall was terribly dizzy. She closed her eyes and struggled for a while, only to find that she was just exhausting herself for nothing.

’I just hope someone shows up and gets me down.’

But that hope seemed slim. There was no one around.

Especially not in the pitch-black darkness.

’Who would ever find someone hanging here?’

A look of despair washed over her youthful face, now obscured by the gloom.

「Meanwhile」 The police were quickly notified of a ship moving at a steady speed, suspected to be the one used in Chloe Marshall’s kidnapping.

After officers boarded to investigate, they found it completely deserted.

They found a burlap sack, a large cardboard box, food bowls, and basic survival gear, but not a single person.

Ethan Ellsworth’s hopes were dashed, as were everyone else’s.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Where on earth had she gone? Had she fallen into the sea, or had she already made it to land?

Their only lead had gone cold. The search had just gotten exponentially harder, especially now that it was nighttime.

Herman Hawthorne had his men find and destroy the original video file. Only then did he personally go to the room where Bianca Rhodes was being held.

She was sitting there, eating a good meal. The situation didn’t seem to affect her at all, aside from the restriction of her freedom.

"Herman," she said with a smile, seeming like a completely different person.

He paused for a moment, then closed the door. "I’ve found the original file. I’ll give you a sum of money. You should leave."

Bianca Rhodes wiped her mouth and stood up. "I’m not leaving. If I go, the baby will be completely without a father."

"If you don’t leave, you won’t have a baby," he said, looking at her with dead seriousness.

She was seething with hatred inside, but her face was a mask of wronged innocence. "Herman, can’t you protect your child and me?"

"I’m not willing to hurt Zoe anymore. I promised her I wouldn’t make her suffer again."

"What about me?" Bianca Rhodes jabbed a thumb at her own chest. "Don’t you think I’m suffering?"

Herman Hawthorne stated flatly, "To me, you’re now just a stranger. Zoe is my wife."

Bianca’s barely concealed mania finally erupted. "The man who once loved me most now sees me as a stranger? Herman Hawthorne, your love is so cheap! You were never worthy of my love! Do you know why I left you when you proposed? You’ve always been like this—so lukewarm. You said you loved me, but I never once felt like you actually cared."

"So, you found a new lover, got dumped, and then came running back to me with a baby bump," he said, sitting down. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag, his eyes fixed on her coldly.

Bianca was momentarily speechless. "I was just trying to make you jealous! But you never came after me."

"Right. Trying to make me jealous by sleeping with someone else."

Her face turned grim. "I know what you’re implying. This baby is yours."

"I don’t think even you can be sure if it’s mine or not, can you?"

Bianca was rendered speechless.

In the end, she sat back down. Staring at the sumptuous meal on the table, she had completely lost her appetite.

"Herman," she began, "after all this drama, I just want to say... if you still love me, I can get rid of this baby. We can get married, and I’ll be yours for the rest of my life."

"You know that’s impossible. I didn’t marry some common girl. She’s a daughter of the Ellsworth Family."

At his words, Bianca stared at him. "Is a daughter of the Ellsworth Family really that much better than anyone else? You could arrange an ’accident’ for her. Who would ever know?"

He stared at her. "I can’t believe those words are coming from you. You used to be the person who would carefully tend to an injured cat. Now you’re telling me to murder my wife? All because of the love I once had for you? Is that it? One day, you’re going to use up what little of that love is left, and the lamp will finally go dark."

"But I’m a woman, too."

He suddenly had no desire to speak with her any longer. "Either take the child and leave, or get an abortion and stay here. The choice is yours. I’ve already done more than enough for you."

Bianca suddenly threw her arms around him from behind. "Don’t go, Herman. Can’t I please stay here, with the baby?"

"No."

She finally relented. "Then I’ll leave tonight."

Bianca Rhodes received a check for a massive sum from Herman Hawthorne. In the years that followed, she would come to regret her decision. If she had truly left then, she might not have been left with a lifetime of regret.