Chapter 22: Meeting of Neighbors and Wives!

Chapter 22: Meeting of Neighbors and Wives!

Sunday morning arrived.

As I began to leave my dark dream world, I was greeted by a wave of heavy physical sensations. The first and most noticeable was my wife laying directly on top of me, hugging me like a koala. Our bodies were completely joined, still deeply connected from last night's final round of sex. The very last thing I noticed was a wet drool patch soaking into my chest.

Yeah, when you realize your hot step-sister has a regular habit of snoring and drooling, the mornings become just a tad less sexy. Still, I thought she was absolutely perfect.

Mary's eyes opened blearily, blinking to see me without her glasses. A slow smile spread across her face as she felt me still thick and buried deep inside her, a vivid reminder of our amazing wedding night. Then, just like me, she noticed the damp patch on my skin and turned bright red.

"Morning, sexy wife."

"I would say fuck you, but I already did that," she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. "Come on, get up for real. I have a spa day today, and I am not missing it just because you want another round."

Mary reluctantly slid off me, separating our bodies with a slick, heavy mess of mixed fluids pooling onto the sheets. The two of us hopped straight into the bathroom to wash off the dried sweat and juices, showering together under the hot water before grabbing a quick breakfast of cold cereal.

Once we dressed for the day, Mary prepared to leave. She was going to pick up Hana in her police cruiser so they could head out for their spa afternoon.

My plan was to head over to Hana's place later to cook a massive dinner for both of them, right before Mary had to head back home to get some sleep before her night shift.

"Rick, honey, what are your plans for this morning?" Mary asked, adjusting her jacket.

"I am going to complete my two-hour workout, then get on my laptop to work on my Star University application." By application, I obviously meant hacking and spying on every single name on my blacklist.

"Mwah! I’m off then. Have fun, and don't forget to make a good meal for us girls, fufu."

She planted a hard kiss on my lips, her thoughts entirely occupied by food. I could still hear her chanting 'spa day' all the way out the door. Cute.

My new physical conditioning routine had been going smoothly. My body was still slightly stiff from the brutal beating I took on my birthday, but my muscles were mostly healed and adapting rapidly. Once my physical training was out of the way, I sat down at my laptop to analyze the past recordings harvested from Woo, Honda, and the Tang family.

I had built a custom monitoring script that operates exactly like the anti-terrorist wiretapping infrastructure from my first life. The moment any target types, speaks, or searches using specific flagged words, my system isolates the transmission. The primary keywords were simple: [Rick], [Lee], [Mary], [Hana], and [Revenge], for now.

Active surveillance is a losing game if you try to watch everything manually. The sheer volume of real-time communication makes it impossible for one person to digest. Drawing inspiration from my time on Earth, I turned my spy script into a localized version of Big Brother.

Whenever those keywords are triggered on their personal or workplace computers, smartphones, or caught by the microphones on those active devices, the exact timestamps and audio logs are packaged and routed back to me for easy backtracking. Of course, if they decide to keep their mouths shut and use a public library computer, I’m screwed, but it is what it is.

Professional assassins, foreign agents, and heavily paranoid operators have always used a classic, low-tech workaround to beat high-tech signal intrusion. They stay completely quiet, write their operational details down in a physical notebook, and burn the paper when they are done. Luckily, that level of security assumes they even know I'm watching them in the first place.

Right now, my tracking script was throwing plenty of flags. Scott Tang, for instance, spent an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over me. The audio files were full of him screaming curses at my name. He had already figured out that I was the one who tipped off the federal immigration officers to deport his main maid. Even wilder, his brain had convinced him that I somehow fabricated her entire espionage background and forced her to sign a false confession. Wow. Just wow.

The logs on Woo surprised me the most. The guy was actually a top-ranked professional fighter, which perfectly explained why he was always hanging around Tina Feng's father as muscle. Interestingly, Tina and Woo absolutely detested each other.

Woo spent most of his time grumbling about the fact that he hadn't been cleared to fight me yet. He had also thrown a massive tantrum when he found out Mary took off work early to marry me. The moment his contacts confirmed our legal marriage certificate in the municipal system, he completely trashed his personal office. Listening to that recording made me laugh out loud.

Dr. Honda was a completely different story. He was a patient, meticulous operator because he actually possessed a functioning brain. Right now, he was focusing entirely on researching my background, calling in favors from powerful, high-society patients who owed him debts. In my book, his quiet calculation made him the single most dangerous threat on the board.

After compiling the updated data into my personal bingo book, I decided to give Linda Lang a helping hand while pushing Scott further down the drain.

I isolated the audio log from the high school lunchroom, capturing the exact moment Scott used heavily abusive language to threaten Linda. I cleaned up the track, editing out the specific references to my own name, and routed the audio file anonymously straight to the personal device of the head of the Lang family. Once the transmission cleared, I completely wiped the remote connection logs and deleted the call history from Nadia’s smartphone service provider.

Speaking of the Ning twins, their legendary bait-and-switch operation didn't escape my surveillance network either. When I finally uncovered the full breakdown of what they did, I laughed so hard I spent ten straight minutes wiping tears from my eyes at Scott's sheer stupidity.

I picked up the entire sequence through the microphone tap on Scott's smartphone. Following the deportation of his maid, Scott had plunged into a deep depression, consuming massive amounts of alcohol. Seizing the opportunity, Nichole and Nadia hired two of their own black-haired, blue-eyed maids, paying them fifty thousand dollars each to slip into Scott's bed while he was completely blacked out. The paid maids took his virginity, and the twins caught the entire encounter on hidden video.

The drunk idiot had absolutely no idea the women riding him weren't his wealthy new brides. Once my laughter died down, a strange weight settled in my chest. On one hand, I was relieved to know he hadn't actually touched the twins. On the other hand, the realization left me feeling incredibly complicated. If Nichole and Nadia were planning a bait-and-switch all along, why did they give their bodies to me first? Nichole was a master schemer, but I couldn't understand her angle. Did the two of them secretly possess genuine feelings for me?

"Nichole, what exactly are you planning?" I muttered to the empty room, closing my laptop. "And why the hell do I find myself missing Nadia?"

I wrapped up my hacking session, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door to run my afternoon errands.

Let's rewind the clock to the exact moment Mary left our apartment, shifting the perspective over to Hana's residence...

Inside her home, Hana wasn't dressed in her usual high-end, trophy-wife attire. Instead, she wore a casual, baby-blue track suit with her hair tied up in a neat ponytail, sporting only a layer of light makeup. She was genuinely looking forward to spending some quality girl time with her new sister-wife, and even more excited for later tonight, when her young lover would come over to spend the night in her bed.

Ding dong.

The sound of the doorbell surprised her. She hadn't expected Mary to arrive so quickly. Hana walked over and swung the front door open, only to freeze. Standing on the porch was a strange young woman holding a meticulously wrapped gift. Hana scanned her face, instantly certain she had never met this person in her life.

"Hello," Hana said, her voice cautious. "How may I help you?"

The young woman wearing the white summer dress, her long black hair framing an enchanting but cold set of grey eyes under a wide-brimmed hat, gave a soft nod to Hana.

"Hello, Mrs. Hana Lee," she said. "I am your neighbor from lot 9, right next door. As the new wife of my high school classmate, Rick Lee, I wanted to come by and offer my personal greetings."

Clink, clink, thunk.

The conversation on the doorstep abruptly halted as the front gate swung open and clicked shut. A marked police cruiser had pulled into the driveway.

A young woman stepped out of the driver's seat, slamming the door shut with a heavy thud, clearly in an exceptional mood. The moment Mary’s eyes landed on Linda Lang standing right next to Hana on the porch, her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Five minutes later, the three women were seated inside Hana’s completely white living room.

"So, Dr. Chang is Rick’s girlfriend, and you are Rick’s wife—who used to be his step-sister?" Linda asked, trying to piece the connection together.

"Now you’ve got it right, Miss Lang," Mary replied smoothly. "I guess Rick didn't bother telling anyone at school, but that makes sense considering he only has one actual friend there. Also, let's just use first names from now on. You're neighbors with Hana, and besides, you already have a history with my family, don't you, Linda?"

Linda froze. The mention of her past struck a visible chord, and a heavy wave of guilt washed over her expression.

"You look exactly like your mother," Linda whispered, staring at Mary. "I am so terribly sorry."

Mary offered a small smile and shook her head. "Don't you ever apologize for what my mother did for you. Doing that would be disrespecting her final efforts."

Tears began to well up in Linda’s grey eyes and spill down her cheeks. Hana sat beside them, entirely confused by the exchange but choosing to remain quiet and listen.

"May I ask... how did you know it was me?" Linda asked, wiping her face. "The police completely sealed that incident."

With a sharp smirk, Mary pulled back the edge of her jacket, flashing her gold detective's badge. "After Rick and I pulled through the aftermath, I joined the force specifically to uncover why those criminals killed my parents. I had to work my way up to Detective just to get the security clearance required to open that specific case file. The moment I found out that the bleeding girl from the bank was the very same Linda Lang my brother knew from school, it all clicked. It made perfect sense why my parents would throw their lives down to save you."

The tears kept flowing from Linda’s eyes, prompting Hana to lean over and gently hand her a tissue.

"Does Rick know it was me?" Linda asked, her voice trembling. "Is that why he hates me so much?"

Mary smiled, finding the sheer irony of the situation almost overwhelming. "He has absolutely no idea that it was you his father died to protect. I’ve never told him."

"What? How could he not know?" Linda looked completely bewildered. "I was out of school for an entire week after it happened. I remember when I came back, I walked right up and apologized to him, but he completely ignored me. And right after that, he was out of school for a whole week too!"

Mary leaned back comfortably in her chair, ready to layout the harsh reality for both Linda and Hana.

"Rick has little to no memory of those two weeks," Mary explained, her voice dropping to a serious tone. "His mind literally couldn't handle the trauma. I wasn't any better. We watched the entire execution happen live, and we had no one to help us. My brother fed himself, went to school, and came home to feed me. He was operating on pure autopilot for two straight weeks. Most of the time, I couldn't even leave my bedroom from the sheer shock of it all. He was moving on basic survival instinct. At school, he didn't even register that you were missing, let alone notice when you returned. But do you want to know who did notice? That little bastard Scott Tang. Do you know the real reason my brother was out of school for a whole week?"

Linda slowly shook her head.

"Because my brother didn't acknowledge you when you approached him, Scott beat him to the absolute edge of his life," Mary said, her eyes flashing with a dangerous glint. "My brother dragged his bloody, broken body all the way home, slapped me hard enough to snap me out of my shock, and then collapsed on the floor from his injuries. I had to nurse him back to health myself. It was only after that physical trauma that his brain finally started processing reality again, completely blocking out the previous two weeks. If I had the legal clearance to kill that little bastard back then, I would have done it without hesitation."

"I am so sorry... I had no idea," Linda murmured.

Mary waved her hand dismissively. "No need. It seems my husband already extracted his pound of flesh from Tang. He even managed to get Scott's favorite lover deported, and she turned out to be a foreign asset tracking our country's movements on top of it. Rick mentioned he did a few other things to him too, but he refused to give me the details. He honestly looked a bit ashamed of whatever revenge he pulled off."

Linda paused, swallowing hard. "Then... do you know why Rick hates me so much? If he doesn't actually know about what happened at the bank?"

This time, the easygoing demeanor completely vanished from Mary’s face, replaced by a stern, unyielding gaze.

"You were my brother's very first crush," Mary revealed. "The day he gathered the courage to ask you if you could just be friends, you stepped on his feelings like he was a cockroach. Because of the exact words you threw at him that day, Rick developed a deep, permanent distaste for all nobles. He despises the upper class because you wounded his heart when he was completely vulnerable. If he were to find out now that his own father sacrificed his life to save the very girl who broke him, I don't even know what it would do to his mind."

Linda lowered her head in absolute shame. Before the bank heist transformed her perspective, her mind had been thoroughly warped by noble pride and an inherent disdain for commoners. But the sacrifice of Rick's father, his mother, and the sheer resilience of Rick himself had completely shattered that lifelong brainwashing.

Sensing the gravity of the conversation, Hana decided to bring up a lingering question of her own. "Mary, I had a conversation with Rick recently regarding his grandfather. Do you know anything about that situation?"

Mary’s facial muscles visibly twitched at the mention of the topic. "Yeah. That is a massive trigger for Rick. He and his grandfather are in a terrible place. Rick instinctively loathes the man."

"So he really is still alive?" Hana asked. "Rick explicitly told me that he considers him dead."

Mary burst into a sudden fit of laughter, clutching her stomach as she leaned forward. The revelation she blurted out next caused even the ice-cold Linda Lang to turn completely pale.

"Haha! Dead?! Who on this Earth could possibly kill General Lee?!"

Linda stared in absolute disbelief. "Rick's grandfather is General Lee? The Supreme Commander of the Self-Defense Forces for the entire Eurasian continent?!"

"The exact same one," Mary confirmed, her laughter dying down into a grim smirk. "The great war hero of our nation. Rick's father had a massive falling-out with the old man years ago, which led to his dad completely walking away from the Lee family. Or, to put it more accurately, he was entirely stripped of his name and banished."

Hana leaned forward, her curiosity peaking. "So that means Rick actually belongs to the middle noble tier, the Lee clan?"

Mary shook her head, clarifying the lineage. "No. He was born long after his father left the estate, meaning Rick was never entered into their official family registry. Despite whatever pedigree his mother carried, Rick is legally and socially a pure commoner."

Hana’s gossip-loving heart was beating fast now, desperate for the rest of the hidden details. "His mother's name wasn't even listed on his medical history records, and he completely avoids talking about her. Did you know her?"

"Sadly, I did," Mary sighed, her expression darkening. "But Rick doesn't remember her. My mother and father made me swear an oath to never, ever speak of her to him."

"Why?" Hana pressed.

"Because Rick's mother was the older sister of Scott Tang's father," Mary dropped the bombshell heavily. "She was completely disowned by the Tang family the moment she chose to marry Rick's dad. So, if you map out the genetics, Rick is half Lee and half Tang. Now you see why the history is so toxic. Her very existence was the catalyst that got Rick's dad kicked out of the Lee clan in the first place."

Linda felt her heart sink straight into her stomach. "Oh my God... Rick and Scott are biological first cousins!"

"Exactly," Mary said, a deep sense of grief settling over her face. "I honestly don't know if the reason Scott always targeted Rick was because he secretly overheard rumors about Rick's bloodline, or if his father was actively instigating the bullying from behind the scenes without revealing the truth. But either way, they are blood relatives."

Linda gasped as pieces of her own past fell into place. "So my father knew all along... That’s why he strictly ordered me to never speak to Rick. He was trying to avoid upsetting the Tang family! I never understood why my father was so hyper-aware of Rick and his dad, but now everything makes sense. How completely shameful of them. Oh no... and I made everything so much worse, didn't I?"

"Your family and the Tang family basically solidified the exact reasons why Rick's parents abandoned their noble titles," Mary said firmly.

Hana, still completely stunned by the sheer complexity of Rick's hidden background, looked at Mary. "But why would loving each other be enough grounds for both clans to completely throw them out? They were both high-ranking nobles, weren't they?"

Mary smiled wryly, finally at liberty to speak about the long-buried secrets of the household. "Because Rick's father was already arranged to marry a fiancée from the Long House. Instead of fulfilling his duty, he crossed over to their biggest rival house for the sake of love. The Long family was deeply shamed by the rejection, and Grandfather Lee was absolutely furious."

Hana and Linda sat in stunned silence, completely overwhelmed by the massive soap-opera drama binding their lives together. Realizing that Rick was moving through life completely blind to these massive family targets made the situation incredibly tense. If he ever discovered the truth, his rage would be uncontainable.

Mary checked her watch, breaking the heavy atmosphere. "Well, it’s officially spa-day time, and I am not missing our slot. Hana, what do you say we make the reservation for three?"

Meanwhile, across town at the main Star City grocery market—the exact same store where Rick had his first chaotic run-in with Hana...

I was pushing a cart through the aisles, a massive grin plastered across my face that I couldn't hide if I tried. I had compiled a detailed list to prepare an absolute feast for my two gorgeous women. My cart was already half full of high-end ingredients.

"Alright," I muttered to myself, checking the list. "Now all I need to grab are the prime steaks, and those are right around this corner!"

Bang!

The moment I rounded the corner of the aisle, my shopping cart slammed hard into another customer's cart. Fuck!

When I looked up to see exactly who I had bumped into, my eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Ah! Hello, flat-tire lady," I blurted out. "Sorry to hit you. I seem to have a habit of doing this around here. Let me just get out of your way. Goodbye!"

Yeah, it was her—the insanely sexy woman from the day I changed that flat tire on the side of the road. Her black car had been an easy fix, so the whole interaction hadn't been a big deal to me mechanically, but visually was another story. She was the only woman I had ever fallen for at first sight.

Meeting her actually made me believe in all those cliché sayings about destiny and soulmates. Everything about her was flawless—her posture, her refined speech, and her looks were a certified perfect ten. But I knew it was nothing more than a fantasy.

"My name is Victoria Long, not flat-tire lady, Rick Lee," she said smoothly.

"Sorry about that, Miss Long," I replied, rubbing the back of my neck. "I’m just surprised you even remembered my name, ha-ha. Well, see you around. Bye."

I navigated my cart around hers and headed down the aisle, completely oblivious to the fact that she had intentionally steered her cart right into my path to force the collision.

Victoria's piercing purple eyes locked onto my back, watching my departure with an unreadable expression.

A moment later, a young eighteen-year-old girl with short blonde hair and distinct pink eyes stepped out from around the corner. She was dressed in a sleek driver's uniform and leaned in close to Victoria, her voice dropping to a low, serious whisper.

"He has two concealed handguns on his person," Ashley reported quietly. "On top of that, his ambient alertness matches my instructor's baseline. He is highly trained in martial arts—the level is far too advanced for someone his age."

"Ashley, don't be ridiculous," Victoria replied, her voice remaining cool and even. "Look at who his father and his grandfather are. It makes perfect sense. But... my family name didn't even trigger a reaction from him. It seems he remains entirely ignorant of the Long clan. Well, his father is gone and his grandfather is as good as retired, so it's natural he doesn't know the history. Let's head home. I have an immense amount of corporate work to finalize before this upcoming university semester begins."

Who knew that Rick was not at fault for this cart collision? I walked away with my mind entirely on dinner, completely unaware that Victoria Long had just executed a calculated move to test me.