"Unbelievable. Ganging up on me now, are we?"
"Now I believe it. She is definitely your flesh and blood!"
With reflexes that sharp, she had clearly done this a dozen times before!
The table hadn't hit him hard enough to cause serious injury, just a bruised ego and maybe a bruised rib.
He was a grown man, not made of glass.
But getting put on his ass by Owen's sister was a brutally hard pill to swallow.
Owen, meanwhile, just shrugged casually. "What do you mean, ganging up? Weren't you the one who tried to attack first?"
Xavier glared dagger at him. "I hadn't even thrown the punch yet!"
"Then my sister simply anticipated your move and struck preemptively."
Owen looked incredibly smug.
They were mostly done with their meal anyway.
It was time to leave. As for the broken dishes, Xavier could foot the bill.
"Your sister is a real piece of work!"
Xavier sneered. "She assaulted me, and you expect me to pay for damages?"
Owen wasn't fazed. "You started it. Don't tell me Master Vance is too broke to cover a few plates?"
Xavier gritted his teeth, refusing to bicker with a woman. "Fine, I'll pay for it. But Owen, stop hiding behind a girl like a coward!"
"You agreed to the race before, and now you're backing out?"
Owen used to love street racing until a horrific accident. He had walked away unharmed, but he had watched another racer die right in front of him.
It had been a gruesome, mangled wreck.
The mere thought of getting back on a track left him paralyzed with dread.
He had never confessed this trauma to anyone; no one knew he was suffering from severe PTSD.
Xavier only remembered the teenage Owen who lived and breathed motorcycles. So, he was hell-bent on settling their score with a race.
"I already agreed to cut ties with Jocelyn. I will literally never speak to her again."
Getting knocked down hadn't enraged Xavier half as much as those words did. "Are you handing out charity now, Owen?"
"You refuse to race me. Do you honestly think I'm that far beneath you?"
"Jocelyn loved you and hated me. Do you think I deserved that?"
Owen was speechless. Where was all this coming from?
"If that's how you want to twist it, there's nothing I can do."
He simply gave up trying to reason with him.
Xavier scoffed. "Fine. You don't want to bet on Jocelyn, so we'll just throw her in as a bonus."
"We'll bet on that autographed book by your favorite author instead."
An autographed book?
Claire blinked in surprise and looked at Owen. "I had no idea you were a big reader."
Owen's expression shifted, and he glared at Xavier. "You told me you couldn't get it signed!"
"I did, but he only signed one copy. I kept it."
Owen was livid.
"That was my book! You stole it without even asking?"
"So what?" Xavier smirked triumphantly. "Unless you race me, you're never getting it back."
Seeing Owen about to accept, Claire
quickly intervened. "Wait, can't you just ask the author to sign another copy t FindNovel.net
"No!" Owen grumbled, looking thoroughly frustrated.
"Why not?" Claire asked, genuinely confused.
"Because he's in prison!" Owen admitted, looking deeply embarrassed.
"Oh..." Claire was stunned. She
hadn't expected her cousin's favorite
writer to be a literal convicted felon.
"What was the charge?" she asked casually.
Owen's face contorted into a
bet
complicated grimace. "Distributing illicit materials and setting.
literature for profit..."
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