“C'moooon, you two…” Gillian whined, sprawling out in the grass and draping his arm over his face. “Does this really have to happen right now? I mean, surely it can wait…” Pausing, he propped himself up on his elbows, his nose scrunching up in confusion. “Actually… What are you two doing?”

Antonio sighed from where he was sitting under the tree, eyebrows furrowing together in concentration as he looked through the lists that were pulled up on the laptop in front of him.

“We are helping Antonio's damsel-in-distress solve a perplexing problem,” said the man that was sitting beside Antonio, tapping away rapidly at the keyboard. He pushed his glasses up from where they had slid down to the tip of his nose, looking distastefully down at where Gillian was laying. “Honestly, have you even been paying attention?” His French accent deepened with the disdain that he felt as he scoffed, swiping one of his long light brown locks behind his ear.

“Now, now, Christopher, we both know that Gil's not coherent in the morning, so it probably went in one ear and out the other,” Antonio said with mock sympathy, even though a wide grin was on his face. He couldn't help himself. The three of them were close so it wasn't difficult for all of them to poke fun at each other and tease one another. Of course, it often led to wrestling matches where they would try to make one another tap out, but that was usually only between Gillian and Antonio. Christopher, on the other hand, had an intense dislike for such rowdiness when it was off the soccer field.

Christopher merely snorted, returning his gaze back to the keyboard in front of him with his long fingers tapping diligently away at the keys. Antonio watched him with anticipation. Technically, they shouldn't even be doing this. He hadn't even come close to finishing all of his criminal law and psychology courses, but he was fairly certain that hacking into a government database was strictly illegal.

It hadn't even been Antonio's idea in all fairness, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't be seen as an accomplice if they were caught. It had all started whenever Antonio confided in his roommate, Christopher. The man had noticed how disquieted Antonio had been after he had returned from his date with Annabel the previous night.

Even if Antonio hadn't shown it around his girlfriend, he found the news that she had delivered incredibly disturbing. The very idea that Mathias may be trapped in an abusive relationship didn't sit well with the Spaniard. He may not have been close friends with Mathias, but there was still a connection and a camaraderie between them that couldn't be dismissed. They were teammates, and in Antonio's old soccer team, teammates were treated like family. So the very idea that someone was hurting one of his family was an unspeakable offense. Add on top of that the fact that Annabel's brother seemed to be caught smack in the middle of all of the drama, and it almost made Antonio's vision go red with the rage that it invoked.

After Antonio had divulged his thoughts on the matter to Christopher, the man had remained silent for several long moments before reassuring him that they would find some sort of solution to the problem in front of them, but for the time being, rest was important. Antonio had thanked his best friend for listening and went to bed as requested.

It was later that following morning that Christopher had approached Antonio with his laptop. He was a computer expert and a genius whenever it came to any type of technology and how it worked. That's why Antonio was hardly surprised to hear that Christopher wanted to try to dig up as much information about Lukas as they possibly could. After all, someone who has those supposed qualities would have left a trail or some sort of history, he had reasoned with Antonio when it seemed like he would object.

With what knowledge he did have, Antonio knew that Christopher had to be right. It didn't mean that it still didn't feel wrong, but he knew he was doing it for Annabel, and as he had told Annabel before, he would do whatever it took to make sure that she was safe. She was everything to him, and he couldn't bear the thought of harm befalling her.

Gillian sighed, drawing Antonio from his thoughts. “If you two have it under control, why did you drag me into it again?” He had plucked a piece of grass and was twisting it between his fingers, tying it into knots.

“Comic relief,” Christopher said distractedly with the deadpanned expression he always wore when he was deep in thought, hazel eyes squinting at the computer screen.

Antonio restrained a chuckle as Gillian merely huffed and rolled onto his side to run his fingers through the grass. He would probably have grass stains on his clothing when he got up, but Antonio knew that Gillian wasn't likely to care at the moment with as bored as he looked.

A disgruntled grumble made Antonio look over at Christopher who was frowning at the laptop. “How...odd…” he remarked under his breath, nose scrunching up in annoyance. “It looks like there was...something here on his records at one point, but they seem to have gotten...erased? No, no, that can't be… Hmm…”

As much as Antonio wanted to speak up and ask what the problem was, he knew better than to interrupt Christopher's train of thought, so he was left twiddling his thumbs and twisting his fingers into the hem of his shirt in anticipation. Anything that he did see on the screen and all of the coding made absolutely no sense to him. Patience was always a virtue though.

With the clicks of a few more buttons, Christopher beamed, his eyes instantly lighting up. “I'm in,” he declared in his best stereotypical hacker voice. Antonio watched the screen light up with various articles and photographs, Gillian scrambling up from the ground to look over Antonio's shoulder.

“Let's see what we have here…” Gillian mumbled, cracking his knuckles as Christopher nodded.

“Lukas Lund. Only child of the Lund family. His mother is a famous fashion designer, his father a CEO of some sort of corporation. Basically very wealthy family…with quite a few suspicious bank transactions, I might add,” Christopher said as he pulled up another window, “to several families and individuals in law enforcement as well as several schools…” He tapped his finger against his lip, visibly resisting the urge to chew on his nails. “Hmm… It seems that whenever he was about twelve or thirteen, he ended up severely injuring another student in a physical altercation which caused several security officers at the school to get involved. Resisting the officers… The other student had to be hospitalized… Apparently the other student's parents originally tried to file charges and the school was going to expel Lukas, but his parents spent a pretty penny buying their silence for the charges to be dropped.”

“What about the school? Did the school still end up expelling him?” Gillian asked, squinting at the screen with a thoughtful expression on his face. Now that they were actually getting into the interesting part of their investigation and not just waiting around, his curiosity was piqued and he was far more actively engaged in the discussion.

Antonio understood that was how Gillian was. He was a man of action. He couldn't stand just laying around idly and waiting for something to happen. If there was something that needed to be done, Gillian would always somehow find himself in the middle of it because that was what drove him to succeed and rise above the others that tried to stand in his way.

Christopher shook his head, pushing his glasses up as his eyes quickly flicked across all the information in front of him “His parents withdrew him from the school so that it wouldn't be able to go on his record. He was then enrolled into some boarding school so that he could focus on his hockey training...” He rolled his eyes as he wiggled his fingers in a disbelieving gesture. “Basically just another cover-up so that he could go through therapy and anger management classes without the authorities breathing down his parents’ necks.”