Chapter 324: Either Way, It Could Get Him Killed!
by cnwebnovelsChapter 324: Either Way, It Could Get Him Killed!
Jiang Hongguang already knew from Sun Yongzhang’s bodyguards that the
fire at Crown Entertainment had started on the tenth floor.
And now this message told him it had started in Room 1029, and wished
him good luck.
He had gone to Room 1029 twice that afternoon. Both times he had waited
a while and left only when no one came.
They had not been screwing with him.
They had been setting him up to take the fall.
It was arson.
Room 1029 had been unoccupied.
And Jiang Hongguang might well be the only person who entered Room 1029
before the fire. Worse, he had gone in twice, for no apparent reason,
under grotesquely suspicious circumstances.
He had even stolen the keycard.
Apart from the card rooms, Crown Entertainment had cameras in every
public area. The restaurant, the corridors, everywhere.
The corridor cameras had certainly caught him going in and out of Room
1029.
The further he followed the thought, the colder he grew. A chill rose
from the bottom of his heart.
He was finished.
Utterly, completely finished, the kind of finished no one could save him
from.
He could not explain himself, because he could not tell anyone why he
had gone to Room 1029. He could not reveal that he had been threatened.
Otherwise Ding Ruilong would kill him too.
He was only a small fry. Was all this really necessary to destroy him?
Burning down an entire club to frame him? The losses had to run into
hundreds of millions. People might even have died or been injured in the
fire.
Was that necessary?
Wait.
As his thoughts churned, something clicked, and he froze again.
He realized suddenly that none of this was aimed at him.
It was aimed at Ding Ruilong.
Because Jiang Hongguang was Ding Ruilong’s man.
Ding Ruilong was his boss. He had gone to Crown Entertainment with Ding
Ruilong. Anything he did would naturally be assumed to have been done on
Ding Ruilong’s orders.
So someone was trying to frame Ding Ruilong.
To drive a wedge between the Ding and Li families.
Who?
Who would dare engineer something this enormous?
The longer he thought, the more frightened he became.
He understood that in a struggle on this scale a minor figure like him
would be ground to dust without effort.
He also realized that he was the key to clearing his boss of suspicion.
But the price of clearing Ding Ruilong’s name was exposing himself.
If he refused to explain why he had gone to Room 1029, the blame would
fall on him and he would die.
But if he explained why he had gone there and showed everyone the
threatening messages, he would still die.
Ding Ruilong would kill him anyway.
As for inventing some other reason, Jiang Hongguang could think of
nothing believable except the truth. There was nothing to invent. No one
stole a keycard and slipped into a room without an extremely serious
reason.
It was a dead end.
Either way, it could get him killed.
Gulp.
He swallowed and looked down at the message again. His blackmailer had
even wished him good luck. They plainly meant to drive him to his death.
What could he do?
There seemed to be only one road left.
Run.
Run now. Hide. That was the safest choice, as long as no one found him.
Although—Jiang Hongguang could see it too—if he ran, Boss Ding Ruilong
would have no way to explain himself. The Ding family would certainly
have to give the Li family an accounting.
That might very well be the blackmailer’s ultimate goal.
But he could hardly spend his own life proving Ding Ruilong’s innocence,
could he?
He thought of Ding Ruilong’s usual way of doing things.
He remembered the ruthless decisiveness with which Ding Ruilong had
killed Tang Wu barely more than an hour ago.
And he remembered every rumor about Li Ruotai’s explosive temper. His
club had been burned. It was easy to imagine his fury. And if Jiang
Hongguang could not explain himself convincingly…
His thoughts were a mess.
The sheer terror even left him dizzy.
What else could he do?
Pale, Jiang Hongguang put the phone away and looked toward the other
bodyguards in the corridor.
Once the fire had come up, the group had kept talking about it.
They had nothing else to do while they waited.
He listened carefully a while longer, confirming again that the fire had
begun on the tenth floor.
Then he moved a couple of steps toward a bodyguard he knew and was about
to say something, but instead he clutched his stomach and gestured.
“Stomach trouble. Going to the restroom.”
And he turned and walked away.
“What’s with Little Jiang?”
“Who knows. He’s been running to the restroom all day. Must’ve eaten
something bad.”
Two bodyguards noticed him, exchanged a couple of idle words, and
stopped paying attention.
Jiang Hongguang hurried downstairs, but he did not go to the restroom at
all. He went straight out of the hospital. The parking lot lay just
beyond the main entrance. He returned to the car, took the key from his
pocket, and started the engine.
Then he stopped.
He hesitated again.
He knew that once he ran there would be no clearing his name. If no one
caught him, fine. If he was caught, he would certainly die, with no room
left to maneuver.
He could still get out, go back upstairs, and confess everything to Boss
Ding Ruilong.
Whether he lived or died would then rest on a single thought of Ding
Ruilong’s.
Take that gamble?
Like hell.
With another boss, maybe he could gamble. Maybe he would survive.
But his boss was Ding Ruilong.
How was that any different from certain death?
Under the night sky, the headlights of the black Audi came on.
Jiang Hongguang drove out.
He had made up his mind at last.
Run.
He would use this car first. In an hour he could be out of Donghai. Once
he reached a nearby city he could steal another car, take a cab,
whatever it took, then switch again.
The Audi left the hospital parking lot and pulled onto the street.
A trace of relief rose in him. Fortunately, after years of handling
dirty work for Ding Ruilong, he knew the channels for fake documents and
had some idea how to avoid being traced without drawing attention.
A black SUV sat at the curb outside the parking-lot entrance.
“Brother Ma, our man’s coming out,” said a man in a baseball cap inside,
watching the Audi pull away.
“Catch him. Be careful.” Ma Yuan’s voice came through the phone.
“Got it.” The man in the cap hung up, picked up a radio, and pressed the
button. “Brothers, time to move. Plate number…”
At the same time.
Outside the surveillance room in the first-floor property-management
department of Heyi Grand Hotel.
People were everywhere. Following Li Ruotai’s instructions, Ma Yuan had
arrived with men some time ago, there to help control the scene and
clean up the “traces.”
The hotel’s owner had already called ahead, so the staff were extremely
cooperative.
Ma Yuan finished his call by a corridor window, put the phone away, and
hurried back into the surveillance room.
“Deleted?” he asked the moment he was through the door.
“Brother Ma…” A bodyguard in a black suit sat at the console. He glanced
at Ma Yuan, then back at the screen. “The last month of footage is
wiped. I’ll overwrite it once more so it can’t be recovered.”
“Good.” Ma Yuan nodded.
They were erasing the traces of Ding Ruilong’s stay. He had not checked
in under his own ID, but the cameras had certainly caught him, so all
the footage had to go.
Standard procedure for smoothing things over on behalf of a powerful
man.
Absolutely no evidence could be left behind for anyone to investigate or
exploit.
What Ma Yuan did not know was that in wiping the surveillance data they
had also erased the corridor footage from noon the previous day, the
footage of someone slipping into Executive Suite 616.
…
Villa No. 36, Zunrong Donghai Huafu.
It had already been around ten-forty at night when Li Ruobing and Wu
Chen reached home. By then Tang Xinbao, Guo Qiqi and Zhuang Xiaodie had
all gone to their rooms to rest.
Now it was half past eleven.
In the second-floor bedroom.
Wu Chen and Li Ruobing had both showered and were talking. Only now had
Wu Chen finished explaining why he had chosen today to burn the club.
“So…” Li Ruobing lay on her side in her nightgown, head propped on one
hand, watching him. “You weren’t afraid it would all go wrong? If Jiang
Hongguang hadn’t run and had confessed everything to Ding Ruilong—you
have to admit that was possible, right? Then how would you make the Ding
family compensate for the club’s losses?”
“It wouldn’t matter. Jiang Hongguang running was the likeliest outcome.
And even if he didn’t run—if he confessed, and everyone learned that
someone had threatened him, that there was another mastermind behind it,
that he’d been framed—none of that would matter either.” Wu Chen smiled
at her.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because…” Wu Chen smiled. “The mastermind is Jiang Chuan. And he’s one
of the Ding family’s own men.”
“What?” She froze. After a moment she asked, hesitating, “Why would the
investigation lead to Jiang Chuan?”