A Graduation Gift

Charlie hung up with his eyebrows deeply furrowed.
His informant reported to him that a group of gangsters who had apparent connections with Clark had been spotted in G City
recently, which meant that there was a good chance they had already made contact.
Was Clark planning to introduce his drug trafficking operations into G City?
At the thought of that possibility, Charlie couldn't help himself from being worried.
If Clark really turned out being an untrustworthy man, Charlie was adamant that he should not be allowed to continue being the
leader of Dark Night Group anymore!
"Father!"
Amanda strutted in wearing a smile on her face, holding in her hands a bowl of soup she had requested the maid to prepare.
"It's kind of cold right now. Have some soup, please."
Amanda placed the soup in front of him on his desk and playfully urged her father to enjoy the soup. The steam rising up from
the soup brought the study some much-needed warmth.
"Thank you, my dear. I appreciate it, I really do. But please keep yourself out of the kitchen, okay? There's no need for you to
worry about what meals the maids are going to make. I don't want you to get your hands burnt."
As usual, Charlie subconsciously got worried about her hands again. But from the expression in Amanda's eyes, it was obvious
she got a little bit frustrated when he mentioned about her hands.
"My hands...They are no longer capable of playing the piano. Why should I care about them?"
Lowering her head to avoid looking Charlie straight in the eyes, Amanda suddenly moved her right hand toward the left side of
her waist and then she began to caress it. She looked so despondent, to say the least, so sad and alone.
It broke Charlie's heart every single time he saw his precious daughter acting like that.
"Please try not to think about it too much. I'm going to find the best doctor in the world for you, and I'll have you treated then. The
day will come when you would be able to play the piano again! Just trust me!"

With his fatherly love and so much tenderness, Charlie tried his best to comfort her.
"Fooling myself would do me no good, Father. My hands won't be able to play the piano ever again, I can tell,"
Amanda replied hopelessly, making Charlie feel grief-stricken, and at the same time, a bit angry.
"This's all because of that stupid Rufus! Where did he get the gall to do something like that to you!? If it weren't for you always
taking his side and defending him, I would've broken his hands into a million pieces already!"
Charlie's eyes had been filled to the brim with intense fury, so Amanda rushed to his side straight away to pacify him.
"Father, please calm yourself down. It's all in the past. There's nothing we can do to change it. Now he is my betrothed, my
beloved, and I want both of us to get along with him."
With Amanda reacting like that and being so considerate, Charlie experienced even greater sorrow. He remembered how Rufus
put on an act and pretended to be engaged with her when she was still much too unstable. That was the cold hard truth. No
matter how grandiose and ambitious the engagement ceremony had been, everything was just going to be a lie in the end. Her
dream of getting married to Rufus and spending the rest of her life with him would never come to fruition.
Watching Amanda and the way she was, Charlie just couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Why did Rufus turn down his daughter?
What was it with that other woman that made him so obsessed with her? That wretched Cassandra!
"By the way, Father. I noticed last time that Clark was present in my engagement party. What is he doing here in G City? I was
actually a bit surprised to see him at that time. Wasn't he supposed to be the one taking charge of the Dark Night Group?"
The mere thought of hearing his name being uttered was more than enough to send shivers down her spine, but in spite of that,
she was still able to muster up the strength to ask her father without losing composure.
The second Charlie heard that despicable man's name, it was able to instantly get on his wick.
"Pfft. Taking control of the Dark Night Group? Please. He never even truly got himself engaged in it in any way! It's actually me,
your father, who has no choice but to manage all of the businesses in the group. Should I have known back then that he was
such an unreliable man, I never would have bothered making him the leader just for his father's sake!"
At this point, Charlie couldn't get any more remorseful of his decision of choosing Clark to be in charge of the Dark Night Group.
The real reason he had done so was because Clark was the son of his best friend, their the former leader, and he only did it for

his sake. But truth be told, Clark had never really taken care of the business as the head of the group.
"Maybe it could help if you stop doing the work for him all the time, Father. Give him a chance to run the business himself. That
way, he'd probably realize his responsibilities little by little,"
Amanda finally uttered those words the way she had rehearsed it a long time ago. She entered into a deal with Clark, promising
she would help him out and convince her father to allow him to continue running the Dark Night Group.
"Stop helping him? How could I just carelessly leave the businesses to him? You saw it with your own eyes, didn't you? During
the ceremony, he decided to show up for just a minute, and then in a blink of an eye, he was already out of sight. It was plain as
day that he was deliberately avoiding meeting up with me! I'm scared to think of what could end up happening to the group if I
leave it all to him."
Charlie purposefully hid one crucial piece of information from Amanda, that Clark was involved in a ring of drug traffickers. He
couldn't risk her finding out these horrid and terrible dealings. It would be best if she didn't know anything about it and remained
innocent.
"Well, would you like me to discuss this with him? If he comes back to the company, it could be beneficial to you, and also, it
would lessen your workload considerably," offered Amanda.
She was caught by surprise, as she wasn't really expecting to hear that Clark had been spending his sweet time dealing with
other things instead of managing the Dark Night Group like he was supposed to. That being said, she still thought that there
might still be a chance she could convince him personally.
"No, there's no need for you to do that. You'd only be wasting your time. What I would like you to do is to take good care of
yourself, okay? Stop keeping in touch with Clark!"
All of a sudden, Charlie felt so nervous and uneasy that the tone of his voice turned cold.
Clark was just like a ticking time bomb now. There was no telling what his next move might be. All Charlie could hope to do was
to keep his daughter out of harm's way and prevent her from communicating with dangerous people. If his daughter somehow
got caught up in that mess, his heart wouldn't be able to handle it.