third person's POV
Veronica frowned, "Cliff, doesn't your company have meetings? Why are you back so early today?"
"Where's Vanya?" Cliff asked right away.
Guinevere looked a bit uneasy.
Veronica was confused: "If you don't keep an eye on your own wife, who knows which guy she's out seeing again?"
"Someone used my phone to text Vanya, and now I can't reach her. I need to know when she left!"
As soon as Cliff said it, Veronica immediately realized how serious it was.
In their circle, kidnapping was a common thing.
Once the family was kidnapped, the other side would definitely ask for a huge ransom.
"Have Elliot check it right away, call the police now!"
This wasn't a small thing.
Guinevere's kidnapping was staged by herself. As long as it didn't get out, it was fine. Besides, she wasn't a Todd family member, so if something happened, it wouldn't really affect the family.
But Vanya was different—no matter what her relationship with Cliff was like, she really was Mrs. Todd now!
If she really got kidnapped, the kidnappers would definitely make a big deal out of it, and the Todd family would for sure get blackmailed hard.
"Clif... was this really necessary? Maybe the lady just went out, let's not make such a big deal about it..." Ginivere whispered.
"What do you know? Vanya must not get into trouble! We can't take this lightly." Veronica cut in sharply, and Guinevere immediately fell silent.
Cliff frowned, thinking about people he'd made enemies with in business lately, and after thinking it over, he only thought of M Group.
"Clif, don't worry. Do you want to check the nearby cameras to see who Vanya left with?" Guinevere suggested.
This sentence woke Cliff up.
He called Beta Elliot right away and told him to pull all the nearby surveillance footage within an hour.
Soon, in the monitoring room, Cliff saw Vanya.
She came out of the Todd family, talked to a driver for a bit, then a man came up from behind, covered her mouth and nose, and dragged her into a car.
Cliff looked grim. "Write down the license plate number and find out where this car went right away!"
"Yes, Alpha Cliff!"
Leaving the control room, Cliff couldn't stop shaking—he had never been this scared before.
He couldn't imagine what he would do if Vanya really got into trouble.
He never let Vanya get hurt! Never!
At the same time, news broke online that the wife of the Todd family's president had been kidnapped, and it immediately drew attention from all sides.
The topic "The president's wife got kidnapped" suddenly shot up to the top of Twitter's trending list.
Grace saw the news headline at home and was totally stunned—Kidnapping? Who would dare kidnap Vanya?
The next second, her phone rang. It was Derek's number.
Grace picked up right away: "Hey! Derek, listen to me..."
"Vanya was kidnapped?" The voice on the other end was calm and low. It wasn't Derek, it was Theodore.
"I just saw the news too, no idea if it's true or not. When are you guys coming back?" Grace sounded a bit anxious.
Vanya had been staying at the Todd family these days. I didn't know what kind of deal she had made with Cliff.
In order not to reveal Vanya's identity as president of M Group, they didn't meet, but just a few days later, something like this happened!
Grace waited for Theodore to reply, but there was no sound on the other end of the phone.
"Theodore? Theodore?" She hadn't been through anything like this before and didn't know what to do.
After quite a while, Derek's voice finally came through: "Don't worry! We're on our way back, just stay calm!"
[AI幻觉导致翻译异常][人称指代错误]That being said, it wasn't true that I wasn't anxious.
Grace hung up the phone, looking upset, and immediately used all the Gilbert family's connections to investigate this, to check if the news was true—In Los Angeles, who would even dare to kidnap Vanya?
Meanwhile, Melinda saw the news in Belinda's rental place and couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't tell if she was excited or just scared.
Belinda got scared. She didn't expect things to get so big, and even the police sent a lot of people.
"Melinda, if this gets found out, we..." She didn't dare to think about it. For such a big kidnapping case, who knew how many years they'd get.
"What are you afraid of? If you really got found out, no one would pay your gambling debts for you. Going to jail at least kept you from getting your hands or feet chopped off. Anyway, you didn't lose out."
Melinda said that, but she still held her phone tightly.
She was waiting, waiting for good news from over there.
But she didn't get news of Vanya's death. Instead, she saw the latest kidnapping news—the news said the kidnappers wanted the Todd family to pay five million dollars in ransom, and they'd let the person go once they got the money.
Melinda was stunned: "W-what's going on?"
She clearly didn't tell those guys to blackmail Cliff, just to buy Vanya's life! How could they not keep their word?
"Melinda, w-what's written here? What does it mean?" Belinda asked anxiously from the side, interrupting her thoughts.
Melinda snapped, "Stop it! Stop making noise by my ear!"
Belinda was scared by how she looked.
Melinda immediately pulled out her phone, her face looking terrible—what was going on? Which part went wrong!
She dialed their number and screamed like crazy, "What are you doing? Why aren't you doing what I said? Kill Vanya now!"