Mermaid Effect Chapter 3

Rand did not know of the despair in the hearts of the people on the Blue Moon Coast.

Of course, his current mood was also exceptionally vile. Not long ago, a helicopter suddenly appeared ahead of the traffic lane he was traveling along on. Then, he didn't need to see or use his nose to know that these mercenaries would pull him out of his car and take him to a plane.

If this kind of thing didn't happen way too often, Rand would probably fear that this was some Hollywood-style kidnapping.

However, Vincent said on the phone that he would send someone to pick him up. Rand more or less made some mental preparations— this is Vincent's style, consistently simple, rude, and entirely without regard to what others think. No matter whether it is someone else or Rand.

"Hey, will my car be towed back?"

Rand stupidly opened his mouth to talk while his mind was s.p.a.ced out.

The mercenary immediately cast a strange look towards him, not one person answered him, and Rand awkwardly lowered his head down.

Ah, I forgot, these are the people that Vincent dispatched.

Rand cursed his bad memory from the bottom of his heart. Vincent does not allow anyone during any mission to have any unnecessary interaction with him. In Rand's opinion, Vincent might be preventing Rand from losing his face.

Rand tried to see it from Vincent's perspective and then this was the conclusion he reached.

With his status, his " younger brother" is probably like a stain on a treasured golden crown, completely unsightly.

Rand and Vincent are brothers. They may have had a pretty good relations.h.i.+p when they were young... but Rand has already forgotten about it all. His real memory began at the age of fourteen. At that time, he was at the police station in a remote central city. The senior policeman gave him a bed with a smelly blanket and a cup of hot coffee (don't ask why they would give a child a hot coffee at the time), they informed Rand that he and his family had gotten into a serious car accident and those in the car with him had their brains smashed in with a warped steel bar making them look like a lump of rotten tomatoes. There was no proof of his ident.i.ty and the car had no records.

They couldn't find out the ident.i.ties of the people who died, and Rand couldn't remember who he was.

Finally, Rand was sent to an aid agency. He later lived with a married Asian couple for a long time until they also died in a car accident. He did not go to college. After doing a few years of low-paid work, he became a small-town library administrator.

Rand used to think that this was how the rest of his life would go on— living a peaceful and poor life. One day, however, Vincent appeared in front of him and told him that they were brothers and that Rand's parents were the founders of Deep White Biotechnology.

Rand's life from then on has been turned upside down.

He had things he couldn't have had in his previous life, a name brand car, a mansion, a lot of money, and along with it came Vincent's frightening desire to control.

Rand felt that if Vincent lived in the past, he would certainly leave his mark in the history books as a tyrant. He controls everything about Rand. This "everything" includes Rand's everyday apparel, his food, his schedule and plans, his reading books, his bathing time...

Rand had even inadvertently woken up one night and then saw Vincent sitting at his bedside, watching him with that frightening gaze.

Quarrels turned in common occurrences, but Rand almost never won.

After nearly a year of tormenting each other, Rand finally obtained his only victory through the psychological presentation of anorexia... He moved out of Vincent's house to a small, underdeveloped city (the same city that he grew up in), Then he went to a newspaper.

His original ideas were pretty plain and simple, a janitor was good, or even a packer. He really didn't care about low wages, but he didn't expect Vincent to ultimately buy the newspaper.

And today he also sent a helicopter to pick him up while he was en route back home after gathering news.

He's truly had enough of this.

Rand thought.

(TN: See what I mean about unbelievably short? Some backstory was given so don't downplay its importance. Vincent is a total creep!)