CHAPTER 390: CHAPTER 390: TRULY... THE ONE PRESIDENT STERLING LIKES

"Take it off! Take it off! Take it off..."

"Take off your clothes!"

"Hurry up and take them off~"

A group of shirtless men surrounded two women. They shouted and laughed, saliva flying, their faces carrying a mischievous grin that hinted at their wicked delight.

However, all of this wasn’t directed at Anna Thornton and Riley Osborne.

Anna and Riley sat across from each other, a card table between them, and another man with a feathery haircut sat between them—Scrapper! The leader of this gang!

Anna had already figured out their tricks. In the underworld, most are inseparable from three interests.

Sex, gambling, drugs!

No need to mention the other two, as for gambling... Anna could make him lose until he had nothing left, not even his shorts!

So, here they were, a group of vicious men, but when they captured Anna and Riley, they surprisingly did nothing, just forced the two women to play cards at the table.

Or to be more precise, it’s not that they didn’t want to, but more that they couldn’t do anything.

Because from the moment Anna stepped up to the card table, no one else had won a single game.

According to a gambler’s psychology, the worse they lose, the more they want to make a comeback, so Rooster, who was left with only his last pair of shorts, still hadn’t considered doing anything indecent with the two beautiful women in front of him, and instead kept focused on the dealer at the table. His eyes were bloodshot, determined to find out what kind of trick was at play here.

To prevent cheating, Rooster no longer allowed Anna’s hands to touch the cards; he shuffled them himself.

But every time he picked up the cards, it was a damned hopeless hand!

"Damn it!" Rooster couldn’t help but curse at his own luck.

It didn’t make sense!

When he gambled in casinos, he lost sometimes, but he had never lost this badly!

Put it this way, he owned casinos on his turf, so he knew all the tricks.

It’s all about winning some, losing some, making your emotions ride a roller coaster, always hoping for a turnaround with the next hand, and even if you lose money, you lose it happily.

Have you experienced playing landlord, holding no Kings or 2s, with your highest card just a Jack, and the rest of your hand a hopeless mess of unlinked cards?

Rooster had!

And for a whole afternoon, every hand he got was like that!

An increasingly rotten hand each time!

As the landlord, he only got to play the first card the very first hand, after which he just watched Anna perform moves that would drive anyone mad, like four 2s and a pair of Kings.

Even Riley was shocked; she didn’t know how to play the game, but after an afternoon she learned how to recognize big and small hands. Miss Thornton wasn’t even using her bombs, probably seeing Rooster had already lost everything but his last remaining shred of dignity, with nothing else left to take off.

Moreover, Rooster’s face had turned green from losing, and if the aggression was too intense, it might accidentally ignite him, but slow boiling the frog would make their situation relatively safer.

Riley quietly speculated on Miss Thornton’s intention.

She glanced at Anna, eyes filled with genuine admiration.

Miss Thornton truly lived up to being... someone President Sterling liked!

She really was different from other women!

Yet, as she considered herself, Riley felt ashamed. When she found out she was kidnapped, especially after the hood was removed and she saw so many ferocious people, with someone having their arms cut off in front of her and dragged away, even recalling that scene now made Riley’s legs tremble.

Yet Miss Thornton remained composed the entire time, not only coming up with a way to protect both of them in the shortest time possible.

Looking at Anna now, she seemed completely at ease in this casino environment, even taking a cigarette from the pack on the card table. The people around them showed a keen sense, scrambling to offer her a light, and seeing this scene, Riley suddenly felt like she was watching a scene from a movie she had once seen.

And in Anna’s eyes, there was a steadfastness that made others feel ashamed.

She didn’t take any of the offered lights, picking up Rooster’s lighter and lighting it herself.

"What are you still standing around for? Take them off!" Anna urged.

Upon hearing this, Rooster gave her a glare, then a greasy smile appeared on his face: "You’re quite eager, aren’t you? Can’t wait to see my family jewels? Then keep your eyes wide open and don’t blink, I’ll show you what big means! What it means to be satisfied!"

Riley: "..."

She was just a sophomore and hadn’t even had a boyfriend yet!

As for Anna... she didn’t blink.

Anna was too ruthless! Her gaze even made Rooster instinctively want to avoid her!

Dammit, this woman they grabbed by the way—she was beautiful, but always gave off a sense of being unmanageable, like a major headache.

"Rooster, where is this truck taking us?" Anna inquired.

Yes, they were no longer in the original old warehouse but inside a large truck’s compartment.

The compartment was sealed, with only a small window for air that barely did any good, surrounded by filthy men, and the smell in this environment was imaginable.

The smell was not the worst part; the real issue was that the truck was now driving who knows where, out in the wild, running with wolves, a danger one could only imagine.

Riley stayed closely huddled next to Anna, listening to Miss Thornton try to gather information: "I hear from your accents you’re not from Aethelgard, and I’ve heard in your line of work, invading rival territory is a big no-no. Does Rooster have friends from Aethelgard covering for him?"

Hearing this, Scrapper squinted at Anna: "Little girl, trying to get information from me?"

"Just asking casually. If you don’t want to tell, you don’t have to!"

Anna didn’t press further, but Scrapper, instead, became interested and revealed, "Actually, it doesn’t matter if I tell you. Soon enough, you’ll be handed over to a big shot from Europe. By then, so far and wide, I reckon you’ll never be able to return home in your entire life. As for her..."

Scrapper pointed at Riley, "She was specifically requested for by my brother! Once I take her away, she’ll never think about returning to Aethelgard either!"

"The brother you mentioned, is he Ethan Hawthorne?" Riley suddenly interrupted.

She wasn’t as bold as Miss Thornton, but she wasn’t dumb.

Riley had been busy collecting evidence lately, trying to bring Ethan Hawthorne down, naturally understanding what sort of force she had provoked.

Rooster didn’t answer Riley’s question, but neither did he deny it.

It was as if he had made up his mind, the higher quality of the two women would be sent off to curry favor with some foreign big shot, while he kept the other for himself, confident they’d never escape his grasp in this lifetime, and thus he didn’t fear them knowing.