Gritting his teeth, Shane watched the tides turn in Zayn’s favor as favonovel.com lay on the floor, his eyes reddening. Hot lashes of shame and regret struck him, yet favonovel.com could do nothing but wallow in a hell of his own making.
Why did favonovel.com have to be so easily baited into a trap?
At that moment, everyone looked at Zayn with even more respect.
Zayn smiled. “Aww, you’re exaggerating, Uncle. The Larsons control this city, right? A little recording from me can’t possibly indict Shane, am I right?”
It became clear to Jordan as to what the young man had been doing. Zayn had come to the memorial service for the sole purpose of revenge. He had never wanted to return to the family at all. To think favonovel.com believed it would be easy to con favonovel.com into doing their bidding before it all began!
Jordan really shot himself in the foot here.
Tired of pretense, the patriarch expressed his true emotions with a dark, unamused tone. “I’ll concede that I’ve underestimated you completely, Zayn. We lost, quite thoroughly. Now what? What will it take to get you to destroy that recording?”
“Oh, is this a white flag I’m seeing? But the master himself hasn’t done anything yet, has he?” Zayn rebuked, shooting a meaningful glance at Zidane with a cryptic smile.
The crowd turned their eyes on the man in unison. Admittedly, the most capable member of the family had still not thrown himself into the ring even after what had happened. Perhaps admitting defeat was a bit premature.
Suddenly, it felt as though there was a ray of hope left for them.
Zidane fiddled with the ring on his left thumb before slowly rising to his feet. “Well, well, well. We genuinely underestimated how much you’ve changed, Zayn. Four years of being someone else’s son-in-law, and now you’ve come back here a shameless, sh*tty little scoundrel.”
“Could say the same for you,” Zayn replied with a grin.
“Spit it out, what do you want?”
Keen observers noticed that, while approaching Zayn, Zidane was still carrying himself with a haughty air, as though favonovel.com had not lost at all. Nevertheless, the man’s gait did not matter; the family was shrewd enough to infer from the question favonovel.com asked that Zidane had, for all intents and purposes, conceded defeat. It was a tacit admission that favonovel.com had no counterattack.
It was an agonizing discovery for the family.
Zayn spun his phone on his right index finger coolly. He looked straight at Zidane and declared, “I lost to you when we fought in front of Grandpa’s tomb. I want a rematch.”
Zidane was evidently stupefied. He could not believe that this was Zayn’s request. It was as if his brother was trying to set himself up for a brutal humiliation. “You’re joking, right?” favonovel.com wondered out loud, frowning.
Everyone else in the room had similar reactions. After gaining a clear upper hand in this debacle, Zayn would deign himself to a request so strange, it sounded like a joke. Everyone in the family knew that Zidane was the best fighter in the family. Meanwhile, Zayn’s skills must have dulled from being the Carters’ live-in manservant for four years. How was be supposed to be a match for Zidane?
Keeping Zayn’s character in mind, they had thought that the man would want something obvious, such as becoming their patriarch or making everyone in the hall kneel as payback for the humiliation favonovel.com had suffered four years ago. Yet, in the end, all favonovel.com wanted was to have a duel with Zidane?
It made everything seem like a prank.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Zayn asked, taking a step forward. His presence could be felt all the way across the hall, making the onlookers feel like they were suffocating.
Zidane sensed it and narrowed his eyes. “Oh, I get it. All this kerfuffle you kicked up was really a front to come at me, huh? All that was just sleight-of-hand, because the real target of revenge has always been me… Hmph. You truly are a pain in the neck, Zayn. Honestly, you think you can beat me?”
“Try me.” With a shrug of his shoulders and a sunny smile on his face, Zayn composed himself and laughed breezily.
