Free Web NovelChapter 179: THEY HAVE TIES WITH THE RED THORN CREW
Liuxian felt the change immediately. The weight in his arms went boneless, and the breathing evened out. He looked down and found that Guiying was already gone, his face relaxed in a way it never was while awake. The sharpness had smoothed out and the guard had dropped. There was only Guiying, asleep.
Liuxian remained still for a long time after that. One hand stayed on Guiying’s back while the other rested lightly on his shoulder, as if touch alone could keep the world from intruding. The lamp painted everything gold, and the gap in the curtains split the dark in two.
My love.
He had said it, and Guiying had answered as if it were obvious. It was as if Guiying had carried that truth quietly and had only just decided to set it down between them.
Eventually Liuxian moved. He slid his arm out from under Guiying slowly and carefully, checking that the breathing did not stutter. He pulled the blanket up to Guiying’s shoulders and tucked it around him with the same care he would use handling glass. Then he stood.
From the edge of the bed he looked at Guiying one more time. Guiying was asleep and unhurried and beloved.
Then Liuxian turned off the lamp. He left the door open a finger’s width so the hallway light could reach Guiying if he woke disoriented. After that he went to his own room, his footsteps quiet, while the house settled around him like a held breath.
The door clicked shut behind him, and the sound thinned out quickly in the quiet. The lamp on the desk was still on from earlier, and its circle of gold fell across the surface and stopped at the edge as if it had decided not to go further.
Beyond it the room was dark. The curtains did not quite meet, and the city pressed through the gap in a thin cold line that carried the smell of late-night traffic and distant rain.
He stood with his jacket still on because the weight of it was familiar, and familiarity was easier than taking it off. He took out his phone and found a number with no name saved against it, and he called.
"Is it ready?" Liuxian asked, and his voice was low enough that it barely disturbed the air.
"Yes. I’ll have it delivered tomorrow afternoon," the voice replied, practiced and neutral.
"It should be before six pm," Liuxian said.
"Yes, Sir. I understand. Thank you for shopping with us," the voice said, and the line went dead with a soft click that felt final.
He set the phone on the desk beside the lamp and sat down and opened the laptop.
The brightness of the screen pushed back against the dark, and he turned it down until it matched the lamp so the room could keep its balance. The house settled like a held breath around him.
The bodyguard reports on Ren Hao came first, and he read them both fully, one after the other, because Guiying demanded Ren Hao deserved that much attention.
Ren Hao’s mother lay in the same room, and the same machines kept the same quiet rhythm beside her that he had learned to read without looking.
Ren Hao himself had settled into the new location without incident. A meal had been left outside the door though he refused to eat, and the curtains were drawn. There was no contact from anyone connected to Shen Zihao. The situation held, for now, and Liuxian let himself believe that word for a moment.
The quarterly reports opened across three windows. He read through them in the order Zhang Wei had arranged them, and the numbers assembled themselves into shapes before he had reached the bottom of each page.
Most of the portfolio sat where he expected it, steady and unsurprising. A handful of properties drifted in directions he had already prepared responses for, because drift was inevitable if you left things alone too long.
Two had been flagged.
The casino and hotel in Hainan had lost fourteen percent occupancy across two consecutive quarters, and the management team’s explanations sat at the bottom of the page in careful language that dissolved on contact with the actual numbers. He would need to go himself, because numbers like that did not improve without a face behind them.
The resort in Yunnan had a supplier dispute, and two seasonal contracts had already been damaged. The tone of the report was pulled tight in the way reports got when the person writing them knew the situation was worse than what the words were saying, Liuxian recognized that tightness from his own writing.
He leaned back in the chair. Outside the gap in the curtains the city held its late hour. The traffic was down to almost nothing, and the lights of it burned cold and steady like things that did not sleep. His jacket was still on. He noticed the weight of it across his shoulders, the way it pressed him down into the moment, and he shrugged it off and laid it over the back of the chair so the room felt a degree warmer.
The travel schedule assembled itself in his head without being asked. Hainan. Yunnan. Shanghai at the end of the month. The European follow-up with Whitmore and Cavendish in the weeks after, and Zhang Wei had not yet confirmed a date but had already circled it in red ink on the shared calendar.
Several of the quarterly reviews Zhang Wei could handle remotely. Shanghai was a single day. Whitmore and Cavendish could wait two more weeks without consequence, and waiting was a kind of mercy Liuxian rarely allowed himself. Hainan and Yunnan he had to go to himself, there was no other way around it.
He noted it, closed the quarterly reports, and scrolled down. Jae’s message sat at the bottom of the stack, timestamped forty minutes ago and later than the others, that Liuxian almost missed it.
But the time stamp alone made his chest tighten.
He opened it and what he saw, made his hands clench.
Liuxian, stop what you are doing and read this. Do not reply from your main phone.
Gang wars and turf wars in Beijing have been escalating for the last two weeks. It started when the new mafia boss returned to the country and made it clear he was not leaving.
For years he stayed abroad, so the factions here grew comfortable. Now that he has planted himself back in Beijing, every old enemy he made is moving at once. The bureau has not seen this kind of coordination in a decade.
I would not pull you into this if it was only underworld politics. But your location has been flagged. In the past 48 hours my contacts logged six sightings around your building.
Two men rented the units adjacent to yours under false identities last week. Both have confirmed ties to the Red Thorn crew. One of them was photographed outside your spouse’s workplace yesterday. Another was seen on your street at 2 AM three nights in a row.
I do not know why they are watching you, but they are watching closely. As your friend and as someone inside the police, I am telling you this directly. Increase security around your spouse immediately.
Do not let him leave without protection. Do not assume your home is safe because nothing has happened yet.
The city is about to get messy and dangerous. Burn this message after you read it.
