Chapter357 Elaborate Schemes
"The Teresa that came back is fake. Tell me, when did Teresa ever leave your sight?" Gabriel rushed down the stairs, his bloodshot eyes filled with an urgency he had never felt before, as he confronted Teresa's bodyguards, whom Luke had summoned.Gabriel burst down the stairs, a sense of urgency in his bloodshot eyes unlike anything before, as he confronted Teresa's bodyguards summoned by Luke.
—The Teresa that returned is an imposter?!
Luke and the bodyguards were dumbfounded.
‘Identical, how could she be fake?’
"Spit it out!" Gabriel roared, seeing them frozen in place.
"After Teresa arrived at the club, we didn't go inside the private room; we just stood guard outside. Everything seemed normal inside the room with Teresa, Diana, and little Liam. Later, Teresa left the room by herself and went to the ladies ladies' restroom," one of the guards quickly reported.
"Teresa lingered in the ladies' room a bit too long, and just when we started to get suspicious and thought about bursting in to check, she came out on her own," another bodyguard quickly added.
Another Another mishap with Teresa - they had failed to protect her time and again, damn it!’
"Did you notice anything unusual when she came out?" Gabriel immediately pressed.
"No." The bodyguard shook his head. "Teresa seemed normal when she left the restroom."
"Did she leave your sight again after that?" Gabriel asked urgently, his heart being squeezed tighter and tighter by an iron grip, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
"After leaving the restroom, Teresa went back to the private booth. She stayed there, I guess, for about a minute, then came out with the young master and headed home," the bodyguard promptly replied.
‘- Stayed in the restroom for quite a while.’
‘- After returning to the booth, I left for home in about a minute.’
‘- A club manager said Teresa left in a hurry and even forgot to put on her coat.’
Then, it hit Gabriel, “The restroom!”- The restroom!
In a flash, Gabriel spotted a loophole and asked sharply, "Did anyone follow Teresa into the restroom?"
The two bodyguards guarding the booth exchanged a glance, startled, and then one of them quickly answered, "Yes, a cleaning lady pushing a cart. She was stocky and looked quite strong."
"Bang!"
As soon as the bodyguard finished talking, Gabriel's fist angrily hit a nearby column, making his knuckles bleed right away.As the bodyguard finished speaking, Gabriel's fist furiously slammed into a nearby column, his knuckles instantly oozing a bright liquid.
But he felt no pain, only a fearful and panicked rage as he barked orders, "The switch was made in the club's ladies' restroom. Get everyone together now. I need a person found."
"Just us looking isn't going to be fast enough."
Mason and Raymond came downstairs just in time to catch Gabriel's orders, having overheard everything.
Mason's graying eyebrows furrowed as he pondered for only a moment before turning to the butler. "Get my phone and call Big Joe."
"Yes, sir," the butler responded and hurried off to fetch Mason's phone.
"Raymond, you call the city police department yourself," Mason then directed.
"Got it, Dad." Raymond nodded and immediately went to make the call.
Mason was ready to leverage both his contacts and the authorities to get Teresa back as quickly as possible.
Just moments ago, Mason and Raymond had gone to the room to check. The woman lying on the ground looked exactly like Teresa.Moments before, Mason and Raymond had gone to the room to have a look - the woman lying on the ground was indeed the spitting image of Teresa.
If it weren't for Gabriel, who slept with Teresa every night, no one would have noticed anything amiss.
The fact that someone had gone to such lengths to create a woman identical to Teresa meant they were not going to let Gabriel and his team find the real Teresa easily. If Teresa had fallen into their hands, she would likely be harmed, if not worse.
Gabriel glanced at Mason and Raymond, then immediately pulled out his phone, found William's number, and dialed.
On the other end, William had just stepped into his house when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw it was Gabriel calling. Intuition told him that it couldn't be good news, especially since Gabriel never called him this late.
"Hey..."
"Something's happened to Teresa. She went to Club XX for dinner with Diana tonight, and while she was in the restroom, a woman who's had surgery to look exactly like Teresa took her place at home."
The call barely connected before Gabriel, with a voice full of urgency and fear, interrupted William's greeting.
"What?!" William gasped, his eyes widening in shock.
He could hardly believe that someone had gone to the extent of surgically altering another woman to replace Teresa.
"The club staff was in on the Teresa swap."
"I got it. I'm on my way," William replied, ending the call. He rushed out the door immediately.
"William, where are you rushing off to now?" Sophia descended the stairs and called after him as he made his hasty departure.
"Mom, it's an emergency. You and Dad get some rest," he said before speeding off in his car, instructing the driver to head to the club posthaste.
...
"Spill it. Who took my sweetheart, and where is she now?"
Inside a side building of the Garcia family estate, the fake Teresa was thrown onto the floor, her clothes belonging to Teresa stripped off by the housekeeper and replaced with an outfit typical of a housekeeper's attire.
Gabriel stormed in, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and yanked her head back forcefully. His bloodthirsty eyes bore into her with a piercing gaze, his voice ice cold as the words spilled from deep within his throat.
"Honey, I... I am just..."
A scream followed by a loud "thump!" echoed abruptly.
Gabriel's patience had run out. The thought of Teresa possibly suffering at this very moment made his blood boil, and he was itching to tear the impostor posing as her to pieces.
As the fraud's words still hung in the air, Gabriel delivered another fierce kick, sending her flying across the room.
The impostor crashed heavily onto the floor, coughing up fresh blood. Gabriel's kick was no joke, especially since he threw his full whole strength into it. Now, the imposter sprawled out on the floor like a flattened frog, feeling as if every bone in her body had shattered, all her internal organs screaming in misplaced agony. The face, the spitting image of Teresa's, contorted in pain—utterly rigid and grotesque, a far cry from any resemblance of Teresa's captivating beauty.
With narrow eyes, Gabriel watched the imposter who couldn't muster the strength to rise. He grabbed a sharp dagger, squatted down, and the gleaming blade gently traced her cheek that bore Teresa's likeness.
Almost instantly, large drops of blood welled up and rolled down the impostor's fair skin as she trembled with pain and shrieked, "Ah! Please... no... no..."
"Talk! Who took my sweetheart? Where is she now?" As Gabriel demanded, the dagger in his hand continued its slow glide across the impostor's face, slicing open a long cut, his roar filled with rage.
"Ah... I don't know! I don't know!" The impostor's screams of agony pierced the air as she shook her head frantically, struggling.
Seeing her resistance, a security guard standing by immediately pinned her down firmly to the floor.
"You won't talk, huh?" Gabriel's dagger plunged straight into the palm of the impostor's hand, which was pressed against the floor.
"Ah!"
The exceedingly sharp blade pierced the palm in an instant, and a crimson tide overflowed. Her scream of absolute terror echoed throughout the entire Garcia estate.
"Will you talk now?" Clutching the dagger, its blade embedded in the impostor's palm, Gabriel slowly twisted the hilt, gritting his teeth as he asked once more.
"Ah... I don't know, I swear I don't know..." The impostor shrieked in excruciating pain, continuing to sob and violently shake her head. Her current state was a stark contrast to the demure and seductive Teresa she tried to mimic just moments before.
Upon seeing her refusal to confess, Gabriel's grip on the dagger tightened, and he increased the speed of the rotation. Her pitiful, agonizing screams were almost deafening.
"Gabriel." At that moment, Mason approached and intervened.
Gabriel glanced at Mason and decisively pulled out the dagger.
