[This chapter is dedicated to Zane_Love for showering our story power stones throughout the week. Thank you!]

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Despite the thickness of the door, when he closed it behind him, he could still hear a faint curse from the man who was looking for his daughter.

Laughing, he went to his room to put on some clothes to pick up his drunken daughter. While he was pulling a white polo shirt from the closet, he wondered if the man who had knocked on Jess's door was the reason she was drinking at this hour.

He shook his head and decided to have a talk with Jess. He knew that she had been avoiding him since he arrived at her doorstep.

No matter what problems they had in the past, he was still her father.

He wore his Levi's 501 and tucked his white polo in. He ran a comb on his hair, sprayed some cologne, and put on his wristwatch. He inspected his reflection on the mirror before leaving the room.

***

Noah was fuming in anger. He walked the corridor in front of Jess's door, thinking what he should do next. How he would confront the man staying at her apartment.

He was blinded with jealousy and rage that it didn't occur to him that the man in her apartment was a relative.

He was still pacing the corridor when he realized that the man was going to meet with Jess. He glanced at the closed door of Jess's apartment and quickly headed to the elevator.

Once he arrived at the lobby, he asked for the valet to get his car and have it parked just outside the building. He didn't wait in the lobby for a long time because just less than ten minutes after he asked the valet to get his car, the man in Jess's apartment emerged from one of the elevators.

He watched him step out of the building and stand at the curb. He slowly walked near the glass door of the lobby just as the valet who got his car came back with his car key, he saw the man he was tailing, hailed down a taxi.

As the taxi pulled up in front of the man, he hurried to his car to follow it.

Sebastian was chuckling when he got into the backseat of the cab; the taxi driver in his thirties looked strangely at him in the rearview mirror.

"Hey, do you see the red sports car behind us?"

"Uhm," the cab driver still gave him an apprehensive look.

"This is the address where you have to take me, but I don't want the driver of that sports car behind us to follow me there."

The cab driver gave him a look of disbelief, "Sir, that is a sports car, this is an old taxi from my shitty company, how do you expect me to lose him?"

Sebastian grinned at the taxi driver, he pulled out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans.

"He has a sports car but you know the streets, and if…" he took out a hundred dollars bill from his wallet, "...lose him, and you have these," he leaned into the driver seat and waved four pieces of Benjamin Franklin.

"You should have told me that," he grabbed the money and laughed. "Can I ask what's your beef with that guy?"

"He is snipping after my daughter's ass," he replied, leaning back to the backseat.

"Daughter, huh?" he grinned, disbelief was visible in his tone.

He chuckled and didn't mind the misunderstanding. Jess was seventeen when he had her. Not to mention, the Asian blood was strong on him. He doesn't look like he's already in his forties.

He has often been mistaken for his daughter's boyfriend. The misunderstanding doesn't bother him - he likes it, Jess hates it.

"She is my daughter."

"Sure," the cab driver said clearly, just agreeing but not believing him. "I can't lose him if he knows that I am trying to lose him since he has a sports car that could easily catch up with my shitty cab, but, just as you said, I know the streets...so, how do you want it done?"

"I don't want him to get an idea where I am going," he said watching the rearview mirror and saw the sports car right behind them.

"Well, if you add more Benjamin, I can drive around —"

"Are you being greedy?" he asked, cutting him off.

"Come on, I have to drive around the place where you are going to, to lose him. The building where the bar you want to go to is very prominent in the downtown area."

"But, can you lose him?"

"Yes! I can piss him off too."

"Deal!" He pulled an additional two hundred dollars from his wallet.

The cab driver joined the traffic and slowly put distance between them and the red sports car behind them by overtaking other cars on the other lane. Chaotic honking ensued with what the taxi driver did.

"Hey, I thought, you don't want him to know that we are trying to lose him?"

"Yeah, but for the additional two dollars I promise you to piss him off." He laughed as though he found something fun out of his boring job of transporting passengers.

Meanwhile, Noah, who was following them was startled when the taxi he was following, started to overtake other cars. He scoffed when he realized that they were trying to shake him off.

"Not gonna happen," he smirked as he swerved to his right. He caught them in the next intersection. There were three cars between them but he wasn't worried. From the looks of it, they were headed for the bridge.

He clicked his tongue and rolled his shoulders. Now that he knew where the taxi was going, he was no longer concerned about losing them.

It will be easy for him to catch up to them on the bridge. That's what he was thinking when he took the bridge but when he didn't see them, he knew he'd been tricked.

"Fuck!" He slammed his fist against the steering wheel.