Is this destiny?

"Why, Vicky?" Gabriel asked when Victoria ended her story and Sarah stepped to the side.

Victoria snorted. "Because you are a wimp. You had it all, but you gave it up. Did you ever ask me if I am happy to be the wife of an assistant?"

"But Vicky... We have more money than we need. We live in a huge mansion. We are…"

"It's not enough!" Victoria shouted, interrupting Gabriel. "You can be happy with mediocrity, but for me, it's not enough!"

Sarah gestured to JoAnna and Sophia to leave the room. She does not care about bickering between Victoria and Gabriel and she needs to think.

"Who are David Smith and Chelsea Davis?" Sarah asked in the hallway.

"David is a Smith, we should ask Emma. Maybe she knows." Sophia said.

"Davis… Chelsea Davis…" JoAnna mumbled. "Sounds familiar." A second later, Joanna remembered. "It's one of the women who spilled wine on Emma's dress. I remember that her whole family hoped that Chelsea will be Mrs. Smith."

Sarah frowned. "A bedclimber. Let's talk to Emma."

"What are you planning?" Sophia asked while walking after Sarah.

"I want to see what David and Chelsea know about Dice and to find out who else was involved. Also, I will interrogate the prisoners. We need to find out who has Aiden and for that, we need to figure out who is behind this…"

Emma told them that David Smith is a young man who was kicked out of the Smith mansion by Charlie, because he collaborated with his sister to drug Emma so that he can sleep with her. When Emma mentioned a big party at the Smith family villa, things clicked into place for JoAnna. She was there!

It didn't take long for two teams to be formed among the generals, one was heading to capture David Smith, and the other one Chelsea Davis.

JoAnna and Sophia took over things while Sarah went to interrogate prisoners. She said that she does not need help and she didn't.

That night, everyone stayed at the Cliffside Villa.

Bridgette didn't want to leave, and Steve stayed with her and Denise.

Victoria could not leave, and Gabriel didn't know what to do at the Long family villa. He was still processing the fact that Victoria used him in order to harm Steve and as a result, Aiden got kidnapped. Such a mess. How come he didn't see it coming? He knew that Victoria is dissatisfied, but he thought that in time, she will learn to accept it and that she will see how this is for the best. Gabriel was unable to imagine that it will reach to this point.

Jeff, Leah, Pam, Mike, Tiffany, and Ben… they all came to see if they can help and stayed overnight, with their kids included.

~ Los Angeles, The Cliffside Villa ~

June 1st

2:04 AM

"There is no ransom request?" Jeff asked Sophia for the fifth time. "Are you sure you checked all the emails and phones?"

"There is no ransom, Jeff. This was not about the money… You heard the audio. They took him for his fighting skills and there is a chance they don't know who Aiden is." Sophia responded.

Jeff pinched the roof of his nose. "How is Sarah?"

"She is letting out some steam on the prisoners while coming up with a plan." JoAnna responded.

"Is she in a state to do any planning?" Felix asked reluctantly.

Sophia looked at Felix like he asked something silly. "Probably not but… she is in a state where she will not follow any other plan so we might as well let her do what she feels it's right, and we will support her."

JoAnna agreed with Sophia. "Sarah knows the most about what we are facing, and for her, Aiden comes first. No matter what, she will not put him in danger."

They extracted all the information from Chelsea and David, and unfortunately, that was not much.

They also captured George Patrikis and several other suspects from SP3CT3R's report, and the information is consistent: Dice is a female with an Eastern European accent, and she is the one behind gathering everyone who was behind this attack. Maybe there are other individuals above Dice who are pulling the strings, but based on the current knowledge, Dice is the prime suspect.

The thugs who infiltrated the Cliffside Villa and the Beach house are locals from California. Their mission was to get in and take videos of the properties that were to be sent to a specific server. Oni and Masika checked their cameras and confirmed that the destination server is offline, which means... it's a dead end.

5:13 AM

Sarah found JoAnna, Jeff, Sophia, Felix, Charlie, Emma, Steve, Bridgette, Ben, Penny, Mike, Tiffany, Pam, and Leah in the game room. They were sitting slouched on the sofas.

There was a table set up with snacks and drinks, and a lot of coffee but no one felt like playing games or eating. Gabriel was also there, but he was seated on the side.

Kids were in their common room, dozing off and waiting for updates. Everyone waited for Sarah to decide what is next, determined to follow her.

"Thank you for being here." Sarah said. "You can probably go home and take rest. Take care of your family."

"Nonsense." Bridgette said. "You are our family and we are here to help. Our kids are sleeping and even if we can't do anything, we will not leave you on your own."

Sarah was touched, but the fact that Aiden is missing clouded all her happy thoughts.

Other than a confirmation of how more than a dozen vehicles and ships left the port during that timeframe, they have nothing to go on. The only positive was that the diving teams didn't find any traces of Aiden's body in the ocean, so they didn't dump him and fled.

Sarah saw that there is an update from Mishi, and she got herself a cup of coffee before going to the study.

…

"What do you have for me?" Sarah asked as soon as the video connected.

Mishi didn't answer Sarah's question. "Did you sleep? Sarah, I know that this is important, but your health comes first. You can fix the code tomorrow."

Sarah inhaled a shaky breath. "It's not just the code. They got Aiden."

"What?" Emir asked in disbelief.

"Based on what we found out, it was a targeted attack on us. They were going for two women, me and another one I assume. But they took Aiden instead." Sarah responded while the knot in her chest tightened. "I don't need to tell you how important this is. What do you have for me?"

"Sure, sure…" Mishi nodded while composing himself from the bomb Sarah threw at them. "Most of the code you gave us is cleaned and five modules are ready to go. We also confirmed that this was a small and simple script that was triggered when a block of code was executed. It would change a random bit in the code and the more your code ran, the more damaged it got. It is generic, which supports the theory that they didn't know what they are dealing with. This virus would slowly destroy anything. Do you have more modules for us? We can help."

"I will send you a few more when I get a chance… Right now, I'm trying to deal with a lot of things and I can't focus on code analysis."

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