"Why... why did you have to kill him..."
The jeep drove on. Thinking of that heap of wreckage worth over a million now lying at the bottom of the ravine, Chen Junbin could not stop the shudder that ran through him. The man beside him was an out-and-out demon who killed without blinking.
He himself had once been a man who answered to no law. But the higher a man's worth climbs, the more timid he becomes. Anyone who could drive a sports car like that was bound to have serious backing behind him; even if he survived this time, it was easy to imagine the pile of trouble today's business would bring him later. Amid that turmoil, the killer said flatly, "Pei Luojia has an excellent post-operation cleanup mechanism. I imagine that by this afternoon at the latest, they will already have notified you that someone is being sent over."
"Huh?" Thrown by the question out of nowhere, he could not make sense of it for a moment. Then it hit him, and his eyes went wide.
"Pei Luojia's killing procedure: first, scout the target; after assessment, send an assassin matched to their strength. If he fails, the assassin's grade goes up one level; the new man finishes the job and analyzes the reason for the earlier failure. A-Qi's ability only rated Class B within Pei Luojia. Now that he's dead, they will certainly send someone else."
"The Class A assassin of the Asia division, code name Blue. He's best at wilderness survival, close-quarters fighting, and operating every kind of machine and vehicle. But assassins, like eunuchs, count as a defective breed of people. Living long in killing and destruction grinds one side of a man's character to a razor edge. He chases speed—street racing, speedboats, aerobatic flying—so he can never become a special-class assassin, because he has a fatal weakness."
Listening to him lay it all out point by point, Chen Junbin sucked in a breath of cold air. "You know him this well—don't tell me you're also..."
"I once belonged to Pei Luojia." The dwarf turned his head, the scar on his face drawing into a cold smile. "Special class."
When the cement plant came into view in the distance, the jeep cut its lights, turned into a small grove beside the road, and stopped. By his old habit, he would have killed these two outright—but now he did not want to. The child in the woman's belly was perhaps one reason.
If they're smart, after this they'll get far, far away...
After knocking the two of them out and tying them up in the back seat, he walked out of the grove and turned back to look at that patch of darkness. The assassin called Blue had once been one of his teachers; now he had been finished off with ease. He let out a breath, and a faint stir of feeling rose in him. Then he turned his eyes to the abandoned factory halls, and his gaze went utterly cold.
From the day he learned his opponent's name was Tang Jingyao, he had begun preparing. Over several nights, without Tang Jingyao ever knowing it, he had gone through even the man's underwear several times over.
The places the man frequented, the strongholds his men occupied, the routes his goods came in and went out by: he had it all basically figured out. He had already cased this abandoned cement plant once. He was not exactly familiar with it, but it was more than enough for what lay ahead.
This was the strength of Pei Luojia's highest-grade assassin. If not for that, he would never have escaped Pei Luojia's base back then.
There were plenty of men in those factory halls now, but in the end they did not dare light the place up like a military base; from a distance it was one bright patch and one dark patch, and Jiaming was already laughing inside.
"Low risk level, but... first time out, make it a clean one, little rookie."
In a third-floor room of the abandoned plant, Tang Jingyao sat on a sofa in a suit and tie, a smile on his face. Two savage-looking foreign men flanked him, and across the coffee table from him sat mother and daughter, Marilyn and Heidi. Marilyn clutched her daughter tightly, her eyes fierce and piercing.
"How many times do I have to say it before you believe me? The assassin that night was truly not sent by me. If I really wanted you two dead, would I have needed to send an assassin at all? And then, idiotically, only one? My God—you are my wife and daughter. Why on earth would I harm you?"
Years in politics, climbing step by step up from the very bottom, had given Tang Jingyao an earnest tone and a fine performance. In her mother's arms Heidi called softly, "Daddy..." But the blonde woman shook her head decisively, exactly as she had every time before, and mocked him coldly: "You play it very well, Tang. If you'd had this much polish ten years ago, maybe not only I would have been fooled—my father might have come to like you too, and things might never have come to this."
"Nothing ever happened in the first place—do you hear me? Heidi is calling me. She is my daughter, and you are my wife! I have never lied to you. Believe me!"
He had been talking nonstop for over an hour, and Tang Jingyao was growing impatient. This was not like giving a report, where some in the audience listened earnestly and some took notes, and even the ones going through the motions had to join in the applause at the end of each section.
Here, this woman plainly knew what he had done, and how to patch this monstrous lie back into shape without resorting to force was a test of the very highest difficulty.
Whatever else he was, he was a Chinese man raised on traditional thinking, and this mother and daughter before him really were his wife and daughter in the true sense. Until the very last moment, he did not want to tear off every last shred of pretense.
That this woman had waited ten years for him in America showed how deeply she loved him. She could still be talked around. It was possible.
Damn it, all because of these Italians... He glanced at the two foreign men who looked like bodyguards. He himself had not yet meant to order a killing; who would have thought they would take it on themselves to bring in an assassin.
And now that things in America had gone wrong, they had him find the people again, smooth the whole thing over and squeeze out the intelligence.
Shit.
He hadn't been able to get it out of her before—what was he supposed to do now?
He unbuttoned his jacket, yanked his tie loose, and with his hands on his hips paced the room a few times. Only when he had calmed a little did he make one last attempt. "Believe me. Please?"
In his heart he knew she could not possibly believe him again, and yet he still clung to a sliver of hope. She loves me that much—if she knows what I'm doing, won't she, for the sake of that love, be forgiving? At least pretend to believe me, and tell me the intelligence I want? She was a clever woman; she had to know by now there was no way out. If she told him what he wanted, then afterward, of course, he would treat mother and daughter well.
"All right. I believe you." After a long moment, a charming smile bloomed on Marilyn's face. "But I have nothing I can tell you. Since you left America, I have not taken part in any of the family's business—precisely because I knew you would come back to China to be an official, and I did not want to leave any stain on you. I have said this several times, and my answer is the same now. If you really had done nothing, you would not need the Mafia's intelligence now, would you?"
Tang Jingyao took two steps back. At last he gave up.
"Fine! Then I'll tell you everything. The assassin was not hired by me—they took it on themselves!"
He suddenly roared, stabbing a finger at the two men beside him.
"You think I'm the one in charge here? They are! I'm just a piece on the board, carrying out orders! It's them who want your intelligence! It's them who sent the assassin to kill you! I didn't want it, but what could I do? You won't talk. You goddamned won't talk even now. You know what? Whether it's your family coming over or them sending more men, the first to die will be us! The three of us are dead for certain!"
He shook his head, his eyes red. "I wanted to protect you two. This was the only way I had. You are the people I love most in this world..."
"So you've finally stopped pretending?" Marilyn smiled faintly. "You love us. And what about your other wife?"
"She is a political chip. What matters is her family. Without her family's support, I would never have gotten where I am today. What I love is..."
"Then I must be one too, I suppose? Maybe I wasn't at first, but I am now. Tang, you've changed. You are not the Tang of ten years ago. Everything is a chip to you now. The only things you love are money and power."
Tang Jingyao froze. Beside him, one of the foreigners had already leveled a pistol at him. "Sorry, Tang. You've had more than enough time. I don't want to watch the two of you flirt any longer. From now on, she's ours to handle."
"Marilyn, please. Just say it."
Marilyn shook her head. "I don't know anything. But if there is a shred of humanity left in you, let Heidi go. She is your daughter, after all. I remember that Chinese people set great store by their own flesh and blood—isn't that so?"
"All you have to do is—" Tang Jingyao was still trying to persuade her when the walkie-talkie on the table beside them suddenly crackled, and a voice inside began reporting urgently in Chinese.
The man spoke too fast; the two foreigners could not understand him, and Marilyn and Heidi had even less idea what was happening. But they saw Tang Jingyao's face turn grave. He snapped out a few orders, then abruptly yanked open a drawer, took out a pistol, and reported to the two foreigners: "Six men are dead downstairs.
All of them were on the perimeter, patrolling in pairs. Every one of them was killed by a single knife stroke to the throat—they didn't even have a chance to fight back. We don't know who's come.
Mr. Ramos, I think your people had better get moving too."
The two understood at once. With a glance at Marilyn and Heidi, they headed one after the other into an inner room. These Mafia men from Italy were certainly not going to go out on patrol; of the six of them altogether, four were in that inner room playing cards at this very moment. After the Mafia man named Ramos went in, Tang Jingyao turned back and asked, "Who's coming to rescue you two? Your father's people?"
"I don't know." A strange light flickered through Marilyn's eyes; then she smiled lightly and shook her head. "I don't know."