Chapter 8: Aibo: We are all very cautious in our line of work

So Rosalia drove to the downstairs of Gobi's apartment early in the morning. While waiting for people to come downstairs, she opened her phone and sent a message to Kaka:

Good morning. Are you free at noon? My colleagues and I would like to visit your house to discuss the day's events.

Just a moment after the text message was sent, Rosalia was humming a song when her phone rang. It was a reply from Kaka.

Is he glued to the screen every day? Rosalia was surprised.

[I have training this afternoon. Do you want to come over for lunch? I'll cook. ;)]

No matter how playful this message was, it couldn't allow Rosalia to joke about her own body...

She didn't believe in Kaka's cooking skills at all, but she didn't want to undermine his self-confidence. After hesitating for a while, she replied:

[Looking forward to it;)]

Just as Rosalia lowered her head and immersed herself in her phone, a deep voice sounded: "Can we leave now?"

The voice was so mournful and so close that it scared Rosalia!

She patted her chest to calm her rapidly beating heart: "When did you come up?"

Gobi's hair was messy, his eyes were dark, his lips were pale, and his plaid shirt was tucked into his trousers in a messy way with the wrong buttons.

He had even developed a blue stubble on his lips after not seeing him for a day, and he looked nothing like the capable man he was yesterday. At this moment, he was leaning against the car door, uttering a faint, half-breathed voice:

"Just when you were smiling brightly and texting Kaka," he said, his eyes dull, as if his soul had been sucked out, "it's all your fault!"

"Me? What did I do?" Rosalia turned the steering wheel and nimbly dodged a teenager who was riding a bicycle very fast. When the other party raised his middle finger, she got in front of him, sprayed him with exhaust fumes, and then left in a cool manner.

Even this did not arouse Gobi's spirit at all. Normally, he would have jumped up, leaned out of the window and shouted "Fuck you" to the other party, pretending to be an American.

Now, he cast a dark look at Rosalia and said, "I dreamed last night that Grayson was chasing me all night."

ah……

Rosalia tried hard to control the corners of her mouth from turning up.

She took a deep breath and asked, "Why am I chasing you?"

Gobi said calmly, "Take off your pants."

?????

The morning rush hour had passed, and the streets leading to the cleaning company were almost deserted. In the middle of the wide street, a black Mercedes-Benz shook violently twice, running out an enchanting S-shaped curve.

"Please look straight ahead. I don't want to have to face another nightmare today just after last night's."

Rosalia endured it for a moment, then endured it again, then endured it again... She really couldn't bear it anymore, and the expression on her face was twisted into a ball.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

The team finally stopped in front of the housekeeping company. Rosalia held onto the steering wheel and laughed. Gobi, who seemed calm, had actually been gone for a while.

He even took out his file bag, compared it with the company name, and then calmly unlocked the car, opened the door, got out, and gave a professional smile to the person in charge who came down to greet them: "Hello, I'm Goby, who I called yesterday to discuss this."

He took out his ID and used his elbow to cover his face. Rosalia, still trying to hide her smile, introduced them to the two:

"This is my supervisor, Officer Bianchi. This is the head of Victory, Mr. Hodge."

"Hello, hello, officer. You are really young and promising." Hodge extended his hand to greet him first.

"Hello Mr. Hodge, no wonder so many players are willing to work with you, the name of your company is very classy." Rosalia reciprocated.

"It's all thanks to everyone's support, haha."

Hodge wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief as he led the two men up the stairs. Because the company primarily served players, there were very few on-site employees. Besides the HR staff responsible for recruitment and the training staff, the company had deliberately chosen a location in the suburbs where rent was cheap and somewhat remote.

Victory Company has three floors. The first floor lobby is used for reception and also houses the utility room. The second floor houses the HR office and training room. Rosalia took a look inside as she passed by. Everything was perfectly normal, just like the cleaning staff she once saw at a hotel, where the old ones were helping the new ones. Some of them were currently practicing flower arrangement.

"You also offer flower arrangement training?" Gobi was also puzzled.

"Yes, our team is mainly responsible for the players' family affairs. We have chefs, gardeners, and cleaners. Because some players' houses are very large and the number of people is slightly different, some are also responsible for swimming pool and home lawn maintenance, etc." Hodge introduced the company's scope of responsibilities to the two people in detail.

"As for the security team, we have several partner companies, most of whom are retired soldiers. However, players prefer to find bodyguards through agents, so few choose to do so."

Rosalia keenly sensed what he meant and asked, "So, someone has chosen your security team."

"Uh, yes."

"Have they never had similar problems in the homes of the players they're responsible for?"

"Yes, never." Hodge couldn't help wiping the sweat from his forehead. He was a bit fat and was already out of breath after walking for a while. "Is there any problem, officer?"

"No, no." Rosalia denied it flatly. She sat on the sofa in the office and politely thanked the secretary who brought her coffee.

She never touched anything given to her by investigators, so she just dipped her lips in the coffee and put it back without drinking it.

Rosalia leisurely crossed her legs and looked through the company personnel list that Hodge had found. She pointed at the names on the file and asked, "Is all the information here? Have you made detailed registrations for every employee?"

"Yes, we also conducted background checks to ensure that they had no criminal record or experience as fans." Speaking of this, Hodge's forehead stopped sweating and his breathing stopped.

He sat down across from the two of them, a rather smug expression on his face. "After all, the players' identities are special. To prevent any accidents, we have some investigative methods," he winked at them. "Basically, every single one of them was carefully selected by us."

After hearing this, Rosalia and Goby looked at each other.

"Oh, basically? That means there are some that you didn't carefully select, right?" asked Gobi.

"Ha, haha," Hodge said calmly, not embarrassed at all. "People in our line of work are very cautious and rarely recruit publicly. It's usually a matter of recommendation, with everyone vouching for each other."

He flipped through a few pages, pointed to the names, and said, "For example, this person, Aibo, used to work for a player's family at a Spanish club. She later married and moved to AC Milan. She found us through her husband. She's doing a great job now, very thorough, and we've received a lot of feedback from players' wives."

"Husband? Her husband is also in your company? Aren't you afraid that the couple will cause some unpleasant rumors?"

Rosalia was not speaking without purpose. She once heard a third-generation rich man say at a party that his family owned several houses in Milan alone. They usually lived in an apartment in the city center for the convenience of going out for fun, and hired cleaning and maintenance staff for the other houses.

Until one day they made an appointment to go to the racecourse for horse racing the next day, and suddenly he remembered that he had a villa near the racecourse, so he returned to the villa with his female companion in the middle of the night.

It wouldn't have been a big deal if he hadn't gone in, but once he entered the main courtyard, he felt something was wrong. The garden was a mess, with piles of dirt piled up in it. At first, he thought it was the gardener preparing to plant flowers, making advance preparations, so he didn't pay much attention.

When he turned on the lights on the first floor, he discovered a mess filled with a lot of things that didn't belong to him. Just then, a couple came rushing down from upstairs. They were part of the cleaning team hired by the family. Seeing that the villa was unoccupied and no one was coming, they moved in with their family, thinking they could move out when someone returned without being noticed. Who knew they'd run into him in the middle of the night?

The third-generation rich man said that he didn't make things difficult for them and asked them to move out quickly. It was also because they didn't live there all the time and didn't hang any paintings for auction there, otherwise it would have been looted long ago.

Thinking of this, Rosalia couldn't help but ask him, "Even in the houses where players live, there are rarely couples living together, right?"

Hotch nodded and flipped open a few more pages to show them: "These are all couples. We will arrange them according to time and area, and also according to clubs. Basically, they are in the same club but different residential areas."

He stepped back and pointed at Ai Bo, saying, "Her husband is an employee of the security company we work with. He's been there a long time and is very honest and doesn't talk much. That's why we chose her."

"Also, the security company will take this into consideration. We usually stagger our security and cleaning teams."

Rosalia looked in the direction of his finger. Next to the woman's name on the file was a picture. The woman in the picture had long curly hair, her lips slightly pursed, and her brows a little frowned, as if she was not used to being in front of the camera. She subconsciously wanted to avoid it, but she just stood there.

She had a bad feeling in her heart, but she didn't know where it came from.

Gobi had been listening without interrupting. Now that they were both quiet, he asked, "Which player's family does this person and her husband work for now?"

This question hit the nail on the head. Rosalia also looked up at Hodge, waiting for his answer.

Hodge hesitated for a moment and said, "This, this is the employer's privacy, we can't-"

Before he could finish his words, Gobi slammed the coffee in his hand onto the table with such force that the coffee liquid shook. A few drops flew out of the cup and landed on the photo in the file, wetting it.

The brown liquid spread across Ai Bo's photo, as if casting a shadow on her. Her lips, which were tightly pursed just now, now looked like she was smiling, and even her slightly furrowed brows seemed to be challenging the camera.

This sound also scared the person in charge, Hodge. He took out a handkerchief, but this time he didn't wipe his forehead anymore. Beads of sweat were already sliding down his cheeks.

He wiped it quickly, hesitated for a moment, and said with difficulty: "Aibo used to work at Kaka's house in AC Milan. Her husband also works at the home of an AC Milan player, but his name is Mr. Inzaghi, number nine."

Rosalia caught the clue in his words and asked, "Before?"

"Um, yes," Hotch clutched his handkerchief tightly, squeezing out the words bit by bit, "She resigned just last Wednesday."

Last Wednesday?

Rosalia was suddenly startled.

That was the third day that Kaka’s house was suspected of being invaded!

The author has something to say:

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[Dog head holding a rose] Thank you for your comments and irrigation

I need to pack my bags, so today's update is a little late

Please leave more comments [erect ear rabbit head]