Chapter 53
“You still haven’t finished all the jobs yet?” Cherise asked as she saw Tristan still typing furiously at the keyboard.
“You know some of these jobs you gave me are of your level, not mine. I’ve told you in your office,” he groaned.
“And here I thought you have become better, Cherise teased him.
“Please, I can never surpass you or K. Tristan rolled his eyes. “Speaking of, why did you choose Q as your username?”
Cherise thought of it for a while before answering, “Q for Queen? I wanted to be the best hacker at that time, the Queen of all hackers.”
“I knew it!” Tristan exclaimed with excitement. “That’s why I chose the name Ace. Because I wanted to be in an exclusive group
up with you and K.
“You’ve always known Q is a woman?” Cherise raised an eyebrow at him.
“I had a feeling.” He nodded. “When you and K appeared, I thought you guys were a couple–Queen and King–so I chose Ace.”
Now, both Cherise’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. K might be short for King. She never thought about it. Though she had a feeling K was a male, she never thought too much of it.
She couldn’t find any information about him, and for once, she was excited to meet someone as powerful as her as a hacker.
So she didn’t mind not knowing about his identity, just like she didn’t want anyone
to
o know of her as Q.
And since they have the same goal – to find information about the kidnapping when she was five, she was more than happy to work with him.
“Don’t you find it weird that he also lost someone on that ship?” Tristan suddenly asked. “Do you think that big brother who saved you was his friend?”
Cherise also had the same thought as Tristan when K first asked her to help him find information about it, but then he said his friend
was a little boy around 5 or 6 years old.
“No.” Cherise shook her head. “You know they were different people.”
“Hmm…” Tristan stretched out like a
right?”
a lazy cat before looking at her again. “So we can conci that kidnapping wasn’t only about you,
“I’d like to think so, Cherise
se replied
with hesitation. “But. I only saw that big brother, and K didn’t ask about anyone else.”
“Maybe you guys were placed in different parts of the ship?” Tristan asked.
“Most probably,” Cherise replied at the same time her laptop and the spare laptop Tristan was using made a sound they were both familiar with..
They looked at each other, and Tristan exclaimed as he looked at his laptop, “K is online!”
Then his brows furrowed as he read something on the laptop screen.
“Cherise” Tristan said slowly.
Chapter 53
“What’s wrong?” Cherise went to sit in her chair and looked at her laptop screen, which showed the same message from K as what Tristan had read.
She also frowned when she read it.
“Why is K asking about you?” Tristan asked.
Cherise thought about not answering it, but she was curious about K’s purpose for researching about her
Q: Last name?
K: None. But here’s her picture [attached picture]
Q: Is she from a dangerous syndicate?
“Why are you asking him that?” Tristan asked curiously and also with confusion.
- Not that I know of. One of my friends knows her. I just need to run a quick background check.
Q: Give me a minute.
K: Sure
“One of his friends?” Tristan asked.
Cherise sighed and could already guess who K’s friend was. She quickly sent him all the information she had fabricated before she married Hudson. It seemed he or his friends had begun to be suspicious of her. She needed to talk to Julian and her grandpa about her revealing her identity.
“When did you become an orphan with no family members left?” Tristan asked.
“When I married Hudson back then, I made up some profiles,” she murmured.
K: Your findings matched mine.
Q: Are you hoping to find out something more about her? She seems like a simple woman from the countryside.
K: Yeah, I was hoping to find out more, but if you can’t find anything else, then all this information must be accurate.
Cherise, no wonder Hudson thought you were a gold digger,” Tristan laughed, gaining him
adly side–eye from Cherise.
Well…” he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “You practically made up information that you were poor!”
Q: Any news about the kidnapping case?
“So?” she asked Tristan. “Don’t poor people deserve love?”
K: None at all. Now I’m thinking maybe they kidnapped those kids as a cover.
“No, no.” Tristan shook his head furiously. “Of course, everyone deserves to be loved. But you know our society.”
Q:What do you mean by that?
“It was a foolish mistake on my part to think he could love me for me and not my background,” Cherise said nonchalantly.
Chapter 53
“But your background is a part of you,” Tristan pointed out. “Now it looks like you were pretending to be someone else when you married him.”
That got Cherise thinking, but only for a few seconds. “Maybe you are right. I wanted to be the best wife for a CEO, so I had to pretend to be meek. As I said, it was a foolish mistake“
K: Maybe they just wanted to kidnap one particular child, but they had to make it like child trafficking for a reason still unknown to
Us.
“What do you think of K’s theory?” Cherise glanced at Tristan.
Tristan read K’s message and somehow agreed to it. “Because why would they just cease to exist? If they are really child traffickers, they would still operate until they got caught.”
“Make sense,” Cherise agreed with him.
Q: Since they’ve been dormant for so long, we can assume they’ve gotten the particular child they wanted?
K: Yes, that should be the case.
Q: But you won’t let go. You’ll still try to dig out information about them.
K: I know you’ll be doing the same. Whether they really only wanted to kidnap a child or not, they still killed my friend and yours.
Q: For justice.
K: For justice. Thanks for the information about Cherise. Till next time, then.
And just like that, he went offline.
“K is even more mysterious than you,” Tristan murmured. “Oh, who do you think is K’s friend who asked for information about you?
“Hudson,” she said without hesitation before adding, “or maybe Keith.”
“K is friends w
with them?” Tristan asked with widened eyes.
“Maybe,” Cherise shrugged. “Maybe Hudson paid for his service.”
“Yeah, you are right. K can’t be friends with an asshole like Hudson Amery.”
Cherise laughed. “Why not?”
“He is the King of the hacker world. His taste in friends should be better than that,” Tristan huffed.
“What’s with your obsession with Q and K?”
“You and K are who every hacker looks up to. He won’t have toxic friends,” Tristan defended K, which made Cherise smile and shake her head helplessly.
“So you
think K and I. We are not normal human beings?”
“Of course, you guys are, but a more developed human. Maybe you guys received an upgrade when being created by God, Tristan grinned.
Cherise’s lips twitched. The way this guy thought of things…
*XN
94% 11:47
Chapter 53
“Enough, chit–chatting.” Cherise said to stop him from saying more ridiculous things. “Keep working or get out. I need to ch*ck my emails and forward me the ones you couldn’t hack.”
Cherise began checking her emails again, and when she logged into her Miss. X’s email, she saw thousands of emails.
She scrolled down, checking one by one, but they were mostly parents who wanted her to be their children’s dance tutor.
There were invitations from many countries for her to perform, but the dates have all passed. She checked the junk mail, and her eyes lit up when she saw an invitation to perform in two weeks in Country B’s largest auditorium.
She checked the list of performers and saw Emely’s name. Cherise didn’t know Emely was also a salsa dancer and the champion of Country D’s competition a few times a few years back.
Country D… The country where Hudson kept going every month before their divorce. The country where he kept his mistress away from her until he brought her back to Country B.
Cherise thought she would still feel sad, heartbroken, or even angry when she thought about it, but she felt nothing now, to her relief.
It was a great feeling. Free of the shackles called Hudson Amery.
Cherise quickly searched for Emely’s dancing career and found out her dancing ability was actually all right but still far below her level.
She had a permanent partner, someone who was actually from Country A. It was a pity for him to dance with Emely because Cherise knew his potential after watching him dance.
But whatever. It wasn’t her problem. If he couldn’t see that Emely was holding him back, then that was his problem.
Cherise scanned the list of participants again and felt disheartened when she didn’t see the name she wished to see. Guessed Xav had retired from dancing because no one had seen him dance anymore.
She still wished to partner up with him, but it seemed impossible now.
A thought crossed her mind, and her heart lightened up a bit. Maybe he would be in the audience. It would be enough for Cherise for him to see her dance if they couldn’t partner up even once.
Now, her mind began thinking of songs and moves. She needed to start training again starting tomorrow. Choreographing a dance routine was relatively easy for her, but her b*dy might not be as limber, or her movements might not be as fluid as they used to be since it had been so long since she last danced.
Two weeks… She couldn’t get more excited now. Finally, she would be able to do something she enjoyed again.
As for today… She glanced at Tristan and asked him to forward those jobs he couldn’t do again, and she began concentrating on those tasks together with him.
They also tried to find out more about her kidnapping again since K might have given her a new lead. She wouldn’t rest until she knew the real reason behind it. The new lead meant they needed to hack into the police database to ch*ck for any missing children reports for that particular year
