Saved By a Gangleader ✔️

Chapter 44 | The secret project

'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go;
Take a look in the five-and-ten, glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow'

ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ=3=3=3

R a y

"Do you remember anything of this day?" I pass my laptop to Noah which is pouring tea for Ace as we've all calmed down.

Once he sees the screen, his figure stiffens but his sad smile stays.

"The day I lost everything important to me," he thinks out loud.

"What was the thing Antonio needed of you to keep me alive?" I ask and watch him sigh deeply.

"My gang was mainly known for it's technology and secret hacking projects that won us the money without having to get innocent people involved. However, I started to get selfish with the power that I had and decided to mingle within other gang's business which started earning my gang enemies," he explains.

"Antonio being one of them?" I ask.

"Tony being my co-leader in that," that's where I started to get confused.

"Tony and I started the gang because we both were really poor and wanted a home to belong to since we were both orphans. We met with a couple of guys in shanty towns until our names spread and we created a small group to get some money.

"But as I said, as our group became bigger, members started craving more of the power we had. Tony and I thought it would be a testing period to see if anyone found out it was us," he stops.

"How did you know people found out?" I bring my legs to the sofa to feel more comfortable.

"When we got a call informing us of Antonio's brother and sister's murder with a message left behind," he looks up from his cup with sad eyes.

"He obviously blamed me for it since I was the one with the brains that pushed for our project to move forward and soon left the country without any trace.

"I took that time to expand my knowledge in hacking thinking if I was powerful enough, no one would be able to threaten my family, your mother.

"A couple of years passed, and I started to become a monarch with the gang since I became so powerful that members weren't always sure of my intentions. When the word got out that I figured out a strategy in which I can break through any system, Tony attacked me in my house and locked me in the basement which is what you see in the video.

"It was indeed a complicated system of formulas that took me years to master and no one would figure it out anyway but he was so desperate for answers that he came after the one thing I had left, you," he laughs sadly.

"You created the program to protect your family but instead, it broke it apart?" I summarize.

"I knew some gang will start threatening you once they knew I had a daughter, but I didn't expect it to come from my former best friend," he shakes his head.

"Then where were you?" I stare at him with no emotions on my face. "For the next 20 years of my life, why were you nowhere to be seen?"