My Pretty Sweetheart (Arianna)
Chapter 449

"Josiah?" I asked, already feeling like my hunch was not far off the mark.

He shrugged. "Truthfully, I didn't intend to kidnap you at first because the cost was too high and I couldn't really bring myself to do it. After all, as long as the chairman of Alford Audit had a talk with you, things would've been fine. So, kidnapping you was not the best option."

I nodded and motioned for him to continue.

"But Josiah took the initiative to come to us. He said that he wanted to work with us when in truth, he mainly just wanted to work with Valerie. As I've been working with Valerie for several years, he used the Saunders family's audits over the next decade to lock in work with me. This meant that I not only got part of the Roberts Group's audit job, but I could even work with the notorious Saunders family for the next ten years. So, I agreed."

These were all well within my predictions and guessing, so it didn't really take me by surprise. I looked at him considerably calmly and asked, "What was Josiah's goal in doing so?"

He thought about it, shook his head, and said, "I don't know. When he worked with me, he just said that he couldn't hurt you. After our discussion on the auction, everything after that was set up by him. I wasn't really involved in it."

I pursed my lips. I couldn't understand why Josiah wanted to set up a fake scene between Andrea and Hendrix for me to witness. What was his purpose? Why did he force me to leave Hendrix that early on?

How would it benefit him?

After learning about these, I was somewhat calm. I looked at him and said, "Mr. Lewis, thank you very much for sharing these with me. But I'll have to think about working with you. After all, I'm the type to hold grudges."

His face suddenly fell. "What do you mean by that, Miss Reid?"

I looked outside the private room and leaned slightly against the sofa. Then, I looked at him with clear composure in my eyes and said, "You kidnapped me once. Do you expect me to keep pretending like it never happened?"

He said with his darkened face, "You remained unhurt through it all, didn't you?"

"There were no physical wounds, but what about mental ones?" Andrea's self-directed and -acted recording was disgusting, and it had disheartened her and made her give up on wanting to be married to Hendrix. In other words, she had suffered a loss much greater than most would think she did.

He still had more to say, but the private room door opened and in came a squad of uniformed policemen who rushed over to grab Michael. As he was getting restrained, one policeman said, "Michael Lewis, you are involved in illegal business activities and kidnapping. Please come with us."

Michael came to his senses and started glaring at me. He was so angry that his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his sockets. "Arianna, you played me?"

I pursed my lips and said faintly, "This was not part of my plan."

He stared at me with rage in his eyes. "Arianna, if you can, please make sure I suffer the same fate as Calvin and have me sentenced to death. Otherwise, when I come out, I won't let you have it easy." Watching the police take him away, I sat in my seat and stared at the food on the table which remained untouched.

I began eating them myself. These did not come cheap, so it would be terrible to waste them.

"You're too calm. Didn't you hear what he said just now? Yet you're still in the mood to eat?" Aaron came in and looked at me, helplessly saying, "When he gets out, you'd be in trouble."

I had a few mouthfuls of food and decided that the restaurant's food was decently tasteful. I looked back at him and said, "You don't want to eat?"

He snorted and sat in front of me. He then asked for a bowl and cutlery from the waiter before looking right at me and asking, "Are you really not afraid of what will happen to you once he gets out?" Putting down the cutlery in my hand, I took a sip of tea and raised my gaze to look at him, "Will you give him a chance to lay his hands on me?"

He was stunned for a moment before he broke out into laughter. "Arianna, where did you get the confidence to think that I would protect you?"