Read Novel Full Chapter 855: The Delivery Was A Setup?
Chapter 855: The Delivery Was A Setup?
The guy gestured at the armed guards and they lowered their weapons before they made their exit, leaving only those secretary girls and the Matsumoto guy behind.
He then turned back towards me, "I’m terribly sorry to have this happen to you. This is all just a terrible misunderstanding."
"Mmm... I have a few questions that I would like to ask you if that’s ok?"
"Of course," He gestured at me to go ahead while leaning forward.
"Well... I would first like to know who you are even targeting to begin with? And why?"
He nodded, "A reasonable question... Hmm... Where should I start? Ah, I suppose having this conversation while standing here would be incredibly rude of me. Please follow me."
He turned and started walking towards the door that he had appeared from earlier, prompting the secretary girls to move to surround me, leaving only the path to the guy unobstructed.
The subtle threat was quite clear as they intentionally cut off any path of escape.
Not that I was planning to leave to begin with so it didn’t matter.
I followed him through the door and he brought me through a short corridor before it ended at an elevator that took us up.
The elevator itself was big enough that it could fit all of us with space between us and still have some more space to space.
The elevator stopped and we got out to enter what was obviously this guy’s office.
The room was already bigger than the entrance hall earlier but had less furnishings with a large study desk being the centrepiece in the middle of the room.
Behind the table were several floor length windows that looked out to the station below, though right now the windows were tinted slightly so the outside looked distorted and blurry.
The Matsumoto guy then took a seat behind the desk while one of the secretary girls brought out a chair for me to sit in front of the guy.
He gestured to himself, "I am Kaito Matsumoto, CEO of Kaito Business Holdings. You can just call me Kaito."
"I see... And I am--"
"Tera, no family name. Captain of the Iridescence and leader of the Teran Mercenary Company. Platinum rank Merc. Took down a Pirate Lord as part of a subjugation request where she allegedly fought the Pirate Lord one on one in close combat and beat him. Has no failed hustles on her record so far," One of the secretary looking girls behind Kaito reported, reading off from her personal terminal.
Kaito turned back to sigh, "Oh Ariam... You shouldn’t interrupt someone who is just about to introduce themselves, you know? I’m going to have to punish you later for that."
The girl bowed deeply, "Please forgive me, Master."
The fact that her cheeks were blushing red told me all that I needed to know about what type of punishment could be expected from him.
He turned back to me and shot me a smile, "Forgive me, it seems like my subordinates have been really rude to you. You were saying?"
He’s just going to pretend like that girl did not already just reveal to him everything about me I see.
In that case...
"Tera. Mercenary," Was all I told him.
"I see, I see," He nodded, not commenting on how I was deliberately hiding everything else from him. "I suppose at this point, we should be honest with each other, shouldn’t we?"
He cocked an eyebrow at me but I chose not to answer. There was no reason for me to give him what he wanted after all. Right now, the side who has the advantage in this conversation was not their side and I’m pretty sure they are aware of that.
Unperturbed, he continued, "Very well... Let’s just start with the original question that you had... You asked who we were originally targeting and why, correct? "
My only response was to just give him a nod.
He gestured towards me, "No offense but... You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, Miss Tera."
I narrowed my eyes at him, "What are you talking about?"
He steepled his fingers in front of him, "We know you have it, Miss Tera. The tracker is working perfectly. Somewhere on your ship is the creature that you are trying to smuggle into this station."
I showed no reaction and just kept my mouth shut once again.
He gestured at me, "As you might have figured, you weren’t supposed to be the one who was caught in that trap. I’m going to make an assumption that you came across the original smuggler and you took over the job of transporting that creature from him, didn’t you?"
Once again, I still kept my mouth shut. For all I know, he might be recording down this interaction and he might use this as a way to incriminate me later on.
At least... I just have to wait for Renata to check that there were no recording devices first.
"First, I will apologise again, since there was no way for you to know this was the plan," He continued, not minding in the slightest that he had to monologue. "And I’m sure as a Merc, you would take jobs that would get you paid so there’s no reason for you to reject a job like this. That much I understand. As a gesture of good will, let me explain everything as now you have become involved in this whether you like it or not."
He then waved his hand above his table, prompting a screen to be projected in front of me which showed an attractive looking woman with bright aqua coloured hair.
He gestured at the screen, "Yuki Nakamura, CEO of Nakamura Security. As you might have figured, we are business rivals as my company is also a security company offering armed security and protection for my clients. Right now, the both of us are in a competition to secure a security contract with the owner of this Pleasure Station and she has been resorting to very... Questionable means... To make me back out of it. The newest plan she had was to let loose a horde of alien creatures on the station and pin the blame on me while getting the credit for being able to stop it."
One of the secretary girls then handed the rectangular shaped device that I saw the police officer holding onto earlier to Kaito and he waved it at me.
"Thankfully, my subordinates managed to uncover this plan of hers and we had intended to use this plan against her by intercepting the creatures ahead of time. This was tuned to track a very specific creature that had a very specific device embedded in it and it’s pointing directly at your ship. I do not think there is a possibility that it was wrong."
Right then, I heard Renata’s voice whisper beside my ear, "Daddy~ As you thought... There are recording devices around the room, do you want me to disable them?"
I made a subtle shake of my head, disguised as me cracking my neck.
I’ll just have to be careful on what information I reveal here.
"As you might have heard, they found nothing on my ship so I don’t know what you want me to say to all these baseless accusations?" I asked.
He smirked, "Like I said, there’s no need for you to hide this anymore. You took this job to get paid but this job was set up that the person delivering it was never going to get paid from the start and would even be implicated in a crime. Right now, you’ve managed to dodge the first implication since you somehow managed to hide that creature, but that also means that you have no one to deliver the creature to get paid as no one is actually going to receive it."
"Let’s just assume what you say is true... So what?"
"Hear me out here. If you work with me, I will make sure you get paid handsomely for helping me and I will also get that contract while showing up that Yuki bitch. Both of us win in this scenario, so wouldn’t that be better for you as well?"
"I’m listening."
"The first thing I need to know... What happened to the original smugglers that were meant to transport the creatures?"
I raised an eyebrow, "Creatures? Plural?"
"Come now... I know there were more than one. One of them was supposed to be some creature that could propagate quickly and overwhelm the station’s security with numbers while the other one was supposed to be some nigh invincible creature. I’m pretty sure the smuggler met with some mishap along the way which made you interfere so what happened to them?"
I narrowed my eyes at him and I think he must have realised I knew he was recording this because he waved his hand over his table again, prompting an audible click to emanate from it.
"I’ve turned off all recording devices here. Like I said, I am your ally here."
Renata also confirmed with me that he was telling the truth so I sucked in a breath and began to tell him the events leading up to this.