Read Novel Full Chapter 862: Marcus
Chapter 862: Chapter 862: Marcus
Instead, he looked at her with an expression so earnest that Alana began to feel an inexplicable sense of unease.
“The connection between us!” he exclaimed, his voice carrying a hint of desperation.
“I’ve been feeling it for a while now, as though there’s something special between us. I keep thinking that you might have feelings for me, but because of the way I treated you before, you’re deliberately suppressing them. Tell me honestly, Alana, don’t you feel that spark between us? Don’t you feel the chemistry whenever we’re together?”
The moment those words left his mouth, alarms seemed to go off inside Alana’s head.
She immediately pushed him away, her eyes widening with disbelief as she stared at him.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded. “I already have a husband and two daughters! What on earth made you think I had feelings for you?”
The moment Lova heard those words, he froze.
For several seconds, he could only stare at Alana, unable to process what she had just told him.
“Alana, I… I can’t believe you never mentioned this before,” he stammered, struggling to find the right words. “But why did you…”
His voice gradually faded as he suddenly seemed to remember something. His expression changed, and a look of realization slowly spread across his face.
He lowered his gaze, finally understanding how ridiculous his assumptions had been.
Alana frowned at him, clearly unwilling to entertain the conversation any longer.
“I’m going to pretend you never said any of that,” she warned him firmly. “But don’t you dare bring up this kind of nonsense again!”
With that, she turned around and walked away, leaving Lova standing there in stunned silence.
Five days later, Lova stopped coming to work altogether.
Instead, he transferred more than fifty million credits to Alana as compensation for the trouble he had caused her. Alana accepted the money without hesitation and never asked about him again.
Meanwhile, Lova became even sadder.
He had initially imagined that his grand gesture of offering compensation would make Alana panic, reconsider their relationship, or perhaps even acknowledge the feelings he believed she had been hiding.
Yet, despite sending such a substantial amount of money, she hadn’t shown the slightest interest in contacting him.
‘How can she be so indifferent?’ he wondered miserably, feeling as though his pride had been thoroughly crushed. ‘Doesn’t she even care enough to ask why I stopped coming to work?’
Just as he was sinking deeper into his disappointment, he received a message from Prince Hanake.
Lova frowned and opened it, his attention immediately shifting to the contents.
As expected, Prince Hanake had contacted him because Valer had somehow managed to secure first place in the ranking, and he needed Lova’s help once again.
Lova sighed when he saw the message.
He had first met Prince Hanake when he was only fifteen years old, and the two of them had established a partnership with the shared goal of helping Prince Hanake ascend the throne.
At the time, Lova had believed that such an arrangement would benefit him considerably, especially if Prince Hanake eventually became king.
Because of that agreement, he had obediently carried out nearly every instruction Prince Hanake gave him, even when those instructions seemed childish or unnecessarily complicated.
This time, Prince Hanake had asked him to cooperate with another noble to secure first place in the Monster Invasion game.
However, while Lova had been occupied with the task and distracted by his own affairs, someone else had stepped in to help Valer.
As a result, Valer had managed to claim the top position, ruining the plan Lova had been working on.
The message from Prince Hanake was straightforward: Lova was to approach Valer, establish a connection with him, and discover the identity of the expert who had helped him achieve such an impressive result.
Lova stared at the message for a moment before finally accepting the task.
Afterward, he went to find his grandmother.
Standing before her, he lowered his head slightly and said, “Grandmother, thank you for everything you’ve taught me until now.”
He had finally understood why Gemma hadn’t constantly intervened to stop him from making mistakes.
She had wanted him to experience the consequences of his own actions, recognize his shortcomings, and eventually learn how to behave more maturely.
Although her methods had caused considerable trouble for everyone involved, Lova had to admit that he had learned something from the experience.
Gemma looked at him without displaying much emotion. Rather than offering him words of encouragement, she merely waved her hand dismissively.
“Your so-called growth has already caused considerable trouble for the Lesi family,” she remarked coldly. “Now, stop appearing in front of me and causing more problems.”
Lova lowered his head without arguing and quietly left.
Meanwhile, Gemma couldn’t help reflecting on her own decisions.
When she had first learned how successful Alana’s restaurant had become, she had felt particularly proud of herself for allowing Alana to rent the shop at such a low price.
She had believed that she had made a wise decision by supporting a promising businesswoman, and the restaurant’s success had only strengthened that belief.
However, after everything that had happened with Lova, her feelings had become considerably more complicated.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have allowed my grandson to get involved with the restaurant at all,’ she thought regretfully. ‘I should have focused on maintaining a good relationship with Alana instead. If I had done that, the benefits to the Lesi family might have been far more substantial.’
Although she had already received considerable benefits from the arrangement, she couldn’t completely suppress the lingering regret in her heart.
She had wanted to teach Lova a lesson, but she had underestimated the damage his behavior could cause to an otherwise valuable relationship.
Meanwhile, Bella had recently found herself paying considerable attention to a new superior being named Marcus.
Marcus frequently visited the restaurant and often volunteered to help Bella organize ingredients, arrange vegetables, and manage the food supplies.
He seemed genuinely interested in the work, and he never hesitated to lend a hand whenever the restaurant became busy.
Over time, Bella began noticing that Marcus was particularly fascinated by the cooking process.
He would watch the chefs prepare their dishes with intense concentration, sometimes asking questions about ingredients or observing how different flavors were combined.
Eventually, Marcus approached Bella with a rather unexpected request.
“Would you consider hiring me as a cook?” he asked earnestly. “I don’t actually know how to cook yet, but I’m very interested in learning. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to experiment with different ingredients on my own. If I could work here, I could learn while helping you with the restaurant.”
Bella was initially hesitant about accepting his proposal.
Although Marcus appeared hardworking and sincere, she wasn’t sure whether hiring someone with no cooking experience would be a sensible decision.
After thinking it over, she decided to seek Jade’s opinion.
When Bella explained the situation to him, Jade listened calmly before responding.
“Do whatever you think is appropriate. If you believe he has potential, then give him a chance. We don’t have anything to be afraid of, so there’s no harm in letting him try.”
His relaxed attitude helped Bella make up her mind.
In the end, she agreed to let Marcus join the restaurant as a cook, allowing him to learn the basics while helping with the daily work.
To her surprise, Marcus turned out to have a considerable talent for cooking.
Although he had started with little practical experience, he learned quickly and showed an impressive ability to understand flavours.
Before long, he was preparing dishes that were not only delicious but also distinctive enough to catch Bella’s attention.
He even suggested adding mutated animals’ meat but backtracked when Bella told him about how they contained contaminated energy.
This was another thing Bella had come to know about Planet Astra.
In a sense, Planet Astra was fighting a battle with cosmic mutated beasts. Shocking as it might seem, these beasts actually floated in the vast galaxy but weren’t visible to the naked eye.
Void may not have any energy, but radiation left in industrial waste left in the space could easily infect these beasts.
However, cosmic beasts had useful things about them, and that was their core, which can be absorbed to level up a person’s power, and it was even edible!
Bella thought that the conversation was long over and didn’t pay much attention to it.
Yet the next day, Marcus brought another suggestion.
“Why not dilute this soup? We can sell more bowls and earn more from commoners. At that same time, for nobles we can give an undiluted version.”