A ray of suns.h.i.+ne irritated his eyes. He squinted as he tried to figure out where he is.

"Oh...CEO Zhou is awake..." the excitement in the voice of the old man was obvious.

Chairman Song giddily strode towards the barely conscious man who was securely tied to a single sofa.

With clotted blood was still over his nape and shoulders, Verdan Zhou struggled to make out what was happening.

Suddenly, he felt the rope around his arms loosening.

A man in an all black attire and sungla.s.ses approached him, but stopped a couple of steps away, as he carried a brown legal envelope.

Another man in black placed a table between the single sofa and the man carrying an envelope.

With a sneer, Chairman Song bent forward to mock Verdan Zhou.

"Tsk tsk...you should've just married my idi** daughter as planned. Y'know, I could always force her. She moves as I want her. I..." he chuckled. "I would've not needed to do this to your pretty face, boy." He laughed sinisterly, then abruptly stopped with a frown.

His subordinates who had smiles when he was laughing recovered their indifferent look when he stopped.

"Pen." Chairman Song ordered.

The man who had the envelope placed it on the table and took out its contents. Then he produced a pen from his coat pocket.

Another man rudely pushed the injured Verdan Zhou, making him almost hit the table with his face. Dan at least managed to support himself by propping his torso by pus.h.i.+ng on the table with his forearms.

"Sign here." Chairman Song had a wide grin on his malicious face as he pointed to an area in the paper.

Dan looked up to him, then turned to where the wrinkled finger was pointing.

Dan chuckled. "Sure."

With shaky hands, he grabbed the fountain pen on the table.

Chairman Song's grin became even wider as he watched every stroke from the pen.

His face contorted when he saw that Verdan Zhou wrote 'Joker' instead of his signature.

"How dare you mock me!" His fist landed on Dan's face with the last word of the sentence.

Verdan Zhou turned his head back to an upright position as he began to subtly laugh. Then his laughter continued into a more audible one, progressing to a contagious one as he continued to stare at the old man with mocking eyes.

"Why you!" Chairman Song slammed on the table.

At this point, Verdan Zhou was being restrained by two men, one of them tying his hands behind him.

He snickered. "Even if I sign on that paper, you still could not register that fake marriage." His smile was done to irritate the old man more.

"And why is that?" Chairman Song was skeptical. He had some men in the city registry who could register the marriage with only the papers he had with him. He could actually forge his daughters signature. However, he had never gotten a good signature from Verdan Zhou.

For some reason, the employees of ZFC had been loyal to the company and the CEO. No one provided him with doc.u.ments signed by the CEO himself. Small matters are actually handled by the directors and his a.s.sistants so he does not need to sign everything.

Verdan Zhou looked up at the old man with a smile bordered by his bleeding lower lip.

"Too bad for you. I'm already married."

Chairman Song had wide eyes. He landed another fist onto Dan's face.

"Get rid of him!" he ordered, and strode out of the dark room, with all but one of his men following.

One was left behind. He was tasked to kill him.

Verdan Zhou sensed the hesitation in him. "Can you even do as they say?" He had a wide grin.

The man felt insulted and dragged him up by the collar, but said nothing.

He almost dragged Dan out of the abandoned building, into a black van parked just outside.

The man aimlessly drove until he decided to take the prisoner on a cliff by the sea.

Verdan Zhou continued to mock his capabilities. "Would you rather work for me? I could give you a higher pay. You who could not even decide what to do with me will only be useless to them. I am the CEO of ZFC. I can give you a better job." he offered.

Within a few feet away, Romina Ta was walking under the moonlight. She knew the pa.s.sages among the bunch of trees near the house her father once built for their family.

As she neared the cliff, she could hear a familiar voice, seemingly reciting a monologue since no one answered back.

When she could finally see his face, his whole body was pushed from the cliff by an unknown man.

"No!" She shouted. Then she covered her mouth, realizing her mistake.

The man became aware that another person was there. However, he was more scared in being caught by the police. He ran away after quickly scanning the area and seeing no one.

Romina Ta tried to calm herself as she hid behind a large tree.

When she was certain that the man had gone, she hurried to view the raging waves below the cliff. She shuddered as she thought that it would be impossible for him to survive.