Take My Breath Away

"Are you willing to marry Calvert if I help him?"

Pain flitted through Evelyn's eyes. "I..."

Carlos waited patiently for her to reply. The office fell into a thick silence.

"I am!" Evelyn answered after a long while.

When Evelyn left, Carlos took out his phone and called Matthew.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"What's up?"

"Come to my office."

"Okay."

Half an hour later, Matthew stepped into Carlos' office.

He pushed the door open and sat on the couch. "What's up?" he asked Carlos, who was standing in front of the window.

"Do you know Star Anise?" Carlos sat opposite him and opened his laptop.

Matthew nodded. "Yes." In the hacker world, the Internet security industry and the Internet community, everyone knew about Star Anise.

"He's the one who installed our company's current network security system. It's the leading security system in the world. It was Star Anise who developed this system. It successfully resists over two billion attacks from hackers every day. At present, it is nearly impossible to hack into our system." Of course, a hacker could program far more than one attack in a second. Even a common programmer could try to attack a system 10, 000 times in a second. So it was easy to imagine what an actual hacker was capable of.

"So what?" Matthew asked, a stony look on his face.

"I want to hire him. His salary will be at least ten million. He will work for ZL Group. I contacted him a few days ago, but he turned me down." Carlos' face soured at the recollection of Star Anise's answer.

Several days ago, Carlos contacted Star Anise. "I see you've programmed an amazing network security system."

"I'm flattered!" Star Anise replied.

Carlos wrote, "Our minimum is ten million dollars a year if you join ZL Group."

"Sorry, I can't. I'm pretty busy now."

Carlos asked, "What are you busy with?"

He figured he could just offer Star Anise more money if he said that he had another job. But unfortunately, Star Anise's answer was much different than what he had been expecting.

"Pursuing my girlfriend!" Star Anise had replied.

Carlos wrote, "I've done this before. Join ZL Group, and I'll teach you.".

He had to go after his wife for a long time before he was finally able to marry her.

Star Anise replied, "Your wife's probably easier to convince than mine. My future father-in-law's pretty difficult to deal with. Your tricks won't work. If you can teach me how to get along with my future father-in-law, maybe I will consider working for ZL Group."

'Father-in-law?' Carlos was stumped. Debbie's father had passed away a long time ago. He never had to deal with that, so how would he know what to do?

Carlos said, "Just flatter him. Do what he likes."

Star Anise replied, "The things my future father-in-law likes... Well, he doesn't really like anything."

Carlos didn't know what to say. In his mind, he thought Star Anise was probably purposely giving him a hard time.

At the thought of this, Carlos asked Matthew, "You know IT too, don't you? Find out who Star Anise is, where he is, and what he does. Try to hack into our company's network too, so you can check out the network security system."

Matthew was pretty tech-savvy. Carlos was no match for him in that field.

"I don't know who Star Anise really is. Everyone wants to know who he is, but he's pretty good at erasing any traces of himself and getting rid of ways for people to track him down. He has a team, and he trains the team well. Each of the members is equally good at erasing any traces they leave behind. As for checking out the network security system, I'll do that tonight." A lot of things had been said about Star Anise. It was said that he had once directly hacked into the Theo Group's system and controlled the entire system of the group. Theo Group had offered 500 million to hunt him down, but he got away scot-free.

If ZL Group's security system really ranked first in the world, as Carlos had claimed, attacking it wasn't going to be easy. Matthew decided to do it at night when he had finished all of the other things he needed to do.

"Have you found out who Sheffield Tang is?" That night when Matthew came back home, Carlos saw Terilynn sneaking into Matthew's bedroom. He knew she must have told Matthew about Sheffield and Evelyn.

"I'll find him," Matthew said plainly. He couldn't let his sister suffer that much pain for nothing.

"Did you get him demoted?" Carlos asked. He already knew who was behind it when Evelyn came to him. He took the blame for his son.

"Well, this is just a small warning for him." If Sheffield couldn't even handle such a small setback, there was no way Matthew was going to let his sister fall in love with a man like that.

"Then who do you think is responsible for the patient's death?" Carlos knew his son well enough to know that getting back at enemies at the expense of innocent lives was beneath him. He could never do something like that.

With a wry smile, Matthew said ironically, "Someone who wants to get rid of him used me. Apparently, Sheffield has other enemies. It's not just us."

Carlos sank into his own thoughts.

"He's not stupid. Evelyn asked me to help him. I guess he'll be able to fix it before I step in." Sheffield didn't even fall into Carlos' trap. How hard could it be for him to get out of the trap of a nobody like Sidell?

Matthew didn't approve of Carlos' way of dealing with things, and he had no plans of hiding it. He snapped, "Since you know him so well and what he's capable of, why are you still trying to bring him down then? Why don't you just let him be with Evelyn?"

Carlos sneered, "You're a brat and you know nothing. He didn't say anything even after your sister got pregnant. Not even when she was in grave danger! Now he's in a complicated relationship with Sidell's daughter all the while still seeing Evelyn! He's not even being honest with Evelyn about who he really is. How can you be sure that he has pure intentions for your sister?"

When Matthew found out about Sheffield, he immediately checked him out. He found that his parents had passed away long ago. "You mean he is using a fake identity?"

"Of course!"

Matthew fell silent. It seemed that Sheffield really was hiding something if he had to have a fake identity.

After Carlos heard that Sheffield had played a 10th-level piano concerto just to ruin Calvert's proposal to Evelyn, he went to see Jimmy in person. When Carlos mentioned Sheffield, Jimmy commented that Sheffield was intelligent—smart enough to do anything as long as he was interested in it. Sheffield had learned to play the piano when he had been abroad. When he was 17 years old, he rose to fame. However, shortly after that, he disappeared from the public eye. It didn't take long for people to forget about the once famous Sheffield Tang.