Chapter 3

The lead live streamer held a hand to his nose and pointed a finger at me.

"You've got the nerve! Just you wait!"

The group exchanged glances and scrambled out of the hallway, still clutching their stomachs.

The doctor quickly wheeled Olivia to a ward. Fortunately, she barely survived the ordeal, but she was still unconscious.

Our son suffered from severe oxygen deprivation while being born, and he was immediately rushed to the NICU.

I sat down on the hospital bench, feeling unusually calm.

I hired two top-notch guards at an astronomical price and ordered them to guard the door to Olivia's ward. Nobody was allowed to approach. I also told them that I would be responsible for any deaths or injuries they inflicted on others while guarding Olivia.

After arranging for that, I turned around and walked out of the hospital to call Andy Holt, my apprentice at my auto repair workshop.

As soon as the call connected, I heard his suppressed sobs on the phone.

"Jake! The situation is terrible here! Our shop has been completely vandalized! The roller shutter door is covered in red paint and spray-painted with horrible, derogatory slurs, and all the windows have been smashed. They also took a hammer to the lifts and machines…"

I listened to Andy's cries on the other end of the line, but I no longer felt any emotion.

"Don't call the police just yet, Andy. Listen to me. Make a copy of all the surveillance footage from the shop, completely intact, with no seconds deleted or skipped. Let them trash the shop and do whatever they want as long as no one gets hurt."

After hanging up, I set up a burner account and slid into Billy's live stream.

Billy and his accomplices were grinning from ear to ear on the screen.

"Thanks so much for the gift! We've successfully cracked down on a thieving syndicate today, and it's all thanks to your support! You guys are awesome!"

They were still riding in their dilapidated van, racing along the winding mountain road to celebrate.

The camera occasionally cut to the outside of the car, showing off their so-called speed and passion for racing,

I stared at the screen for a long while. With my decade-long experience honed in auto repair, I quickly spotted an anomaly in their video.

When the camera panned across the backs of their tires, I clearly saw a drop of black fluid blow in the wind from the right-rear brake caliper. That was definitely no ordinary water leak.

That was brake fluid.

The scene from earlier at the travel service area instantly flashed through my mind.

They had loosened the hose to stage an oil leak and extort money from me. However, it was a very old rubber hose, and the threads on the screws easily got stripped and misaligned if it was loosened and then tightened again.

Now, as they continued to speed downhill on this mountainous road, they frequently had to brake, causing a surge in pressure in the hose. That would only exponentially accelerate the leak in the hose.

The place shown in their livestream background, with its mountainous scenery, was a notoriously dangerous stretch of road on the outskirts of the city. It was a continuous ten-mile stretch of steep and winding road leading downhill.

In other words, they were literally courting death.

I started my car and took a dangerous shortcut, heading straight for that winding mountain road.

Half an hour later, I parked the car next to the only emergency lane on this treacherous stretch of road, with an emergency sand pit beside it.

A few minutes later, a piercing roar echoed from the top of the mountain road.

I leaned against the car door, watching coldly as the van sped down the mountain, black smoke billowing from it.

"Brake! Brake, you idiot! Billy, brake! Stop the van!"

"I can't brake! I can't stop the van! The brake's not working!"

Billy and his gang's screams echoed across the entire valley as the van's chassis lurched violently over the road's uneven surface from their extreme speed. Sparks also appeared under the vehicle.

I saw Billy sitting in the driver's seat through his wide-open windows. He was frantically trying to take control of the steering wheel.

Why wasn't he live-streaming anymore with his phone? Could it be that it was because his big-spending audiences weren't giving him any gifts anymore?

There was a hairpin bend on the road ahead, and if he couldn't stop, he would plunge right down the ravine that was hundreds of feet deep.

Yet, the van still kept picking up speed.

Billy was panicking hard. He tried to scrape the body of the van against the side of the hill to slow down the vehicle and save their lives.

There was a loud crash, and the entire right side of the van scraped against the cliff. Large pieces of sheet metal flew off, but the van still didn't slow down at all.

The van was completely out of control.

Ultimately, after leaving two crooked tire tracks baked into the asphalt, the van managed to squeeze into the emergency lane in front of me and run into the sand pit.

The front wheels drove straight into the sand. The rear end of the van was raised in the air, and the van finally slowed to a stop at the edge of the pit.

White smoke and a pungent, burned smell billowed from the hood.

Billy scrambled out of the shattered window, completely covered in blood. He fell to the ground on his knees, gagging a few times, before looking up and meeting my gaze.

He froze for a moment. Then, his eyes lit up.

"My old friend, Jake Faulkner! Save us! Help!"

He scrambled toward me and grabbed my legs.

"Please help us! Take a look at the van! The brake line broke! The rest of my friends are still inside!"