Cancelled Again

"No, no, I understand. You're busy with your stuff; that's completely fine."

"Don't worry, we can have lunch another day."

"Seriously, Roni, it's a non-issue."

"Alrighty then, I'll see you soon. Okay then, bye, love you."

…

'Damn, one of us is busy again, and we've had to cancel lunch.

'Except, this time it's me being cancelled on. It really doesn't feel too good.

'But I guess this is something I'll have to accept, given we're both work adults leading busy, successful careers.'

Roland leaned back in his chair, feeling quite down about being cancelled on.

Of course, he knew Veronica wouldn't have cancelled on him without a good reason. Nevertheless, it still left him feeling disappointed.

'I'm only feeling this way because I'd been looking forward to lunch with her.

'Tracking down Nightingale makes it seem like I don't trust her, but I do. It's because I trust her that I have to prove to the others that they're not the same person.'

He sighed and got back to work. All of a sudden, he wasn't feeling very hungry anyway.

…

In the security office, Anna and Carter were discussing how best to deal with the Veronica situation.

"Even you don't believe that Veronica is Nightingale?!" Anna couldn't believe it. Carter had told her that he believed her, but now he was saying something completely different.

"It's not that I don't believe you," reassured Carter. "It's just that I find it hard to believe that someone could hide such a talent for so many years from the ones closest to them."

"Well, she's managed it somehow!"

"Listen, I believe that there's more to her than meets the eye. She's clearly not all smiles like she appears. Judging from the conversation I overheard, she's definitely got something against you. I'm not saying she didn't say what she said to you, but have you ever thought that she might have been lying?"

Anna had no response to that. Why had she taken the other party's words at face value? Now that she thought about it, it seemed far more likely that Veronica was merely trying to get under Anna's skin.

After giving Anna a moment to thing but receiving no response, Carter continued, "My current theory is that Veronica somehow knows this Nightingale person—perhaps she even employs them—and has been using them to deal with people or situations that she can't throw her family's money at.

"As you can probably tell, I do not think too highly of her. She seems like a spoiled, rich girl who has never worked an honest day in her life. Seriously, people only out to harm others really gets on my nerves."

…

In his office, Roland glanced at his computer again. After making little to no progress that morning, his curiosity kept prodding him to open Nmap, his hacking tool of choice. It got to the point where he could only give into his urge; he was doing little work as it was.

'If I'm being honest with myself, I can't work out if this curiosity is due to Anna's accusation or a professional curiosity as a fellow computer expert.'

With a grin on his face, as if playing with his favorite toy, Roland started tapping away at his keyboard again, like a maestro playing his magnum opus.

=====Author's Thought=====

The competition is over so I'll be posting again.

I'm sorry to you loyal readers for not posting chapters recently, but Webnovel's running of the contest was less than satisfactory. None of us have much of a voice in what goes on on this site and in the community, so other than voicing my concerns through other channels, abstaining from posting during the contest's duration was all I could do.

Furthermore, as I have a lot of chapters to catch up on thanks to everyone's support during the event (29 chapters!), there won't be any bonus chapters available for the coming week or two.

Thank you to everyone who voted for RTB during the event despite the lack of chapters! All of your support means the world to me!