Night Falls
"Ugh!"
"Cough, cough!"
Ignoring Stella's violent, desperate struggles against her heavy bindings, Steve finished his lavish dinner.
He showed absolutely no gallantry or basic human decency as he roughly pried Stella's cracked lips open and forced a heavy glass of water down her throat.
The cold liquid spilled over her chin, soaking into the soiled fabric of her clothes, but she swallowed greedily out of pure, primal survival instinct.
Steve could genuinely not care less whether the woman tied to the dining chair lived or died. Even if Stella was undeniably a certified, world-class beauty, his cold, calculating mind was entirely consumed by a much darker obsession.
His main, overwhelming concern right now was the two massive Worthington safes that had been flawlessly stolen from him ,the exact heavy safes that securely held the absolute vast majority of his illicit wealth.
Without those glittering gold bricks, Steve knew perfectly well that he'd be entirely flat broke in no time at all.
He wouldn't even be able to minimally keep up his current, lavish lifestyle of tailored suits and expensive cars, let alone financially afford to maintain this massive, heavily fortified luxury villa.
Thus, Steve violently loathed Charlie Croker and his surviving crew for arrogantly daring to aggressively steal his gold.
The absolute only reason Steve had heavily held his murderous temper back ,cruelly starving Stella for two grueling days but otherwise laying no physical hand on the beautiful captive ,was a deep, paranoid fear.
He was terrified that, without Stella actively serving as his desperate leverage, Charlie might completely panic and, exactly as Steve himself had once done in the freezing Alps, immediately flee with most of his stolen wealth and permanently vanish into the shadows.
If that disastrous scenario actually happened, Steve would violently lose vastly more than he could ever gain. After all, the annual U.S. property taxes on an estate this size are absolutely terrifying.
Stella glared fiercely at Steve across the polished mahogany table, her beautiful blue eyes burning with an intense, unfiltered hatred.
The past two days had been an absolute, pure nightmare of physical misery and mental torture. Most of the agonizing time, her slender limbs were tied tightly with thick, unforgiving rope, and she was securely locked alone in a dark, empty bedroom.
Evidently, Steve deeply, intensely feared her world-class lock-picking skills.
Even after violently searching her clothes and flawlessly confirming she had absolutely no hidden metal wires or hard objects on her person, the paranoid sociopath still strictly refused to use standard steel handcuffs and aggressively used thick, knotted rope instead.
Furthermore, Steve gave her absolutely no food to eat and even cruelly denied her basic, desperate requests to use the bathroom.
It was incredibly easy to imagine exactly how wretched and physically degraded she felt, and exactly how furious the proud woman was at her helpless situation.
Steve also heavily feared that, if he allowed Stella to continuously, aggressively curse him out, his fragile, inflated ego might violently lose control and he would brutally beat her half to death in a fit of blinding rage.
Therefore, immediately after forcing the glass of water down her raw throat, and precisely before Stella could aggressively spit a harsh curse at his face, Steve violently stuffed her mouth once again with a coarse linen napkin.
"Quiet now ,your misery will be completely over soon," Steve muttered, his voice a low, lethal drawl.
Steve meticulously wiped his damp hands on a clean towel, stepped casually away from Stella, and returned comfortably to his plush leather seat at the head of the long table.
Even though Stella was undeniably stunning, the lingering, humiliating reek of urine in the opulent room was more than enough to completely kill his refined appetite.
He calmly met her furious eyes, which were currently blazing with a raw intensity exactly as if they could physically scorch him alive.
Completely unhurried and projecting absolute, arrogant control, Steve picked up a fresh yellow banana from a silver bowl ,his preferred, post-meal fruit.
Slowly peeling the skin back, he took a casual bite and chewed methodically. "From exactly what I know of Charlie and the others, I generously gave them a full day to prepare, but, " Steve paused, a twisted, highly confident smile forming on his lips. ", odds are they will desperately try their luck tonight."
Stella's racing heart immediately sank like a heavy stone in her chest.
Her highly intelligent mind knew perfectly well that Charlie absolutely hadn't even had the necessary time to properly act or formulate a flawless rescue plan.
So she also clearly knew Steve's arrogant guess wasn't entirely perfect, yet it absolutely wasn't completely wrong either.
Without the massive pile of stolen gold bricks to safely return, Charlie would logically have absolutely no other choice but to aggressively slip into the fortified compound after dark and violently attempt to free her.
That very afternoon, maybe strictly just to arrogantly show off his impenetrable defenses, Steve had even aggressively paraded her bound form entirely around the perimeter of the sprawling villa.
Thanks exclusively to that terrifying, psychological tour, Stella knew exactly what the highly fortified place looked like right now.
A massive, highly sophisticated theft had undeniably occurred at Steve's villa previously.
To keep the embarrassing incident completely quiet and tactically avoid the private security company being immediately fired by the wealthy estate's management board, the heavily armed firm not only quickly agreed to cooperate fully with Steve, directly sharing vital parts of their encrypted surveillance feed, but they also aggressively dispatched a dedicated, eight-man security personnel squad strictly to patrol his private grounds.
All of them were hardened, highly trained ex-military operatives. They were the absolute core, elite combat assets of the corporate company ,definitely no easy pushovers.
Inside the luxurious villa itself, Steve had meticulously laid countless, highly lethal traps.
He had also aggressively brought in a dozen heavily armed mercenary men and securely parked four heavy, armored, modified off-roaders on the manicured lawns.
He had drastically upgraded the outer perimeter fence to a lethal, humming high-voltage grid, and flawlessly installed vastly denser, blind-spot-free surveillance cameras on every single corner.
Looking at the massive military buildup, Stella simply couldn't logically imagine exactly how Charlie and the small crew could possibly break in and rescue her alive. For a suffocating, terrible moment, profound panic violently seized her tired heart.
"Heh."
Steve casually savored the subtle, terrifying shift in her beautiful expression, a dark, twisted satisfaction welling up deep inside his chest.
The absolute, sadistic reason he had forcibly taken her on that extensive afternoon tour was specifically to let her fully know the impossible odds ,and violently despair.
"Now, Charlie, " Steve whispered into the quiet, opulent room, his eyes gleaming with lethal anticipation. ", absolutely don't disappoint me tonight."
"Come on ,aggressively show me exactly how you'll miraculously break through my flawless traps again and desperately save the beautiful woman you love."
It was already well past eight o'clock in the evening; Steve could hardly wait to finally see his old rival Charlie walk blindly and straight into the heavy snare he had so incredibly carefully laid.
Meanwhile, positioned perfectly more than a hundred meters above Steve's heavily guarded villa, hiding silently in the dense, swaying crown of a massive oak tree, Arthur Sterling watched the compound like a predator.
Now dressed entirely in dark, non-reflective tactical black, Arthur smoothly, silently drew the heavy, military-grade Sniper crossbow directly from his invisible storage space.
His calloused hands moved with flawless, lethal precision. He carefully nocked a heavy, armor-piercing bolt onto the taut string, peered intensely through a narrow gap he had meticulously trimmed in the thick foliage earlier, and quietly studied the illuminated grounds far below.
His supernaturally sharp gaze locked perfectly on a highly inconspicuous, dark spot securely located inside the fortified compound: the heavy, main electrical panel that continuously fed raw power to the lethal high-voltage fence and absolutely every single electronic device inside the massive house.
Knock that specific, critical box out and the entire sprawling villa would be instantly plunged into pitch-black darkness ,but only very briefly.
Arthur had already systematically, aggressively pushed his highly technical [Electrician] skill well above Lv2.
When he had flawlessly infiltrated the complex earlier that week to steal the gold, his enhanced eyes had briefly glimpsed exactly what looked like a massive, industrial backup generator securely housed in the underground garage.
But because he had been in a desperate, highly calculated hurry to aggressively steal the heavy bricks and escape unnoticed, he absolutely hadn't gotten a completely clear, detailed look at the machinery.
Still, Arthur's cold, analytical mind absolutely always planned strictly for the absolute worst-case tactical scenario: if there really was a fully functional, automated backup set, within a very few, incredibly tense minutes, it would violently kick in and bright power would fully return to the estate.
Arthur would consequently have absolutely only those few, dark minutes to flawlessly break in and aggressively get Stella out alive.
Time was incredibly tight, and he logically knew he might get absolutely only one, single perfect shot at the rescue. So he waited, his breathing slow and completely controlled, his muscular frame perfectly still against the rough bark.
As for whether he could actually hit a small, metal fuse-box flawlessly from a staggering hundred meters away ,Arthur had absolutely zero tactical doubt.
That terrifying, unwavering certainty was exactly the profound confidence his newly acquired Lv4 [Shooting] skill generously gave him.
"Charlie, exactly what are you waiting for?" Arthur murmured softly into the cool night air, his voice barely a breath.
His dark, calculating gaze drifted slowly down toward a specific, shadowy spot on the lower slope of the mountain ,the exact, unmonitored dead zone where he had perfectly hidden his own vehicle before. Right now, Charlie's heavy approach vehicle was securely tucked away exactly there in the deep shadows.
Arthur muttered to himself again, his calloused finger already resting perfectly on the cold, sensitive trigger of the heavy crossbow.
He would patiently, ruthlessly wait for the absolute perfect, chaotic moment and then aggressively press it without a single second of hesitation.
Down near the fortified perimeter of Steve's sprawling villa, absolutely everything was heavily shrouded in thick darkness.
Two dark vehicles had crept silently up the winding road and lain in perfect, tense wait for quite some time.
With the highly capable, technical help of their elite hacker Lyle, Charlie and the rest of the surviving crew had flawlessly, digitally slipped past the advanced sensors of the security company and Steve's own heavily armed men.
They were now successfully reaching the imposing, heavily guarded main gate of the luxury villa.
Inside the dark interiors, Charlie grimly drove the lead car, while Handsome Rob and Left Ear securely manned the heavily armed trailing vehicle.
Lyle, naturally, absolutely hadn't come along to the highly lethal drop zone.
He had securely stayed behind in a heavily modified Dodge Ram 3500 van securely parked at the very foot of the dark mountain, actively providing crucial, real-time tech support for Charlie's desperate, incredibly dangerous team.