49: Chapter 49 Family Secrets and Kill Orders

Charles was silent for a moment.

He looked at Diana, his expression unchanged—the same face that had never been moved by anything for the regular customers at the auto repair shop.

Then he said:

"I don't know about that."

"The 'Colt Association' only reported to me that Edward and Musk had investigated and believed the Deep State was hiding information about Aliens."

"They didn't tell me what the specific relationship is between the Hoover Dam, the b-2 bomber, and Alien technology."

The "Colt Association" was the secret intelligence network that the Hopkins Family had passed down for over a hundred years.

Members of this organization never attracted any attention in their daily lives.

They appeared to be just an associate professor teaching 18th-century European history at a third-rate university, just a middle-aged patrol officer cruising the community in a squad car, or an ordinary civil servant wearing reading glasses in the City Hall archives, filing old blueprints.

None of them would ever receive an operation code on any given night, nor would any of them hear orders after the phone rang twice.

But as long as the boss behind the scenes of the Hopkins Family issued an order through a specific encrypted channel, these ordinary people scattered throughout society would turn into invisible assassins within six hours, ready to follow commands perfectly.

The Colt Association would not leave any records of their operations, especially records of silencing witnesses.

After hearing this, the disdain at the corner of Diana's mouth was undisguised, but beneath that layer of disdain stuck something new—a cold annoyance.

"So the report the Colt Association gave you only tells you where the Aliens are, but doesn't tell you which door they entered through."

"If I were the true owner of Northrop Grumman, the Colt Association would never be as incompetent as it is now."

"I wouldn't have let it go so many years without being able to piece together a complete answer..."

"You will understand when you sit in this position," Charles said as he picked up a dirty cotton rag that had fallen off the tool rack and set it by his feet.

He didn't look at Diana, continuing to bow his head and handle the miscellaneous tasks of the repair shop.

"Some things have no answer, not because no one went to investigate, or because the people investigating weren't smart enough."

"It is because everyone who seriously investigated that answer disappeared."

He looked up at Diana.

Beneath his gentle, flat eyes with drooping corners, there was suddenly a layer of extremely deep and dark silence.

"Ever since my father designated me as the controller behind the scenes of Northrop Grumman, everything I have done over these years has revolved around one premise."

"Not to give any organization, any outsider, or any inquiry that crosses the red line a lead that leads to that place."

"As long as I am still sitting in this position, I cannot sit by and watch Northrop Grumman disappear, nor can I watch the Hopkins Family disappear."

"So, I never want to know the answer to this question."

"Do you understand? I. Do. Not. Want. To. Know."

Diana looked at him, the black oil and rust dust from the chassis of an old pickup still staining her coveralls. Her tone sounded like advice, yet it was pressed with a determination that seeped from her very bones.

Since their father passed away, this determination had been embedded in this gray, dusty factory in Los Angeles, never moving, never boasting, and never retreating.

She gripped the crocodile-skin bag on the rolling stool tightly, her shoulder tense from habitually suppressing her anger, but her voice uncontrollably sharpened.

"When I sit in this position?"

"...Charles, that position was originally mine!"

"The seat of the true owner of Northrop Grumman originally belonged to me!"

"If Father hadn't changed his will at the last minute, Graham wouldn't be sitting on the top floor of Century City right now, signing documents for you while waiting for me."

"Do you think I'm just jealous that you got a company?"

"What I want is to take Northrop Grumman to the next level!"

"What I want is to let the Hopkins Family step into the threshold of The Pentagon and then push open the final palace door of Washington! And you..."

She swept her hand heavily toward the tool rack, pointing at the old, grease-stained tools and the rusted car with its chassis suspended in the air.

"You can't even sit in that CEO's chair for a single day!"

"You only know how to hide in this broken repair shop, giving credit for brake pads to delivery drivers—you are a disgrace to the Hopkins Family!"

"That is the reason Father wanted to change the heir back then," Charles suddenly put down the old rag he had used to wipe off the grease.

He wasn't hysterical, and he didn't raise his voice.

But the moment that sentence fell, the only sound left in the repair shop was the dull click of the rolling compressor every dozen seconds.

He turned to look at Diana, the shallow wrinkle between his brows looking extremely dark under the pale light.

"Your curiosity will destroy Northrop Grumman."

"Your thirst for knowledge will cause the total destruction of the Hopkins Family."

He placed the wrench on the tool rack, in that precisely calibrated slot, as if placing a bronze bell that would ring on time no matter what.

"You walked into Father's study on that sunny afternoon and asked him: 'It has only been three years since the merger of Northrop and Grumman, how on earth did you build the b-2 bomber?'"

"You just thought it was an academic question, similar to any question you would ask a professor at Princeton."

"But Father heard it."

"He saw that light in your eyes, that light of an unstoppable pursuit of the truth—that kind of light only you have."

Charles lowered his gaze, letting his hands hang by his sides, his voice growing a fraction hoarser.

"He knew that after you asked that one question, you would definitely get to the bottom of it."

"Sooner or later... maybe in two years, ten years, twenty years, you would definitely follow this clue to the end and figure out that gap that has been sealed for fifty years."

"When you find the answer... that will be when we are destroyed!"

Diana stood where she was, her lips slightly parted, but no sound could come from her throat.

She heard the words "Father" come out of Charles's mouth, with a tone that carried no anger or accusation, but only a flat, almost cruelly honest recollection. Her chest was suddenly struck by an old shadow.

Those heavily closed doors, the hand of her father resting on the spine of a book instead of patting her head, the afternoons spent in silence facing the sunset in a rocking chair—those vague remnants she had deliberately flattened in her memory were suddenly all overturned by Charles's words.

The harsh confrontation between the siblings suddenly vanished in the empty factory.

The old rolling compressor clicked for a few seconds, stopped, and then clicked as it started up again.

"Father was protecting you," Charles said.

Diana did not immediately respond to his words.

She pulled back the hand that had been resting on the leather bag on the rolling stool, her knuckles slightly pale from the prolonged tension.

When she spoke again, her voice remained cold and steady, but the sharp, metallic quality of a "successor who has been deprived and is now picking up the confrontation again" remained undiminished.

Only this time, the direction of her strike was no longer just Charles.

"Father's strategy was only useful when things were calm."

"When no one was investigating the Hoover Dam, and no one was digging up what was buried underground, he could seal the secret in the family will forever."

"But now... now Edward and Musk have already investigated."

"Not only have they investigated, but they seem to have actually found something."

"Walsh took something from 1,000 meters deep under the Westfield Center right under my nose, and that thing has already been sent to Musk and Edward."

"The situation has completely changed. Sticking to Father's conservative strategy now is what will destroy the Hopkins Family."

Charles was silent for a moment.

He wiped his palms clean with a towel, rubbing away the smell of brake fluid, antifreeze, and grease from under his fingernails bit by bit.

Then he looked at Diana peacefully, his voice faint, as if he were stating a mathematical formula for which he already knew the answer but was still unwilling to admit.

"That thing 1,000 meters under the Westfield Center... seems to be an eyeball."

Diana blurted out: "An Alien's eyeball?"

Charles neither admitted nor denied it.

He looked at Diana, his expression still that gentle face of an auto shop owner chatting with a regular customer.

But the words he spoke seemed to use an aura that did not belong to this factory at all, as if he were casting an insurmountable seal.

"I will never answer this question, and I never want to know the answer to this question."

He set the towel on the tool rack.

"However..."

The tone of his words shifted very naturally, as smooth as shifting gears, without any hesitation or panic.

"I also will not sit by and watch the destruction of Northrop Grumman, nor will I watch the destruction of the Hopkins Family."

Diana stood opposite the tool rack, looking into his eyes.

She was half a head shorter than her brother, but in those deep brown eyes, there was no trace of the contempt that usually surfaced when she saw this repair shop.

She needed Charles to weigh the thickness of the door he had just closed for her, millimeter by millimeter.

"Anyone who dares to investigate the Hoover Dam must be hunted down and killed by the Hopkins Family to the ends of the earth—this is an order passed down from our great-grandfather's generation."

Charles calmly recited this sentence, exactly consistent with the version they had heard in their father's deathbed room.

His right hand clenched uncomfortably inside the sleeve of his coveralls.

It wasn't nervousness; it was more like a man who had carried his responsibility too steadily for too long, weighing whether or not to reveal the other layer hidden too deeply within this sentence.

Diana tilted her head slightly.

Before she could continue to press him, Charles took a step, walking from the tool rack to her side, and continued in a low, word-for-word voice:

"Actually, there is a second half to this order..."

"If you don't kill them all, someone will come to hunt us down to the ends of the earth."

He lowered his eyes, picked up the old gloves that had been stained with too much machine oil from the workbench, and flattened them with his palm.

"And now, sister, you didn't kill them all."

"You missed Edward and Musk."