Chapter 168 

His voice was deep, but gentle. He talked to Zoe the way a husband and a lover would. 

He asked her to stop crying and said that he’d be back in Brookesville soon. On top of that, he’d arrange for some of his men to track down Ella. 

Much time had passed when Zoe stopped crying. 

Holding the phone, he listened to her light breathing, and couldn’t help but say softly, “I may have asked you to stop crying, Zoe, but I love it when you cry. I feel the urge to be meaner to you whenever you do. I want to hear you weeping while you wrap your arms around my neck. I want you to call out to my name gently and beg for me to-” 

She hung up on him abruptly. Hearing the beeping from the other end of the phone, he chuckled. Then, he made a phone call with the hotel phone and asked Ava to come over. 

Ava hadn’t even had the chance to rest before he asked her to do more work for him. She was seriously thinking if she should’ve asked 

for a raise. 

After knocking on the door, she went into his room and found him leaning on the chair, fiddling with his phone. 

Then, he ordered her, “Look into Ella’s whereabouts.” 

She was stunned, but he smiled at her, “Start from Leslie’s fiancee. If something happened to Ella, it’s probably her doing.” 

It took Ava some time to grasp what he was saying. After that, she asked softly, “Is Mr. Leslie going to have a fallout with his family over 

Ella?” 

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Mason stared at his assistant for a long time before his smile slowly vanished. 

“Not a chance! The Lynch family and the Schmidt family have just agreed to collaborate on a multi-billion project. Both of the family’s old men donn’t trust each other at all. Their grandchildren’s marriage is what lets them sleep at night. Should Leslie decide to call off the wedding now, then his grandpa is going to skin him alive.” 

More to the point, Leslie wasn’t some starry-eyed man on a quest for love. To him, Ella was but a plaything that he had grown tired of. 

Ava left his room and leaned on the door. She couldn’t help but think that only men could understand men. People like Mason and Leslie treated women like charity cases and gave them so little love. It’d be 

stupid for the women around them to take their love seriously. 

She used to be jealous of Zoe, but now she pitied her. 

Then, there was the fact that Mason’s personality was way darker than Leslie’s. He graduated from the most prominent university in the nation at the young age of twenty. Then, he graduated from Stanford and returned to the nation to take over Lockwood Corporation. 

Nobody knew the number of people he had sacrificed to reach the peak of his career and marry Zoe. Ava was becoming more aware of just how heartless he could be. 

Zoe was distracted the next day. In fact, she was so absentminded. even Aiden could see it. He grumbled that she was sloppy and that she might as well go back home early. 

She apologized to him in a soft voice. Walking out of the music institution, she gave Ella another phone call, but she still couldn’t reach her. She had thought of calling the police but she was worried 

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that Ella was kidnapped and they might kill her if she did. 

She was about to be driven insane. 

Then, a black Bentley pulled over and its window was lowered. It was Mason. He looked stunning in a deep blue shirt with a black coat. 

Leaning over, he looked at her and said gently, “Get in the car.” 

Zoe didn’t dilly-dally. She needed his help, after all. She opened the car door to the passenger seat and saw the puppy sitting there. It stared at her with its black eyes and started wagging its tail happily. 

She felt a sense of tightness in her throat. 

Carrying the dog, Mason repeated, “Get in the car!” He proceeded to put the dog on her lap when she got in. 

She couldn’t resist touching the puppy when it felt so soft. Then, she sat stiffly as Mason buckled her up. He was so close to her that she could smell his aftershave. 

Lowering her gaze, she said, “Like I said, I don’t have anything to repay you with, Mason.” 

Raising his eyes, he stared at her with his black eyes. Zoe’s body shivered slightly under his manly stare. She was taken back to that night when he spoke to her after they were done doing it. 

“It looks red and feels so soft.” 

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