The Million-Dollar Heart (Percival and Vivienne) novel Chapter 718

The following day, Vivienne was still curled up in Percival's arms, sleeping like a log.

Trending topics about her were skyrocketing, with a mix of comments from fans and possibly paid trolls sprawling below the headlines.

[Hawthorn Family Heiress Rampage]

[Vivienne Bullying]

A uniform wave of negative press.

[Who is this Vivienne? Never heard of her. How dare she mess with our sweet Ramona?]

[Poor Ramona, what is her team doing? They set her up with this no-name brand, and she gets harassed at the party!]

[Hawthorn family perfume? Our Ramona was doing them a favor representing them, and this is how they repay her!]

Vivienne was jolted awake by the insistent ringing of her phone.

Willa's voice came through, and Vivienne muffled by sleep, "What's up, Aunt Willa?"

"Vivienne, come to the hospital. Someone broke in last night."

Vivienne and Percival rushed to the hospital in record time. In the ward, Willa was already seated by Karen's bedside waiting for them.

Vivienne, usually composed, looked unusually serious. Without waiting for Willa to speak, she asked, "What happened?"

Percival followed closely behind her. "What's that in your hand?"

He had remained calm, the first to notice the syringe Willa was holding. In the shaft of morning sunlight, the clear liquid in the white syringe shimmered with a warm glow.

Willa didn't answer right away but glanced at Karen, who looked as peaceful as if she were merely asleep. "I can tell their target was specific. They weren't trying to kill your mother; they wanted her to test some drug."

"Testing drugs?" Vivienne's gaze finally fixed on the potion in the syringe, "But why involve my mother?"

Willa shook her head and handed the syringe to Vivienne, her ignorance evident.

Considering the skill of the attacker from the night before, she asked, "Vivienne, how much do you know about the ancient warrior lineage?"

At that, Vivienne paused, "Apart from the Perez and Martinez families, there's the Littleton and Abernathy families."

As she listed the few families she had some knowledge of, she turned to Percival, "Mr. Wolf, what do you know?"

Percival's eyes darkened as he shook his head slowly. "I only knew of the ancient warrior lineage through the Abernathy family, nothing more than you've mentioned."

These families had centuries-old legacies, many secrets unknown even to insiders like Vance.

The surface-level information was scant; without these individuals revealing themselves, they might as well be any ordinary person.

Vivienne understood that Willa wouldn't bring this up without reason. She inspected the syringe in her hand and then said, "Aunt Willa, are you suggesting that the attack on my mother is related to the ancient warrior lineage?"

Arthur sat at the head of the table, his aura of authority making everyone else sweat bullets. Despite their innocence, they couldn't shake a feeling of guilt under his gaze.

Arthur's slender, finely jointed fingers tapped on the documents before him, the sound like the tolling of a death knell.

"After checking for so long, are these all you got?"

The man closest to Arthur nearly buried his head in his chest as he said, "War God, this is all we've found on the Brooks family. We've turned the Brooks family upside down, including their servants from that year; we haven't found the person you're looking for."

Arthur was far from content with the conclusion. "Are you telling me that a person just vanished into thin air from the Brooks estate?" he questioned with a mixture of incredulity and irritation in his voice.

The man seated across from him shifted uncomfortably in his chair before hesitantly speaking up, "Well, it's not exactly that. It's just that there's no one named Winnie associated with the Brooks family. We've checked - the main family, the servants, even the guests who've passed through. No one by that name exists."

Arthur's brow furrowed deeply, a storm brewing on his face. He should have known better than to delegate this. He should have looked into it himself, but his duties had been pressing at the time, leaving him no room to investigate.

He sat motionless in his chair, fingers tapping slowly on the desktop, the atmosphere heavy with tension.

The man opposite Arthur swallowed hard, breaking the silence. "War God, we might not have found anyone named Winnie, but... I did come across someone named Karen."

Arthur's tapping fingers paused, and he arched an eyebrow, signaling for the man to continue.

"Karen was Scott's fiancée. They were set to marry, but she vanished the day before the wedding. She later married a Dorian from the Hawthorn family and had a daughter. Rumor has it that she was already pregnant with this daughter when she left Scott. Karen passed away, somehow came back to life, and was spotted at Vanguard Agency not long ago. And then, she just disappeared without a trace."

The man paused, then seemed to remember an important detail. "Oh, and Karen's daughter? Her name is Vivienne Hawthorn."