540: Only this once

Only this once

[Medical City Center]2

"Nonsense!" Silas winced as he felt his lungs constrict, breathing through his gritted teeth, as he glared at the man sitting beside the hospital bed. "Dom, don't give me that nonsense. Are you telling me you're choosing a mere bodyguard over a director of your company?"

Dominic maintained a calm facial front. "I'm not choosing anyone. It's wrong for my bodyguard to attack you for no reason, but we have to consider that thanks to what happened, I'm not arranging a funeral."

"Dominic Zhu!"

"Silas, that bodyguard will face consequences — I assure you. However, I can't just fire him."

"Why?"

"Because I owe him a huge debt." Dominic fluttered his eyelashes ever so slowly. "Tiger is one of the people who rescued my son and fought the people who almost took away my entire family. His action last night was wrong, and he will face the consequences according to the gravity of his actions. But I won't fire him out. However, he is considered warned. I won't let this happen next time."

Silas's face turned sour, not pleased by what he was hearing. However, with Dominic's explanation, he understood his reason for not firing Tiger. 

"Now. Let's move on to a more important matter." Dominic continued solemnly, waiting for Silas to refocus his attention on him. "Is there someone who had a grudge against you? Any idea of who could be those people watching you last night?"

Dominic jerked his chin on the tablet in Silas's lap. It contained the CCTV footage of another angle in the parking space last night. Silas gazed down at it again with a bitter countenance, seeing some silhouette who were spying on him from a distance. 

From the footage, one man in black was about to approach him last night. However, the man backed away when Tiger came. Tiger then started beating him up, explaining Silas's cast hands. 

"No," he said as he raised his face to Dominic. "I don't know who those guys are."

"Are you sure?"

"Do you think I have an enemy somewhere?" Silas let out a short scoff. "They're probably after you and mistook me."

Dominic nodded in understanding. "I see. I will give you security --"

"There's no need." Silas shook his head, interrupting Dominic mid-sentence. "I don't trust your men after what happened."

"But you might be in danger."

"Your men also make me feel I am in danger." Silas leaned back, wincing a bit at his bruised body. "I can hire people to protect me. I can manage. Just discipline your people well."

His face grew solemn as he held Dominic's gaze firmly. "I will let this slide, but only this once! If this happens again, I will apologize in advance for what I am going to do to your people."

"Fair enough." Dominic nodded. "Though you don't have to because this will not happen again. I will not forgive anyone who touches my family. Even if that means hurting them."

Silence descended on the private ward as neither of them spoke after Dominic's last statement. One could tell the sincerity in Dominic's pair of solemn eyes, easing the displeasure in Silas's heart. 

"That's good then." Silas huffed quietly. "I'm going to rest for today. I still can't use my hands — that guy really went crazy last night."

Dominic didn't say anything anymore, listening to Silas's rants about Tiger. It wasn't surprising Silas now held a grudge against Tiger. After all, Tiger did hurt Silas and broke the man's hands without mercy. Although Tiger meticulously hit the areas where others couldn't see, the footage was enough to make one wonder what compelled the man to exercise violence toward Silas. 

*

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Dominic stayed with Silas for the next twenty minutes before bidding his cousin farewell. When he left the private ward, Dominic slipped his hand inside his pocket to call someone. 

"Good work," he said quietly to the person on the other end of the line. "I already wired you the money for today's job."

"Nice." Joker kept his reply short and simple. 

Dominic was already used to Joker's ever-changing attitude on every phone call. At this point, he was aware money wasn't what truly gave Joker the thrill, considering Joker was talented enough to accumulate a fortune in the underground world. 

"I'm curious," he asked after another moment, standing in front of the elevator. "How did you come up with such a solution?"

He already had a few resolutions on how to fix the problem Tiger created without losing too much. However, he still wanted to see if Joker would have a better solution. His wife told him that Joker was good at fixing problems and thus, he wanted to see if that was true. The work Joker had done for Dominic so far doesn't consider fixing problems, after all. 

Heaven was right, though. Joker found a solution to stabilize the situation without putting Dominic at a disadvantage. Joker manipulated the CCTV footage, adding those men into the footage to make it appear someone was following Silas last night. 

"I didn't come up with the solution." After several seconds, Joker answered and then followed with a yawn. "Those guys were already there, but they were in a blind spot from the cameras. I only manipulated the footage from some dashcam and made it appear it was caught through CCTV. Well, you can say I still manipulated the footage and added those guys to it. But it's not just an imagination. Those guys were already there and if not for Tiger, your cousin might be dead by now."

Dominic furrowed his brows as he glanced at his phone before placing it back on his ear. "Any idea who might they be?"

"Do you want me to look into it?" Joker hummed as if he was having second thoughts. "Silas Zhu has a lot of enemies, you know? So, even if I look into it, I might not get a proper answer about who sent those guys. Cartels are really nasty guys. You shouldn't keep him around or just kill him, considering his face looks like yours. His enemies might mistake you for him."

Dominic knew that, but he had his plans.

"Thank you for your concern, but I'll be fine." He glanced up at the numbers above the elevator before hearing a short sound as the door opened. "Let me know if you find out something important and keep me posted on where the man I've been looking for is. It's a shame that my gift for him had been sitting in the warehouse, waiting for it to be shipped."

Once those words rolled out of Dominic's tongue, he ended the call and stepped inside the elevator. His eyes were sharp and glinting.

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