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With a goal in mind and a plan at hand, he shifted his gaze from Melinda and turned his focus back to the wine as it wasn't time to make his move yet.

Strangely enough, he was the only male in the vicinity who could take his eyes off her and focus entirely on something else. This didn't escape Melinda's cold eyes that literally scanned through the room.

She had always been used to being the center of the occasion and was always on the receiving end of different kinds of gazes from both the men and the questionable females, so seeing someone who simply glanced at her for a few seconds and was obviously amazed by her beauty as she had seen his eyes widening slightly when they fell upon her, but still took his eyes off of her with seemingly no effort piqued her curiosity.

'That's him right?' 

'That kid everyone has been talking about for a while, Davies Lake,' she wondered to herself.

As the head of one of the city's largest and most powerful leagues, there was no way she didn't have any inside information about  Davies. She had been notified by the information gathering unit of her league that Davies had once again surfaced and had arrived back at Yorkshire City. 

She had been quite impressed by some of the things he had achieved, but she was not so interested as to actually be very interested in meeting him, so she had simply taken the information about him as a side note.

But he still belonged to... Or rather, he owned a ginormous organization that she couldn't afford to get into any stupid conflicts with, so she had made sure to stay updated about any major news that concerned him.

To be honest, she didn't really pay attention to him even though she had told her people to keep her updated as she didn't really care about what happened, but that all changed when she the headline of the news for the day after Davies had arrived in the city was that he had somehow gotten stuck inside of a mission gate.

Talk about bad luck, something she hadn't been very interested in had forced her to stay interested as she knew the kind of chaos that would ensure should anything actually happen to the widely acclaimed genius of the century. 

The mad dog fight for the things he possessed would almost tear the city apart. Unfortunately, her guild was a leading figure in the city so even if she wasn't in the least interested in whatever befell Davies, she also had to take preventive measures to ensure that her league wasn't pulled into whatever chaos that was brewing.

At the end of it all, Davies's arrival had brought her extra work and a lack of a peaceful mind so her impression of him had degraded by quite a bit.

A week later, when everyone was walking on eggshells and doing their best to avoid inciting a fight in the city that could potentially take a turn for the worse, news about Davies making it out of the gate almost unharmed and he had even managed to drag out the trainees that had gotten stuck into the gate with him.

It was also at this period that her information-gathering team had managed to get a clear picture of Davies's face and she had to admit that she was quite impressed by his beauty which was even higher than hers even though she as a woman should be the one with higher beauty, but she felt no attraction for him as she was not like other women who would swoon so easily upon getting a glance of Davies's face.

She was also quite impressed that Davies had not only saved himself but also taken care of his subordinates even though they were probably holding him back from the information she had gathered about the issue. 

Melinda may look like the frigid ice queen born in the deepest parts of the North Pole without the slightest bit of emotions, but that was only what was shown on her face due to her past circumstances.

She was actually a very caring person who took care of everyone around her which was also what ensured that she had grown to where she had been able to reach.

The people she surrounded herself with were people that respected her and were completely loyal to her so she almost never had any internal issues and could focus on growth, all of this stemmed from her good leadership and caring attitude despite what her face portrayed.

Though impressed she had been prepared to put away her worried and focus back on her own things when she suddenly wondered what Davies would do after he found out about what had almost occurred due to his disappearance.

Unknowingly, she has started to become a little interested in Davies and was now paying some attention to him which was a great contrast to when she did not want to have anything to do with him as she simply didn't care enough.

She had heard that one of Davies's employees, a C-level executive for that matter, had tried to attack him while under the influence of some 'suspicious substances'.

'Attacked him my ass,' she remembers thinking with a roll of her eyes when she had heard about it. Anyone with a brain would instantly realize that there was something wrong with the situation, but then they would think that since he was under the influence of some strange stuff, the situation was plausible, but the more adept thinkers would immediately realize that the mention of the C-level executive being under the influence was nothing but a smoke screen.

She immediately recognized that Davies had killed the executive because of something else but had managed to push the blame to something like narcotics so he wouldn't have to deal with the annoying aftermath of having to kill his own employee.

Melinda was even more impressed at this point because she knew that as a leader of an organization one had to cut away any rotting parts no matter the cost, before they could infect the whole tree and cause it to implode.

If she had to do the same thing as he did, she would... After all, she wasn't new to killing people.

'It seemed the genius of the century isn't a house cat but a tiger prowling in the jungle,' she had thought and then changed her focus back to her own job, no longer caring much about the situation or anything else about Davies Lake in general.

Unfortunately, the things that had to do with Davies didn't wait for her to come looking for them but rather they jumped at her, waiting to be found... Or rather, they had appeared on her television in the form of the morning show that she had always watched every morning.

As she heard case after case of strange deaths that had befallen the employees of Davies's company, she actually became a bit wary of Davies and actually sweated a bit in apprehension,

'Did I say he was a tiger... He's more like a furious dragon raging around after someone infuriated him,' she thought with cold sweat appearing on her back as she swallowed hard.

This time, she resolved to not pay any attention to things about Davies and whole heatedly focuses on her own work, and luckily, she didn't hear anything about him for a few days until she heard that he had been dragged into an accident and had been shot by the stupid pretentious bitchy girl from the Santos family.

She actually had a slight smile on her face after she heard that Davies had actually beat her up a fair bit before leaving her sprawling on the road.

Melinda had not yet met Davies at this point but had already begun to think that he might be quite an interesting person to speak with. 

Due to news about Davies constantly flying around since he had arrived back at the city, she had actually been able to get quite a bit of information about him, and the one thing that anyone who had heard everything that had occurred around Davies would be able to confirm one thing.

That one thing was that Davies had quite the temper and the moment that he ended up in a bad mood, someone would have to pay for it... In blood.

The old president who had suddenly committed suicide this morning after pissing Davies off after Davies had just almost been robbed of his technology was another fresh warning to people who were in the know about the occurrences in the city.

Melinda had been quite interested in meeting Davies prior to today, but knowing that he had just been almost robbed of his technology and was most probably in a bad mood, she didn't want to meet him right at the moment when he was probably looking for someone to let out his anger on... She had an inkling that the suicide of the old president wasn't just a suicide and had probably been encouraged by 'another party'.

Even the fact that he had come to the banquet was actually quite surprising as she hadn't thought he would be here, especially after what had almost happened to his technology.

Luckily he had merely given her a glance and looked away, so it was easy for her to escape from having to converse with him, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before she would have to meet him as she couldn't completely act like she didn't see him as that would be disrespectful, even though she was older than him by quite a fair bit... All she was doing was simply delaying their inevitable encounter.

Unknown to her, the encounter between the two of them was already a foregone conclusion and it was not going to be something she had ever thought of happening.