?Chapter 1494:


    No wonder they were close friends—Jewell had guessed it before William could exin.


    At William’s silence, Jewell rubbed his temples with a sigh. “You weren’t this impulsive when you were abroad. You’ve really changed since meeting Ste.”


    Back then, William had been wholly devoted to his studies; despite drawing admiration from more than half the women at his university, he had remainedpletely indifferent.


    He had always skipped school events altogether.


    Jewell had first met him at a surfing club, where every female member was stunningly fit and undeniably gorgeous; each one had, at some point, cast flirtatious nces in William’s direction.


    Yet William, utterly absorbed in honing his surfing skills, had paid their attention no mind whatsoever.


    Now, for Ste’s sake, he had resorted to outright physical violence—an act so out of character that, in Jewell’s view, it was rarer than a century nt blooming.


    “I didn’t call you up here to mock me,” William said quietly. “Today, Marc imed Ste would never regain her memory. He sounded absolutely certain. Do you think he’s done something to make sure of it?”


    Jewell’s expression grew grave at once. “What could he possibly have done? Ste’s amnesia was brought on by drugs. You think he drugged her again when they were alone?”


    William’s eyes darkened. “Is that possible?”


    Jewell shook his head firmly. “Almost impossible. The hospital reports are clear: Nina injected the poison herself. It was meant to be lethal, but the dose was too low, and that’s what triggered the memory loss. For Marc to try the same thing, he’d need both iron nerves and wless precision—even a marginally higher amount could kill Ste outright.”


    Deep down, Jewell refused to believe Marc would ever wager her life like that, just to bury whatever memories she might recover.


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    The man simply wasn’t that unhinged.


    William considered this in silence for a moment, then asked, “Is there another drug—something that could suppress memory without being fatal?”


    The question instantly brought the name of a certainpound to Jewell’s mind, but he dismissed it with a quick shake of his head before the word could escape his lips. “I don’t think so. Some colleagues abroad did experiment with apound like that years ago, but it was banned almost immediately because of its devastating, irreversible effects on memory.”


    No sane person would break thew to develop or procure such a thing, he told himself. And the idea that it might somehow have fallen into Marc’s hands was frankly ludicrous.


    William offered no reply. He simply held Jewell in a calm, unwavering gaze that carried far more weight than words ever could.


    After all, the world had never suffered a shortage of madmen—and inventors, especially in medicine, often proved the most dangerous of them all. In their obsessive chase for breakthroughs, they rarely stopped to ask whether their creations would heal or destroy humanity.


    Genius and madness, as the old saying went, were separated by the thinnest of threads.


    William didn’t need to speak a single syble; that steady look was more than enough for Jewell to understand exactly what he feared.


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