"Mr. Blake, before I transfer the money to your account, I need to remind you. If I transfer it directly to you, the taxes you'll have to pay could be crazy high!"
Roy hadn't previously thought his information fee would be this large, so he had Gerald just take care of the taxes for him.
But now it seemed that doing so wasn't the best idea. Los Angeles has a really high tax rate, and Roy definitely didn't want to just hand over a big chunk of his money to the IRS.
"How about this? Hold off on transferring the information fee for a few days. I'll go set up a studio first, and then you can transfer the money to the studio account."
Paying taxes through a studio is much less than paying individual income tax, and the tax rate also depends on where the studio is registered, so there's a lot of room to maneuver.
However, he still needed to consult with an accountant about the specifics. The tax system here in America is just too complicated.
"Of course, no problem! You can come to me to withdraw this information fee anytime."
"Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Orrin!"
"Pleasure doing business with you!"
After that, Roy left Gerald's office with Sultana.
Originally, Roy wanted to be a gentleman and offer Sultana a ride home, but Sultana drove herself, so there was no way.
"Sultana, you don't seem too disappointed?"
Roy walked side-by-side with the chocolate beauty, seeing her off to the parking lot.
"The subway case is complex, and Gerald's choice is the right one. We can't take risks."
Okay, Roy didn't know Sultana well enough. She's probably just more conservative when it comes to work.
But sometimes, even if the FEA wants to back off for a while, the enemy might not.
After seeing the older sister off, Roy was about to head back to his suite to enjoy the fruits of their victory with Heather and Penny when his phone suddenly rang.
He picked up his phone and saw it was Dalia calling.
This was a bit strange. Dalia hadn't been answering her phone or replying to messages for the past two days. Why would she suddenly call him?
Could something have happened?
Roy immediately answered the phone.
"Hello, this is Roy."
"Roy, something bad happened! I noticed some strange people snooping around my house. Could it be those things from the subway tunnel that night?"
Hmm? Those guys made a move?
Roy thought for a moment. It's possible their actions at noon had stirred things up, prompting Butcher's side to take action.
But Roy was strong, and the two women with him, Heather and Penny, were resting in the hotel these past two days because they were too tired from having fun the previous days, so the enemy had no way to get to them.
The Dolphin Hotel was the FEA's stronghold. Butcher would have to be crazy to enter there and try to grab someone.
But why would they go after Dalia?
If they were looking for someone, it should be him, right?
Back then, neither the subway driver nor Butcher should have seen Dalia.
Thinking about what Gerald had mentioned earlier about the Los Angeles police, Roy thought of a possibility.
"Dalia, did you call the police after that day?"
Dalia didn't hesitate and immediately answered Roy.
"After getting home that night, I was scared all night. The next day, when I was reading the newspaper, I saw a missing person notice and thought about going to the police station to provide some clues, but the police ignored me."
Okay, Dalia had good intentions, but good intentions led to bad results.
Butcher and his people must have targeted Dalia that way.
"Dalia, lock your doors and windows right now. I'm coming to you immediately! Remember, don't trust anyone!"
After hanging up, Roy called Heather and Penny, telling them he might be back late, and then drove his second-hand yellow Chevrolet Camaro straight to Dalia's apartment.
On the other side, after Roy hung up, Dalia immediately closed all the windows and drew the curtains.
Then, she pushed a cabinet against the front door before hugging her daughter Ceci and huddling together on the headboard.
Her daughter Ceci, who was only six years old, didn't understand why her mother was doing this, but she could sense her mother's fear.
"Mommy, why are we doing this?"
Looking at her innocent and lovely daughter, Dalia could only force an explanation.
"Shh, Ceci, we're playing hide-and-seek with someone. It's best not to talk right now."
Hearing that it was a game, Ceci immediately became quiet.
But it's actually quite difficult to keep a young child quiet in one place for a long time. Being noisy is in their nature.
After holding it in for about five minutes, Ceci started talking again.
"Mommy, hasn't that person found us yet?"
Dalia desperately hoped the stranger outside wouldn't find her and her daughter, but the lack of any sound made her hesitate.
"Mommy's going to take a look now."
Dalia went to the window, pulled back a part of the curtain, and looked out at the street.
It was the weekend, and Dalia had taken her daughter out to play all day. On the way home, she felt like someone was following her.
But at first, Dalia thought it was her ex-husband sending people to tail her.
Dalia and her ex-husband were in a critical stage of fighting for custody of their daughter, and she had encountered similar situations before.
However, when she went to pick up her daughter Ceci from kindergarten, Dalia unexpectedly saw the face of the person following her. It was Butcher Mahogany, who had appeared in the subway that day.
This terrified Dalia. After quickly taking her daughter home, she saw through the window that Mahogany was still standing on the street corner, watching.
Dalia's first instinct was to call Roy for help, but what she saw at the Santa Monica Cup last night made her hesitate. In the end, she chose to call the police.
Unfortunately, after making several calls to the police, the operators just gave her some perfunctory responses.
This is also where Dalia was too naive. In America, the police are only responsible for arresting criminals and maintaining social order after a crime has occurred. They have no obligation to protect potential victims before a crime happens.
That's the job of security, and you have to pay extra for that.
No joke, there are real cases of this!
Two girls heard strange noises and a woman screaming from next door, so they called the police. The police operator said they would send someone to check.
Hearing that the police would come, the two righteous girls chose to help the woman next door, and as expected, both of them were caught and raped by the criminals.
During this time, three waves of police came, but they just knocked on the door, asked a few casual questions, and left.
Afterwards, the two girls sued the local police, but they lost the case.
The court's reasoning was:
"The duty to provide public services is a duty owed to the general public, and in the absence of a special relationship between the police and an individual, there is no specific legal duty."
In other words, even if the Los Angeles police weren't corrupt, they still wouldn't necessarily send someone to rescue Dalia and her daughter.
After several hours, the police still hadn't shown up, and Mahogany hadn't disappeared. Utterly terrified, Dalia finally chose to call Roy for help.
But now, when Dalia looked at the street corner, she noticed that Mahogany's figure was gone. Had he given up?
"Mommy, did you see anything?"
"No, Mommy didn't see anything."
Slightly relieved, Dalia went back to the bedside and hugged her daughter Ceci, praying in her heart that Roy would arrive quickly.
"Mommy, I made a new friend these past few days!"
Dalia tried hard to control the fear in her heart, not wanting to affect her daughter.
"A new friend? Did you meet them at kindergarten?"
Ceci shook her head.
"No! I met them when I was waiting for Mommy after school!"
Dalia was taken aback. Because she didn't have much education or any specialized skills, she could only choose odd jobs or labor-intensive work.
The problem with these jobs was that her finishing time wasn't very stable, so she was often late picking up her daughter from school.
Dalia patted Ceci's head, feeling somewhat worried about her daughter.
"Ceci, can you tell me about this new friend?"
"Yeah! Mommy, I drew a picture for him. I'll go get it to show you!"
Ceci left Dalia's arms, walked over to her little backpack, and took out a crayon drawing from inside.
Seeing Ceci's old backpack made Dalia feel a pang. She had bought that little backpack before her divorce, and it had been used for several years, but because of financial difficulties, she hadn't bought a new one.
Now, seeing this old backpack, Dalia felt very guilty and didn't even notice when Ceci had returned to her.
"Mommy, look quickly! This is the friend I drew!"
Shaken a few times by her daughter, Dalia finally came back to her senses and looked at the crayon drawing in Ceci's hand.
It showed a tall man in a suit holding the hand of a little girl. Strangely, the little girl in the picture had a big smile, but the tall man's face was completely blank.
"Ceci, why didn't you draw a face on your friend?"
"But Slender Man doesn't have a face!"
This sentence startled Dalia. How could a person not have a face?
Looking closely at Ceci's expression, the little girl had a matter-of-fact look on her face, as if the Slender Man she was talking about really didn't have a face.
"Ceci, tell me, does your new friend really not have a face?"
Having experienced the subway monster incident, Dalia already knew that there were many supernatural things in this world. There were man-eating monsters in the subway tunnels, so it didn't seem strange that someone might not have facial features. Maybe he practiced some kind of 'Faceless Divine Skill'?
Ceci nodded emphatically.
"Yeah! Slender Man doesn't have a face, and he's really tall! Taller than Daddy, as tall as two Mommies!"
Dalia was five foot nine. Two of her would be about eleven and a half feet! Even if Ceci's description was a bit exaggerated, it should still be around ten feet. Could there really be someone that tall?
Alcina Dimitrescu: Yes, there is!
Dalia hesitated for a moment, wondering if Ceci was dreaming. If there really was someone that tall appearing at the kindergarten, the teachers there couldn't possibly have missed it.
But these past few days, the kindergarten teachers hadn't mentioned anything about a ten-foot-tall person. Instead, they told Dalia that Ceci's mood had been fluctuating a lot lately, and she didn't like playing games with the other children anymore.
Dalia knew that this was because the divorce and the broken family had caused a change in Ceci's mental state.
Many parents think that young children don't understand anything, but they don't realize that even though children might not understand everything, they can sense changes in emotions.
These emotional changes can subtly alter a child's psychology.
Dalia hugged Ceci, feeling a pang of heartache. She believed that it was because she had been too busy with work and hadn't paid enough attention to Ceci recently that her child had created an imaginary friend.
"I'm sorry, Ceci. Mommy was wrong!"
Ceci looked at her mother strangely, not understanding why her mother was apologizing, but she could feel her mother's concern at that moment, so she happily hugged her back.
The brief moment of warmth was interrupted by a rapid knocking on the door.
Dalia was plunged back into terror. She released her daughter Ceci and pushed her under the bed.
"Ceci, hide under the bed and don't make a sound!"
"Mommy, are we still playing hide-and-seek?"
"Yes, it's still hide-and-seek! If Ceci can hide without being found, I'll take you to McDonald's tomorrow!"
Hearing that she could have McDonald's, Ceci's eyes lit up immediately.
"Okay! I'll definitely hide well and won't make a single sound!"
As she said this, Ceci even covered her own mouth.
Seeing how obedient her daughter was, Dalia then left the bedroom and went to the front door, grabbing a rolling pin from the kitchen for protection.
"Who's there?"
A woman's voice came from outside the door.
"LAPD! Did you call the police?"
Looking through the peephole, Dalia saw two people in police uniforms standing outside, a man and a woman, which seemed to fit the standard for a police call.
'It really is the police,' Dalia thought, feeling a sense of relief. She was just about to push away the cabinet blocking the door and open it when she suddenly remembered Roy's last words:
Don't trust anyone!
Not even the police?
Dalia hesitated for a moment, and then the female police officer outside started knocking again.
"Open the door now, or we'll have to break it down!"
Hearing this, Dalia had no choice but to push away the cabinet and prepare to open the door. However, she was still cautious and kept the security chain on, opening the door just a crack, which could still be considered opening it.
"Ma'am, why did it take you so long to open the door?"
The female police officer looked a bit annoyed, probably because Dalia had been too slow.
"I'm sorry, I was a bit scared just now and had blocked the door with a cabinet. It took some time to move it."
This explanation was actually quite reasonable, but the female police officer's face was still full of impatience.
"Alright, just open the door all the way first, and we'll talk inside."
Dalia nodded and was just about to remove the security chain when she inadvertently caught sight of a necklace hanging around the female police officer's neck. The pattern on it looked familiar.
It was the same pattern as the one on Mahogany's chest!
Dalia had seen that pattern the night of the Midnight Meat Train when Roy kicked Mahogany away!
Dalia's expression changed. She immediately realized that there was something wrong with these two police officers and quickly tried to close the door.
However, the two police officers at the door reacted very quickly, immediately sticking their feet into the gap to prevent Dalia from closing it.
Failing to close the door, Dalia could only try to move the cabinet back to block the door, but unfortunately, as a weak woman, she was no match in strength for an adult man and an adult woman working together outside.
The two of them forced the door open, and Dalia was quickly subdued.
The female police officer quickly checked the apartment.
"Didn't the file say she had a daughter?"
The male police officer knocked Dalia unconscious, hoisted her onto his shoulder, and walked towards the door.
"Who cares about that? We were only told to bring this woman!"
The female police officer shook her head and followed the male officer.
Photo of Jennifer Connelly in her prime
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