Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 498 Difficult Choices
As Ma Zhaodi listened to the mother's sorrowful and angry account, he turned to look at the butcher and Franky beside him. The butcher clenched his fists, while Franky lowered his head. Clearly, he did not believe that he had no responsibility for the matter, as he had claimed.

"I'm starting to regret it."

Ma Zhaodi didn't ask how old Colonel Mallory's grandson and granddaughter were. The two children, who were still huddled together in bed and whispering under the covers, were probably around ten years old.

"If I had known, I would have knocked out the lamplighter and brought him back while he was in the mental hospital." Ma Zhaodi subconsciously glanced at the Vought Building in the distance, which was lit up with golden lights in the night. It stood tall in the dark New York night sky, its golden and magnificent appearance resembling a splendid palace.

The murder of a military colonel's child cannot go unpunished by the law. The only explanation is that the Vought Corporation bribed officials to suppress the incident.

Therefore, it would be better to execute that scum in private—even without a law degree, Ma Zhaodi knew that what he had done deserved the death penalty.

Of course, given the recent decrease in executions in Pennsylvania, judges might have different opinions—but since the law has failed in the case of lamplighters, the judges' opinions are naturally irrelevant.

"Frankie, where did you go for those half an hour?" Ma Zhaodi looked at Frankie with some curiosity. "Even though you're French, you couldn't possibly be chasing after some woman in red on the street at this time for such an important mission, could you?"

Franky didn't answer; he just lowered his head and remained silent.

"Because he's a complete bastard! He never follows plans, what kind of free spirit is he, what kind of French romance? Bah!"

The woman burst into a tirade: "If we let that Frenchman keep moving around in the group, he'll get us killed sooner or later!"

Seeing that he didn't speak, Ma Zhaodi changed his approach: "We need to exchange intelligence, remember? I'll give you all the information I've found. You just need to tell me what happened in that half hour. It's very simple."

At this point, he raised his hand to look at his watch: "Shirley seems to be back from buying food soon, we don't have much time."

When he heard that Sherry was coming back soon, Franky's face turned pale. He remained silent for about half a minute before finally speaking.

"That night, I was following the lamplighter as the colonel had instructed. I had no intention of leaving; I just wanted to keep a close eye on him."

“When he came out of a party that night, Shirley called me. She said it was a friend of mine, my best buddy, Jay—I don’t know how to tell you, but... Jay, Shirley, and I, the three of us, came here from France together, and for a long time after we came to America, we survived on each other.”

"I joined the Boys, which gave me something decent to do for the time being, but they didn't."

“Jay overdosed on drugs that night and was unconscious. Shirley didn’t know what drugs he had taken and couldn’t give him first aid, so she had to call me.”

"So I rushed over, I left the mission to save him, and when I came back, the lamplighter had already disappeared from the party."

Upon hearing this, the butcher suddenly glanced at Ma Zhaodi. What Franky and Breast Milk didn't know was that before meeting Franky, Ma Zhaodi had said that if he saw him making drugs, he should break his arm.

The butcher didn't think much of it at the time. Although he himself wasn't addicted to those things, he didn't have any particular opinion on the so-called "solomony." He also thought Ma Zhaodi's abhorrent attitude towards so-called "solomony" was rather old-fashioned.

“We’re not exactly clean people to begin with, so why pretend to be saints? People who aren’t flexible enough can’t compete with Walter.”

"But if there had been someone like that in the team, Franky and his friends might have had their arms broken long ago, they wouldn't have overdosed and nearly died that night, and perhaps Mallory's grandchildren would still be alive."

For the first time, he questioned the principle of "going with the flow" that he relied on for survival, and realized for the first time that those seemingly outdated "correct" principles were perhaps meant to help people avoid more tragic consequences.

Only by truly suffering losses will one reflect on one's mistakes. From this perspective, Walter's superheroes and Butcher are the same.

"How is your friend?"

"He survived, but only for a few more months."

Franky clenched his fist: "A few months later, he overdosed again, but this time he didn't survive." "I don't even know what the point of helping him that night was. Even if I had saved him a few months later, he would have overdosed again anyway."

"I don't know if my decision at the time was right or wrong. If I had left him alone, at least I could have saved two children."

The mother looked at Franky: "Why didn't you say so sooner? Brother, all these years..."

"What's the point of saying anything? The dead can't be brought back to life; it was my fault to begin with."

Ma Zhaodi stepped forward and patted Frankie on the shoulder.

"Frankie?"

“That’s all,” Franky replied. “I’ve said everything I could.”

“I know, I’m telling you that if I ever see you ice skating or making, transporting, or selling your own products again, I’ll just break your hands.”

"what?"

Frankie looked up at Ma Zhaodi, whose face was serious, showing no sign of joking.

".Thanks."

See, he even has to say thank you.

With the intelligence sharing complete, Ma Zhaodi plugged the copied data into the computer and left it with the three people before going out to make a phone call to Clark.

The news about Compound Five, as well as the things we found out this time, also need to be relayed to him through that rented room—strictly speaking, Clark is actually the most important person in the current Boys, and his intelligence priority is much higher than others.

Clark listened silently to all the intelligence, and when Ma Zhaodi described the inhumane mental hospital and the terrible conditions inside, he couldn't help but clench his fists.

But he knew now was not the right time to vent, so he kept all these things to himself.

"Hey Superman, what are you doing standing by the window?"

Maeve's voice came from behind Clark: "Or did your X-ray vision spot some criminal again?"

"No, I just think the weather is a bit awful today."

Clark turned around: "You specifically wanted to see me about something?"

"I heard Madeline wanted to change Starlight's uniform into a bikini, but you shut her down. Well done, great hero!"

Maeve smiled meaningfully: "But be careful, Madeline isn't very shrewd."

"Aren't the people of the motherland also very vengeful?"

Clark countered, "I've noticed he doesn't like you coming to talk to me. Aren't you afraid he'll mess with you?"

"I'm counting on you to come and save me."

(End of this chapter)