Chapter 353: The Woman in Grey

The awkward silence stretched out for more than a few seconds.

"O-Okay," Vivian finally stuttered with a nervous smile on her face as she tried to act normal. "Would you be back for dinner?"

"I’m not sure." Yohan also decided to pretend the slip-up never happened. After all, calling his aunt by her name couldn’t exactly be tied to their secret relationship.

Meanwhile, Cassie was too out of it to even notice.

"In that case, you should hurry out." She went ahead and grabbed his arm, guiding him toward the door.

Yohan didn’t understand why until he was already outside. When he did, he simply smiled and entered his car.

"I don’t know why she’s that worried. We aren’t even related... but I guess she doesn’t know that."

He was sure Vivian was going to tell her eventually. She was probably worried about how Cassie would handle it.

"I really don’t see the big issue here. She should just rip off the bandage and get it over with."

Yohan arrived at the place where Gunjoo wanted to meet. It was a private hotel with a casino in the lobby.

By now, night had fully covered the city, and loads of people were going in and out of the place. Yohan never even knew a place like this existed in the city.

Whenever the automatic doors opened, he could see the inside from where they had parked.

"I thought gambling was illegal in this city."

"This place is the only one of its kind, and even though it’s heavily regulated, it’s totally legal. Hatoru used to run it, raking in millions every month. That is why he paid the lawmakers to make it almost impossible for anyone else to get a gambling business license," Gunjoo explained with a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets.

"Now that he’s gone, I figured, why don’t we take this one and run it for ourselves instead of continuing to try to build our own?"

"Okay, what does that have to do with me?" Yohan wondered with a blank stare.

"Don’t you want a seat at the table? If you do this, you would be entitled to thirty percent of the proceeds as passive income. That means all you have to do is sit back and let me and my men run it."

It was a tempting offer, but Yohan wasn’t moved one bit.

"I told you I don’t want to be involved in your gang activities. Why don’t you want to do it yourselves? You have the thousand-man army..."

"It’s the Hundred-Man Monster Squad," Gunjoo sighed. "And this is a public place. Although it’s run by gangsters, it’s completely legal. The job has to be done by someone with your level of skill, precise enough to make them submit without raising any alarm."

"Alfredo is unfortunately out of town, and it might take a while before he returns. I can bump it up to thirty-three percent if you like?"

"I already told you..." Just as the words faded, his gaze landed on something that caught his attention.

He spotted someone he couldn’t believe had walked into the building.

’Was that the woman from the city council?’

Although she had large glasses on, he recognized her cold walking style and the same grey jacket.

"Excuse me for a moment. I’ll be right back." He was already moving before the words fully left his mouth.

Gunjoo’s hand fell on his shoulder. "Hey, if you’re going in, you shouldn’t go in without any information."

"The guy in charge is called Glass-Eye. His strongest fighter is called Alexander the Great. That’s the guy you should watch out for..."

Yohan simply stood through the monologue, all his attention focused on the inside of the casino. He needed to know what a woman like that was doing in a place like this.

Once he got inside, bright lights welcomed him from all angles. The sounds of multiple slot machines filled the room. The jingles and cranking of the levers mixed with frustrated people screaming at the screens.

He scanned the room and caught sight of her just as she slipped through a door at the back.

He calmly headed in that direction but was stopped by two guards in black suits.

"Only employees are allowed behind this point, sir." One of them said it with a mean glare.

"But you didn’t stop the woman who came before."

"She’s an employee," the man said bluntly.

Yohan knew it was an obvious lie. The man simply didn’t want to let him through. There was nothing he could do, he didn’t want to cause any trouble.

Just as he was about to give up and walk away, he noticed someone watching him from the corner of his eye.

When he turned, the man tried to shield his face with a newspaper, but Yohan had already figured out who it was.

He walked over to the man with a grin.

"I think your name was Simon Red, right?"

He lowered the paper two seconds later, as if he had considered denying his own name. His face was still wrapped in bandages, but he looked almost healed up, even managing a lazy grin.

"N-Nice to meet you again..." the man said.

With what Yohan had done to his face, he hadn’t expected him to be healed enough to speak after only a couple of days.

’He must have gotten something from the Baker’

That was the only explanation.

"Yeah, it’s nice that I got to run into you here. Why don’t we go for a walk?" Yohan said, placing one hand on the man’s shoulder.

He got up like he had already lost the battle and headed toward the door where the guards had stopped Yohan from going through.

With Yohan’s arm resting casually around his shoulder, the men simply opened the door for the two of them to go through.

"Good."

Yohan’s voice sent chills down his body.

He couldn’t take a full breath or swallow a drop of saliva because it felt like a wolf was holding his neck between its teeth.