Arthur watched Malinda narrow her eyes and saw the gleam light up her azure gaze. He immediately shrugged and said-
"The Bounty Tavern we just acquired should have ties to the Bounty Tavern in the Inner Bay, right?
I never said you should use our newly acquired Bounty Tavern to contact the Inner Bay's Bounty Tavern and put some outrageous bounty on Joel Coleman.
I certainly never said you could use the Bounty Tavern to infiltrate the Inner Bay's underworld.
And I absolutely never said you could use the Bounty Tavern to eliminate people who make trouble for you in the Inner Bay or elsewhere."
As Malinda listened, she glanced at Arthur, and the corners of her lips began to curl upward.
That was exactly what she had just been thinking.
Anything to do with Joel Coleman was unimportant.
What mattered was infiltrating the Inner Bay's underworld and using this opportunity to eliminate people who kept exploiting their home-ground advantage to make trouble for her.
In the Inner Bay, she owned only two shops.
It wasn't that she didn't want to establish a trading company, or even a trade association.
She had faced obstruction at every turn.
Open and covert obstacles bound the lady like a spiderweb. Even the professional managers she had sent there had already suffered two deaths.
Those two professional managers had been trusted aides she had painstakingly trained.
Unlike her subordinates who knew only how to fight and kill, these two aides were intelligent, understood social subtleties, and had distinctive insights into business management. They had been crucial pieces in her plans.
Yet before either could fulfill his intended role, one had been stabbed in the back and fallen down the stairs, dying on the spot. The other had encountered robbers while traveling by carriage and,