Jordan’s private flight was set for the next afternoon.
He was already awake at four in the morning.
He paced back and forth outside Nina’s door several times, but in the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to knock and wake her.
Only after the sky had fully brightened did he finally go in, carrying a bowl of steamed egg custard he’d made himself.
He watched his sister finish it bite by bite, then carefully chose his words and said, “Nina…
can you leave a day later?”
Nina looked up at him, a knowing smile already sitting in her eyes.
“You’re worried I’ll get bullied if I go to the Blackwell family’s memorial ceremony, aren’t you?”
“No kidding.” Jordan set the bowl down on the bedside table with a heavy thunk, his thick brows twisted tight.
“Tiffany is shady as hell, and the women in the Blackwell family are each more difficult than the last.
If you go there alone, I’ll be in G Country stressing so hard I’ll probably end up with a heart attack.”
Nina pulled out a tissue and gently wiped the sweat from his forehead.
This world-famous arms dealer was wearing an apron right now, all tense and uneasy, looking less like some big-shot legend and more like an ordinary old dad worried sick about his daughter.
Her chest softened at the sight, but her tone stayed firm.
“Jordan, didn’t you say this yourself before?
People of the F Country royal family don’t back down.
If I don’t even dare go to the Blackwell family cemetery, then how am I supposed to return to F Country later?
How would I face Father and Mother?”
Jordan opened his mouth, but in the end, not a single word came out.
He knew this sister of his too well.
Twenty years ago, when she went missing, she was only three.
When they found her again, that stubborn streak deep in her bones hadn’t changed one bit.
Once she made up her mind, there was no changing it.
“…Fine.” Jordan practically crushed the word between his teeth before forcing it out.
“But I have one condition.”
Without giving her any chance to argue, he grabbed Nina’s hand and strode toward the garage.
The garage at Fragrance Garden was hidden on the west side of the main house.
After passing through a moon gate and going down two flights of steps, the space suddenly opened up.
Even though Nina had already lived here for half a month, this was her first time stepping into the garage.
The moment the motion-sensor lights came on one after another, she sucked in a sharp breath.
In a space as big as half a football field, more than twenty top-tier luxury cars were parked in neat rows.
Their bodies had been rebuilt with composite high-density materials, the windows were bulletproof glass, and even the tires had been specially reinforced.
Pagani, Koenigsegg, McLaren Speedtail…
under the cold white lights, they gleamed with a dark metallic sheen, like a pack of steel beasts lying low in wait.
“Every car here has been modified to the same standard as my own rides,” Jordan said, tapping the window of a Pagani.
A dull, heavy knock echoed out.
“Only this level of protection lets me feel okay about you driving it.
Go on, pick one.
Which do you like?”
Nina’s gaze swept across the row after row of absurdly expensive cars, then finally settled on a bright pink sports car tucked away in the corner.
Gold powder had been mixed into the paint, visible even to the naked eye.
Under the lights, it shimmered with a blazing, dazzling glow—flashy to the point of being almost arrogant.
“That one,” she said, lifting a finger to point at it.
Jordan followed the direction of her finger and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“…A Ferrari.
Seriously, Nina, you call that low-key?”
“It is the most low-key one here already.” Nina blinked at him with an innocent look.
“At least it doesn’t look like that Pagani next to it.
That thing straight-up looks like an alien spaceship.”
Jordan choked on his words for a second, then burst out laughing.
The sound rolled through the huge, empty garage and echoed back.
But after laughing for only a moment, his eyes suddenly turned red.
He reached out and pulled his sister hard into his arms, holding her like he was afraid the next second she’d disappear.
His chin pressed against the top of her head, and when he spoke, his voice was low and muffled.
“That Ferrari’s tank is full.
The bulletproof coating is the newest version.
Drive it however you want.
I’ll clean up the mess for you.”
Nina hugged him back, her nose stinging with sudden heat.
“Okay.”
Jordan slowly let her go and lifted a hand to straighten her collar.
But the tension in his eyes didn’t ease at all.
He kept staring at her slender wrist bones, at her pale cheek, and then something seemed to lock into place in his mind, like he had finally made up his mind.
“Still not enough,” he said in a deep voice.
Nina froze.
“What do you mean?”
“No matter how tough a car is, it’s still just a dead thing.” Jordan’s eyes sharpened in an instant, cold and fierce like a hawk’s.
He grabbed Nina’s hand and led her toward the deepest part of the garage.
“I can’t go with you onto Blackwell turf, but I have to make sure you can protect yourself.
There’s something under Fragrance Garden.
Today, you need to see it.”
They passed through the blast door at the end of the garage and stepped into a hidden elevator.
There were no floor buttons inside, only a biometric lock.
Jordan pressed his thumb onto it first, then came the iris scan, then voiceprint verification.
After all three layers cleared, the elevator began to descend slowly.
Nina could feel the air changing little by little, turning colder, heavier, carrying the faint smell of engine oil and metal.
Then came a soft “ding.”
The elevator doors slid open.
Ahead of them was a corridor more than ten meters long.
The walls on both sides were made of heavy lead-gray alloy, thick and oppressive.
The motion lights above switched on one after another with their footsteps, stretching forward like a strip of light leading straight into an abyss.
At the very end of the hallway stood a blast door nearly thirty centimeters thick, stamped with the eagle crest of the F Country royal family.
Jordan stopped in front of the door and turned back to look at Nina one last time.
In that glance was reluctance, worry, and something else too—something almost brutal in its resolve.
“Nina,” he said, “I can’t go with you into the Blackwell family’s wolf den.
But I can give you the weapon to tear straight through every line of defense they have.”
He entered the final password.
With a heavy hydraulic sound, the blast door slowly slid open to both sides.