17 Phoenix Red

The Diamond Prince stopped in his tracks and gave Crescent a meaningful look. He drowned the girl in his deep ocean blue eyes that for a moment Crescent stood fixated on it unable to move. Whether it was mercy or distrust that freed her from the Diamond's prince stares, she had really no idea.

"Interesting," he said before he left, leaving Crescent almost breathless.

In just a minute though, the door flew open again but it was Georgi and Apple who entered this time.

"Gosh, boss! What is that all about?"

"O my, O my, you need to tell us everything right now!"

"Was he really interested in you?"

"Was he? Was he?"

Crescent only pushed the bridge of her nose with the sudden noise that filled the room. A bit distraught, she took a glass and pour herself some water before she faced the two.

"Did you buy some liquors?"

"Boss?" Georgi somehow caught her tension. "What's happening,"

"Trouble I think," Crescent announced and flushed a very complicated face.

***

"Did you get what you need from her?" Juan Long asked as he and the prince both head back to the car.

"Nothing useful," He replied. His words were always short but Juan Long was already used to that.

Huzey Montarini or what everyone knew as the Diamond prince had always been a man of few words. He is always reserved and the only people who can make him open were his best friends—the Montreal's young sire, Ziggorioh Montreal, and Dugmoch's Little Miss, Xhemin Lae or Ava Lee. The two, however, choose to reside in the Manggan Island and this explains why the prince too decided to reside there for a while. It was only recently that he came back to look for someone.

"If you gathered nothing useful from that woman then why do you seem troubled?" He asked curiously. Being one of his most trusted subordinates for a few years now, he kind of memorized some of his demeanors and expressions.

"Nothing. Just seemed a little curious,"

"What's with that girl that makes you curious about?" Juan Long asked further as he opened the door of the back seat of the car and allowed the prince to go in. He followed him after he had settled before their cat hit the road.

"You tell me," His master called for his guess.

"Well, she had quite a background. Her family seemed to be of good standing abroad and yet she lives in that kind of apartment and works in good for nothing company," Juan Long did run a background check on Crescent and learned about where she came from.

Crescent according to his sources was one of the granddaughters of Clayton Borromeo, owner of Iris International Corporation, a real state-focused business. Crescent according to records had an accident three years ago in the mountains of Tibor. She was doing some charity work on behalf of their corporation when the truck she was riding flipped and fell into a rushing river. She had been in a coma for months and woke up rumored to have amnesia. After that, she took some scholarships abroad and landed in her recent company.

"Many elite children do that, nothing unusual," Huzey didn't approve of his first proposition.

"Well, what about the fact that she was obsessed with the master thief?" Juan Long took a glance at the prince to check his expression but his half mask only hid everything he wished to see. "He did create a noteworthy little research about him,"

The Diamond prince did become interested in that. Crescent's little research. It was actually one of the reasons why he wanted to see her as the theory she wrote about the legendary thief was something different from all the theories he had read. Just like Crescent, Huzey was in search of the master thief too.

His red angel, the woman he was looking for, was actually told to be the master thief. However, knowing that his angel was just a girl in her twenties while the master thief is probably more than a half-century old, there's no way the master thief and the girl he was looking for were the same person. What he knew was that the recent stealing that everyone thought was the master thief's recent operations was not really his, but his red angel's. For how in the world, they share the same traits and strategies that the police and investigator thought they were the same person, he had no idea.

"Well, if her research doesn't really make her interesting, then perhaps her dream catchers?" Juan Long continued on his guesses as Huzey seemed to have ignored his recent remarks. "Was it not the reason why you came to see her?"

"She probably copied it from the samples I sent to the Bureau. I remember sending samples when they were processing the copyrights for it," Huzey told. As he was the ambassador of cultural affairs of the Manggan Island, Huzey was the one taking action in preserving and introducing the culture and arts of the Manggan people to the civilization. Before he does so however, he makes sure he had reserved the copyright to the Manggan people. He didn't want others to exploit it and so he made sure to take necessary precautions.

"Perhaps. However, to copy it means she needs a strong connection inside the Bureau. I didn't find one when investigating her. Also, if she did steal it, she should have been making money out of it by now but she did not. The only thing she did was post her designs on an anonymous site that had no regular views," Juan Long expressed, "Don't you think that's a little stupid? Stealing for nothing? Hard to tell but she doesn't seem to appear stupid to me,"

Huzey choose not to answer with this and went on with his usual overbearing silence.

"Since I could not really guess what made you curious about that woman now that you've seen her…. why don't you just tell me?"

Huzey did not bother to answer and just stared at the streets. Tired of waiting, Juan Long just dropped the conversation.

"Her eyes," Huzey spoke, his voice seemed to have caught something magical that Juan Long who thought the conversation was over, turned to him in surprise.

"What?"

"Her eyes….it is phoenix red just like how the Lagdameo heir described the red angel"