Sheldon Webb had, after all, spent years with Hector Donovan day and night. One look at his expression was enough to know exactly what he was thinking.
Then, he caught sight of a certain someone's sly expression—like a little fox that had just gotten away with a trick—and his mouth twitched violently.
'My artist usually seems so sharp,' Sheldon thought. 'Why does he turn into a complete dope whenever his sister is around?'
'Could just anyone develop that kind of strength by training? Does he not understand what "natural-born superhuman strength" means? Natural-born!'
After a few days of observation, however, he had figured it out. His artist's sister looked innocent, harmless, and easy to bully, but in reality, she was the type to be pure on the outside and dark on the inside. She was the one who did the bullying. If anyone tried to bully her, they'd be lucky to get away without her taking a pound of flesh.
At this thought, Sheldon Webb grew even more melancholic.
'Such a promising talent. Why isn't she willing to become a star like her brother?'
After the incident with Jacqueline Jennings, Hector Donovan's nerves were stretched taut for several days straight. It would have been one thing if he were the only one involved, but he was mainly worried that the madwoman would retaliate against Arabella Donovan for what happened that night.
But for several days, everything was peaceful both on and off the set, to the point that Hector Donovan began to doubt himself.
'Could Caspian Rhodes's defense of them that night have actually worked? Is Jacqueline Jennings holding back, afraid to make a move against them?'
Harboring this complex doubt, the final day of Hector Donovan's guest role finally arrived.
That day, Hector Donovan had just finished filming on set when he received a call from an acquaintance.
The caller was a junior female colleague from the same company. They had attended the same school, and she had once worked under Sheldon Webb alongside Hector Donovan, so they had a bit of a friendly history.
But as Hector Donovan's fame grew, his schedule became increasingly packed.
Sheldon Webb felt that managing Hector Donovan alone was exhausting enough and that he couldn't possibly take on another artist, so he had transferred her to a different manager.
Hector Donovan was surprised to get a sudden call from her, but he didn't overthink it. "Is something wrong? What? You said someone... Just wait there. I'll send someone to get you."
The woman on the other end of the line was sobbing, begging Hector Donovan to come pick her up personally and not to tell anyone else, as she didn't want too many people to know about it.
Logically, it was completely understandable that a girl who had suddenly encountered such a thing wouldn't want many people to know.
But to Hector Donovan's ears, something felt indescribably off. Unfortunately, the person on the phone gave him no chance to think, continuing to wail in a shrill voice about the inhumane abuse she had suffered. She claimed she was too ashamed to face anyone, couldn't go on living, and was about to go to the hotel rooftop to end her life.
Hector Donovan's right eyelid twitched even more violently. A sense of foreboding churned in his stomach, leaving him on edge.
Just as he was figuring out how to calm her down and send someone to check on the situation, his sister's inner commentary arrived first.
'She's here, she's here! She's coming with her honey trap!'
A honey trap?!
Hector Donovan instinctively tightened his grip on his phone. Not far away, Mr. and Mrs. Donovan, who had been eating, immediately put down their chopsticks and looked questioningly at their second son.
Arabella Donovan chewed on the end of her chopstick, her mind wandering, completely oblivious to the strange reactions of the other three people in the room.
After returning from the hotel that day, Arabella Donovan had flipped through that Gary Stu power fantasy novel several times, inside and out. She finally found some clues and confirmed that the pixelated, unlucky 'Lover' was none other than her terribly ill-fated second brother.
Afterward, by piecing together snippets of conversation between the male lead and other characters, she had figured out the entire process of how the 'Lover' was "victimized."
'The woman calling Second Brother right now must be the main actress in the honey trap, the one Jacqueline Jennings paid a fortune to hire, right? Don't be fooled by how miserably she's crying. If Second Brother actually goes to pick her up as she says, she'll drug him the moment they meet and then turn around and frame him for rape.'
Mr. and Mrs. Donovan's faces turned deathly pale. Although Hector Donovan's call wasn't on speaker, the woman's voice was so shrill that they had pricked up their ears and managed to get the gist of it. They had even felt a bit of sympathy for the woman who had suffered such a terrible ordeal.
Who would have thought that this was actually a vicious conspiracy against their second son? One wrong step and his reputation would be ruined!
They were both furious and terrified in hindsight, wishing they could crawl into Hector Donovan's phone, drag that woman out, and give her a savage beating.
'Not only that, Jacqueline Jennings also won over many artists from Second Brother's company. They're just waiting for him to fall into this trap, and then they'll pop up one by one, according to plan, to testify against him. They'll use their own reputations to sling mud at Second Brother, claiming he tried to pressure them into sleeping with him and introduced them to high-level executives against their will to get better resources.'
Thinking of this, Arabella Donovan couldn't help but shake her head.
If things went according to the original plot and they succeeded, her second brother would never be able to shake off the label of "the entertainment industry's pimp"!
Hector Donovan's face was ashen. He despised scheming and taking shortcuts more than anything. To think that he would be slapped with such a label... all he could say was that Jacqueline Jennings truly knew how to disgust someone.
'And that's not even the most vicious part! The most vicious part is, they also prepared some illicit drugs for Second Brother. Once they have him unconscious, they can force-feed them to him and then frame this whole loss of control as him getting high on drugs and going too far.'
Wh-what?!
The three members of the Donovan family were instantly struck dumb, as if by lightning. How could she dare? How could she! This was an attempt on their son's life!
As the person at the center of it all, Hector Donovan's thoughts ran deeper. He suspected that besides wanting to destroy him, Jacqueline Jennings had prepared this stuff for other, more sinister purposes. For instance, forcing him—the thorn in her side who had repeatedly rejected her—to grovel at her feet and beg.
Given that madwoman's depraved nature, it was entirely possible. However...
Hector Donovan narrowed his eyes. He already had an idea of how to resolve this.
Perhaps because Hector Donovan had been silent for too long, the woman on the other end, having received no response to her crying, grew even more frantic about wanting to die.
Hector Donovan quickly summoned one hundred percent of his acting skills, soothing her with a tense and worried tone, "Don't cry, don't panic. You can't be impulsive at a time like this. First, tell me where you are. I'll head over right now."
Seeing that her hysterics were working, the woman immediately dropped the act, sobbing out an address between sniffles.
Hector Donovan carefully committed it to memory, offered a few more words of comfort, and then hung up the phone.
Arabella Donovan, terrified her second brother would fall for the trap, quickly asked, "Did something happen?"
"It's nothing." Hector Donovan made a reassuring gesture toward his sister, then picked up his phone to make another call. "Hello, is this the police? I need to file a report. In room 1303 of the Rainbow Hotel on Wutong Street, in the city's northwest district, someone is suicidal and threatening to take their own life."
"Also, I suspect her extreme behavior might be influenced by certain illicit substances. Oh, and there might be more than one person in that room."