Chapter 1337 - Airtight Preparations
They had already been investigating the identity of the people who kidnapped Jin Chenggong and dumped him at one of their hideouts for more than three months now. René Alejandro and his hacker team were doing everything they could to scour the national surveillance system but the perpetrators were several steps ahead of them.
The national surveillance system had been secretly compromised to erase evidence and inject fake footage. The change was so seamless that nobody noticed it despite regular checks. It was only because of René Alejandro and his brothers' skills that they even noticed it in the first place.
Just based on this alone, they couldn't determine for sure which hacker did it. However, they suspected that it might be Drakon and his two irritating disciples, WhiteTigress and BlackPanther, based on the fact that this hacker team already had history of helping and protecting Jin Corporation.
Since Jin Chenggong was a Jin, albeit a disowned one, and his crime was betraying his clan and Jin Corporation, René Alejandro could only think of Drakon as the most likely hacker to help get rid of this traitor.
The problem was that the job done on the national surveillance system was so clean that René Alejandro and his brothers couldn't find any identifying traces of the specific hacker who silently and secretly made the changes without triggering alerts.
In the end, their efforts led to a dead end.
René Alejandro felt frustrated because Emilio Miguel continued disparaging his team for being useless. Of course, he didn't take the insult lying down. He retaliated and said that Emilio Miguel's team was useless as well for not finding any physical clues about who dumped Jin Chenggong and how they did it.
Regardless of their hostile rivalry, both of them were still aware that they had a common mission.
Jin Chenggong alone wasn't a threat. What they were the most concerned about was how the perpetrators learned about their hideout and knew how to dump Jin Chenggong there. They had been extremely careful and yet this kind of mistake still happened.
In addition to digging clues about the people who kidnapped Jin Chenggong, they were also doing internal investigations as well.
One possibility was that there was a traitor among them who divulged information about them to the unknown enemy.
Another possibility was that the enemy was extremely skillful, perhaps even more skilled than them.
Both René Alejandro and Emilio Miguel leaned towards the first possibility—that there was a traitor.
They could always force traitors to reveal themselves before imposing punishment on them. As their organization grew larger and more powerful than ever before, it was already expected for some of their members to begin developing thoughts of betrayal. [Read official chapters on W e b n o v e l (dot) com. Please stop supporting piracy. Also follow author on Instagram: @arriacross]
As for the second possibility, that the enemy was more skilled than them, their pride as members of their organization automatically made them want to dismiss this idea.
Unless the former top dog of the international underworld was resurrected from the deepest pits of hell, then it was impossible for other criminal groups to defeat their organization. Other criminal groups needed to band together first before they could threaten their organization's current existence. And that was something that they wouldn't allow to happen no matter what.
"Emil is becoming more and more impatient. He keeps on rushing us to produce results. If we don't, he's threatening to kill Jin Chenggong."
René Alejandro rolled his eyes. "If that maniac wants to kill Jin Chenggong, then he should just do it. Why keep on threatening us with that man's life? It is not like we care about that traitor. Emilio Miguel is the one who is going to be in trouble with the higher-ups if he really kills Jin Chenggong without permission. We are just going to receive a slap on our wrists, no?"
"Yes, but I'm also getting annoyed at the lack of progress in our investigation! Can we pin the blame on Liam Jin if we reveal Jin Chenggong's current condition and what he went through to the public?"
René Alejandro pursed his lips before answering his brother's question. "That was the original plan but Liam already had a set of airtight preparations that makes it difficult for us to pin the blame on him. Even before Jin Chenggong disappeared, Liam already handed clear evidence of Jin Chenggong's betrayal directly to the Chief of Police in secret and even implied that he might be framed if something bad happens to Jin Chenggong.
"Of course, the evidence is clean and doesn't contain any information about us. The Youngs' involvement aren't included either. Even if Liam suspects the Youngs, he can't do anything about them because the Youngs are holding Jin Corporation's Singapore branch as hostage. Any wrong move and the Youngs can sabotage Jin Corporation's influence in Asia. Liam wouldn't dare to risk it, no?
"In addition, Liam was the one who reported Jin Chenggong as a missing person to the police. He also mobilized the Jin clan's other branch families to help in the search, but of course, nobody succeeded in locating him. On the contrary, they ended up digging more incriminating evidence of Jin Chenggong's betrayal. To his clan members, the police and the public, Liam has already demonstrated his benevolence as the clan leader by doing all of this for a traitor.
"What's more, he showed mercy to Jin Chenggong's family—his wife and daughter—by sending them abroad with a group of bodyguards. He'll also be the one paying for the salaries of the bodyguards so the wife and daughter didn't need to worry about any of that. The mother and daughter won't live in luxury anymore but at least they won't have to face the humiliation of wearing the label of a traitor's family if they insisted on staying here."
One of his brothers commented, "Bodyguards? More like jail guards to keep an eye on the mother and daughter!"
"True, my brother." René Alejandro nodded and chuckled. His two deep dimples appeared on both cheeks, instantly transforming him into a charming prince charming. "Liam is not the head of Jin Corporation for nothing.. Although we haven't confirmed that he has something to do with kidnapping and torturing Jin Chenggong, just the preliminary preparations he had in place to shift potential accusations away from him are already enough proof of his cunning intellect and skillful maneuvers."