Chapter 473: You’re Surprisingly Reasonable

Caspian Rhodes froze for a moment, his heart skipping a beat.

Before he could process it, he saw Eloise Donovan had already looked away. Arabella Donovan, however, stepped forward with sparkling eyes, looking at the pair teasingly. “Miss Lockhart, and this is…?”

“I’ve heard so much about you, Miss Donovan. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” The young man stepped forward to greet Arabella. “Hello, Miss Donovan. My name is Leon Lucas. I’m Jessica’s boyfriend.”

Arabella Donovan blinked, a little surprised.

‘Leon Lucas… Why does that name sound so familiar?’

It wasn’t just Arabella; Eloise Donovan also found the name a bit familiar, as if she’d heard it somewhere before.

‘Ah, I remember now! He’s that poor sap who was so popular it made Cassandra Lynch jealous—the one she caused to break his leg!’

Just as Arabella remembered, Eloise Donovan also recalled who this person was.

“Hello.” Arabella Donovan extended her hand for a brief shake, a simple acknowledgment.

Leon Lucas didn’t mind her brevity. He smiled and said, “I have you to thank for what happened back then, Miss Donovan. If you hadn’t pointed it out, I’d probably still be in the dark, thinking my sworn enemy framed me just to make me break my leg, miss summer camp, steal my spot, and get one up on me.”

Arabella was surprised that Leon Lucas brought it up himself. Hearing his words, she felt a wave of secondhand embarrassment.

‘So, your sworn enemy has been taking the blame for Cassandra Lynch all these years? No wonder she got away with it for so long. How unfair is that? Speaking of which, Mr. Lucas’s family supposedly has underworld origins. They’re not people you want to cross. So, is his enemy… still alive? Is he safe?’

Arabella knew she wasn’t close enough with Leon Lucas to gossip about this, so she had to suppress her curiosity for the time being.

Fortunately, someone else was on the same page.

Jessica Lockhart shot the man beside her a harsh glare. “You have the nerve to bring that up? Think of all the trouble you caused Howard over this, both openly and behind his back. You’re lucky he’s magnanimous and didn’t hold it against you. Otherwise, when you showed up at his door to apologize, he probably wouldn’t have even let you in. He’d have just thrown you out.”

Hearing this, Eloise Donovan was also a little surprised and curious. “Miss Lockhart, your relationship with this… Howard…”

Jessica Lockhart shot her boyfriend a warning look, her face a mask of resignation.

It turned out that the Lockhart siblings, Leon Lucas, and the Howard they mentioned had all grown up together.

Leon Lucas and Howard had clashed since they were kids. They would start fighting the moment they saw each other—or rather, Leon would unilaterally start picking a fight with Howard.

Leon thought Howard was a sanctimonious hypocrite who lived like a pre-programmed puppet, utterly boring. Howard thought Leon was crude, disrespectful, and rebellious, always doing the unexpected.

Neither could stand the sight of the other; it was a textbook case of mutual dislike.

Back then, when Leon broke his leg in that “accident,” his spot in the summer camp was given to Howard as a last-minute replacement.

Leon was already depressed about missing out, but when he saw that his replacement was the sworn enemy he detested most, he was thoroughly disgusted and miserable.

He even started entertaining conspiracy theories, wondering if Howard had used some underhanded method to steal the spot that should have been his—like sticking pins in a voodoo doll of him or hiring a fortune teller to curse him with bad luck.

The Donovan sisters were speechless, both thinking, ‘Your imagination is really something else. It’s a waste you’re not a screenwriter specializing in wild plots.’

Fortunately, Leon Lucas also knew his ideas were absurd. He was just bitter and couldn’t resist the itch to stir up some trouble and give the other guy a headache from time to time.

None of it was a big deal on its own, but it was all quite annoying when added up.

When Arabella Donovan happened to reveal the truth about his broken leg in the coffee shop that day, Leon Lucas finally had the sudden realization that he had been wrongly accusing his enemy all these years. And then he…

“…made a special trip to the guy’s house to apologize.”

Arabella Donovan: “…” ‘Holy crap, this supposed mafia prince is surprisingly reasonable!’

“So, Howard… did he forgive him?”

“Nope.” Jessica Lockhart couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “He saw him, but he completely ignored him. After Leon finished his apology, Howard just told him to get out. Leon came back and was mad at himself for days after that.”

Arabella Donovan: “…”

After listening to them, Eloise Donovan vaguely sensed something. “So, Miss Lockhart, your reason for seeking out our Serena this time… could it also be because of…?”

Jessica Lockhart was surprised by Eloise Donovan’s astuteness but didn’t hide anything.

“That’s right. It was because of this guy’s business that I happened to notice Miss Donovan. And with Logan’s situation getting more and more absurd lately, I decided I had to try a different approach…” ‘A desperate measure.’

She never expected that she would accidentally solve her brother’s romantic problems, expose Guinevere Rhodes’s true colors, and rescue the person most important to him.

At this thought, Jessica Lockhart suddenly turned to look at Leon Lucas.

“Something’s not right about this. According to Miss Donovan, for those people to dare to act so brazenly in broad daylight, they must have powerful backing. Not to mention, they wanted to abduct my future sister-in-law and sell her to some lawless place of no return. If someone wasn’t pulling the strings, how could a living, breathing person just vanish into thin air?”

Leon Lucas immediately understood what Jessica Lockhart was getting at, and his expression darkened slightly. “Your Lockhart family is my family. If someone dares to mess with you, this definitely isn’t over.”

Listening to their conversation, Arabella Donovan’s eyes lit up slightly.

The big shot behind Guinevere Rhodes was a lawless fanatic, the oldest of the heavyweight male supporting characters, with deep-rooted influence. An ordinary person would have no way of touching him.

But this Mr. Lucas before her was different. His family had started in the criminal underworld but had successfully gone legitimate, building a fortune and commanding influence in both the light and the dark. His capabilities needed no further explanation.

“Mr. Rhodes, you just mentioned that among the men your cousin was involved with, one of them didn’t have clean hands. When you said that, did you mean you found something specific? Could you send it to the police for reference?”

Although Arabella Donovan directed her words at Caspian Rhodes, she was sneaking glances at Leon Lucas out of the corner of her eye, discreetly observing his reaction.

The accomplices in today’s kidnapping of Yvette Chandler had all been caught, but Arabella didn’t believe these nameless lackeys could finger the mastermind Guinevere Rhodes relied on, much less successfully implicate him in this incident and bring justice for the victim.

But if they just let him get away, Logan Lockhart, now knowing the truth, would inevitably have a falling out with Guinevere Rhodes and become her enemy. At that point, it was almost certain he would end up confronting this mastermind.

If the suffering young couple she’d worked so hard to save ended up being “butterflied” out of existence because of this guy, Arabella would probably die from sheer frustration.

It would be better to strike first. Team up with Mr. Lucas, send that guy to prison early to eliminate future trouble, and solve the problem once and for all!

‘I’m doing this to rid the world of a pest! There’s absolutely nothing selfish about it!’

Caspian Rhodes: “…”