Chapter 363 A Message for Zara
Hubery was still shaken when he stumbled out of the bar.
If Dylan had not been there tonight, Hubery might not have made it out in one piece.
His expression was grim. Only now did he realize that the people he spent all his time flattering had never truly considered him one of them. To those rich kids, he had merely been someone to toy with.
If they wanted to ruin him, he had no power to fight back.
Their social status was worlds apart. He could not afford to offend any of them.
A trembling young woman followed beside him. She was technically his girlfriend.
Technically, because Hubery had plenty of women he called his girlfriends. This one had simply stayed with him the longest.
She was obedient, easy to control, and came from a family with a little money.
But if she had not shown up and caused trouble tonight, none of this would have happened.
The girl looked frightened and pitiful as she cautiously asked, "Hubery, who's Zara?"
During the confrontation, she had heard Hubery claim that he was Zara's former classmate. After that, the others had stopped attacking him, and an arrogant-looking rich kid had even stepped in to save him.
From the way they talked, Zara seemed to be a woman.
Naturally, that made her suspicious.
"What does it matter to you who Zara is?"
Hubery was already furious. He had lost every scrap of dignity he had tonight, and she had witnessed him at his most pathetic.
All he felt now was humiliation and anger.
None of this would have happened if she had not come looking for him.
He was just about to lash out at her when a ghostly figure suddenly appeared in the parking lot.
It was a young woman in a white dress. She looked pale and delicate, almost too fragile to withstand the wind.
She approached without making a sound.
Then her voice suddenly broke the silence.
"You know Zara?"
Hubery and his girlfriend both jumped in fright.
When they looked up, the girl was already standing right in front of them.
She was around five feet seven, with an unnaturally thin frame. She was not merely slender. She was so emaciated that the sight of her made their skin crawl.
It looked as though there was nothing beneath her white dress but a skeleton, with the loose fabric barely hanging from her bones. The empty space beneath the oversized dress gave her an eerie, hollow appearance.
Her face was deathly pale, and her eyes were almost entirely brown. Her pupils seemed to fill two-thirds of each eye, far larger than they had any right to be.
One look at her was enough to inspire instinctive fear.
Apart from that, her features were actually quite delicate.
Hubery's girlfriend immediately grabbed his arm, a chill running down her spine.
It took Hubery a moment to recover. "Yeah. Who are you?"
An unsettling smile suddenly spread across the girl's face. Her long, bony fingers, which looked as if they were covered by little more than skin, closed around Hubery's arm without warning.
"It doesn't matter who I am," she said. "If you want to live, have Zara come find me."
Then her hand tightened.
In an instant, Hubery felt as though he had been dragged into an empty void.
His eyes went blank, as if his soul had left his body. Without a word, he began following the girl.
His girlfriend froze before forcing herself to call after him.
"Hubery? Hubery, what are you doing? Why are you going with her?"
The girl's words had already been terrifying, but Hubery's complete lack of response was even worse.
His girlfriend grabbed him and pulled with all her strength, but the thin girl might as well have been anchored to the ground. She could not move either of them an inch.
Hubery continued walking after her in a daze.
After his girlfriend tugged at him a few more times, the girl glanced back.
It was only a brief look, but an invisible force struck Hubery's girlfriend and sent her flying backward.
The blow was not powerful enough to seriously injure her, but hitting the pavement still hurt like hell.
By the time she scrambled to her senses, she finally realized that there was something deeply wrong with the girl.
A terrified scream tore from her throat.
"You two are unbelievable. I paid several thousand dollars for this tablet, and somehow you managed to break it just by watching Peppa Pig!"
Back at home, Zara shook the tablet from side to side, but the screen remained completely black.
Aurelion and Dino had been watching something when it suddenly shut off for no apparent reason, so they had brought it to her.
Zara could not figure out what was wrong with it.
Aurelion asked, "Fine, I believe you paid several thousand for it. But when did you buy it?"
"Five years ago," Zara replied.
Aurelion fell silent.
"Then it died of old age!" Aurelion protested. "How is that our fault? No wonder it kept freezing whenever we watched anything!"
She had used a five-year-old electronic device until it finally gave out, yet she still had the nerve to blame them.
Zara rolled her eyes. "I still paid five thousand dollars for it."
After trying a few more times, she finally accepted that the tablet was beyond saving. "There's no point wasting money on repairs. Fine, I'll buy another one."
"Buy two," Aurelion said. "Dino and I want our own."
"Are you paying for them?"
Aurelion answered without the slightest hesitation, "Make the Black Clan pay!"
Zara fell silent.
Wonderful. He was demanding money with even more confidence than she did.
Aurelion had clearly forgotten that he was supposed to be the hostage here, not the one placing orders.
Still, just as Zara was preparing to take Aurelion and Dino shopping, the police arrived at her door.