Chapter 108: Wu Chen! I Want Him Dead Right Now!

Chapter 108: Wu Chen! I Want Him Dead Right Now!

The call connected very quickly.

“Come to my office!” Ding Ruilong said. Then he spun and flung his arm, hurling the phone away. It flew several meters, struck the antique vase on the stand in the corner, broke it, then slammed into the wall and shattered into pieces.

Crash!

The vase it had struck fell to the floor as well, breaking into dozens of shards.

Ding Ruilong dropped back into his seat. He didn’t so much as glance at the ruined phone or the shattered antique. His eyes stared fixedly ahead. His breathing was rapid, and even his hands shook—not because he felt the pain in his hand, but from rage.

The fury in him was very nearly drowning his reason.

A full two minutes passed before his emotions settled a little. He turned and looked to one side of his desk.

The desk was chaos. Photographs and documents lay everywhere, heaped together without order like fallen leaves.

He reached out and took the photograph on top. It looked like a student photo: a male university student at his graduation ceremony. The man in it was the same man from the video.

Wu Chen.

Ding Ruilong looked at the photograph of Wu Chen at his graduation and was seized by a sudden frenzy. He tore it to pieces and flung them aside.

Then, abruptly, he was calm again.

He picked up a stack of documents and leafed back and forth through them. Wu Chen’s household registration materials. Wu Chen’s student file. The resume Wu Chen had submitted at a campus recruitment fair.

He read, and read, then stopped all at once, threw the materials aside, and grabbed a random handful of photographs, his face empty. He held them without bothering to square them and flipped through one by one.

A photograph of Wu Chen and Li Ruobing getting into a car together in a parking lot.

A photograph of Wu Chen and Li Ruobing eating outside the Italian restaurant.

A photograph of Wu Chen and Li Ruobing kissing beneath the shade of a tree.

A photograph of Wu Chen and Li Ruobing walking out of an alley arm in arm.

Just out of the car, Li Ruobing glancing back, laughing lightly with Wu Chen, relaxed and at her ease…

At the restaurant door, Li Ruobing thoughtfully, gently straightening Wu Chen’s collar…

Beside the main road, Li Ruobing and Wu Chen murmuring to each other, gazing, smiling faintly…

Expressionless, Ding Ruilong looked at these photographs. By degrees the veins rose again on his forehead. His hand clenched the photos until his knuckles went white. In his eyes the red and the madness surfaced once more.

The first time he learned Wu Chen existed was July 9, the day after Wu Chen and Li Ruobing established their relationship.

He knew so quickly because on the night of July 8, at Lao Pinxuan Restaurant, Wu Chen and Lu Guangnian had nearly clashed. The matter spread rapidly through Donghai’s business circles, and his informants in Donghai reported it to him directly.

At first Ding Ruilong had assumed it was fake again, another of Li Ruobing’s tiresome fake-boyfriend tricks.

The previous ones had all been fake. Ding Ruilong had known it, because they had been far too fake. He couldn’t have failed to know.

And he had still chosen to deal with all three of Li Ruobing’s fake boyfriends. There had been no other reason. Ding Ruilong simply found them an eyesore, found them uncomfortable to look at. Fake or not, they had to die. He wanted Li Ruobing to understand how foolish her little tricks were.

This was the fourth.

At first he had assumed this one was fake too. He had even planned it out: once he’d finished investigating Wu Chen’s background, he would step by step ruin Wu Chen’s entire family, and torment Li Ruobing’s heart all over again. That would be very interesting. He was in no hurry.

But.

Ding Ruilong had never imagined it.

As more and more information came back, he realized Li Ruobing’s fourth boyfriend was very likely real. No—was real.

Even yesterday he still hadn’t been certain. He had received photographs of Li Ruobing and Wu Chen kissing, and though seeing them had enraged him, he still suspected it was fake. That woman Li Ruobing was willing to go all out.

After several years of fighting her, Ding Ruilong understood Li Ruobing’s character. He knew a woman as hard-willed as she was truly could throw herself into it. She dared to cross lines, and the boyfriend might still be fake.

How could a man with a background that ordinary become Li Ruobing’s man? Had Li Ruobing gone blind and fallen for him?

Impossible.

He hadn’t been certain, and he hadn’t accepted it… until this morning.

He received intelligence from Donghai again.

The video taken outside Li Ruobing’s villa late last night made Ding Ruilong certain: this time Li Ruobing was playing for real.

Li Ruobing truly had a man. She had even brought him home. She had kissed him at the window that long, and afterward he had carried her inside… carried her inside to do what? What else could he have carried her inside to do?

The moment Ding Ruilong pictured Li Ruobing beneath Wu Chen being—he went mad with jealousy, mad with rage.

The most perfect woman in his heart, the goddess whose hand he had never once touched, had been casually taken by another man. The moment he thought of it, Ding Ruilong truly had nothing left in him but every sort of insane and extreme notion.

“Slut. Slut. Why? Slut. You’d rather have a man like that than have me? A few days’ acquaintance and you take him home? You’re humiliating me, slut!” Looking at the photographs, Ding Ruilong ground it out under his breath, his tone brimming with boundless rage and jealousy.

Knock, knock.

A knock at the door just then.

Ding Ruilong tossed the photographs down, raised his head, and said coldly, “Come in.”

The door opened.

The man who entered was tall and thin, around forty, in a formal suit, his hair combed with meticulous care so that he looked like a corporate executive. But his hooked nose, his triangular eyes, and the centipede-like scar on the crown of his head filled him with a bandit’s air.

Jiang Chuan, forty-two. He had been a soldier, and had begun working for the Ding family when he was barely into his twenties. He was a Ding family old hand, one of Ding Ruilong’s trusted confidants.

“Young Master, you called for me.” Jiang Chuan came to stand before the desk and spoke respectfully.

On his way in he had already noted the broken vase, the shattered phone, and the blood on Ding Ruilong’s hand, and had grown a good deal more careful.

Ding Ruilong wasted no words. He picked up a photograph, tore away the half with Li Ruobing in it, and held up only the half with Wu Chen, shaking it at Jiang Chuan as he said through his teeth, “Wu Chen. I want him dead right now. The more miserable his death, the better.”

Jiang Chuan’s expression changed. He hesitated and said nothing.

It had never been like this before. With Li Ruobing’s fake boyfriends, taking things step by step had been enough. Ding Ruilong had never been this aggressive.

Aggression would cause problems.

Because Donghai was not the Ding family’s territory.

“Is there a problem?” Ding Ruilong demanded, glaring.

“This… Young Master.” Jiang Chuan weighed his words. “Making him die is no problem, but it may not be that fast. If we send people over directly, we at least need to understand his movement patterns first so we can find the right moment. Donghai is Li Ruotai’s territory. Everyone on the streets there is his dog. If he traces it back to us, it implicates you. And… this Wu Chen has serious problems. His background doesn’t add up. It can’t possibly be that simple. There must be—”

Bang!

Ding Ruilong slammed the desk and rose, glaring, shouting like a madman. “Don’t fucking tell me any of that! I don’t want to hear it! I’m asking you—can you do it or can’t you?”

“It can be done!” Jiang Chuan nodded at once, saying it with certainty. Then, after a pause, he went on. “But Young Master, I can’t let a moment’s impulse on your part get you blamed by the Old Master again. Two months ago, over that clash of yours with someone, the Old Master was already furious. If he finds out this time that you sent men to Donghai to kill someone, I’m afraid…”

Ding Ruilong stared at him. He wanted to explode, and held it in.

Because he knew Jiang Chuan’s loyalty to him.

Jiang Chuan didn’t want him doing the wrong thing while his reason was gone.

Ding Ruilong drew a deep breath and forced his emotions down a little. Then he fixed his eyes on Jiang Chuan and asked, “How many days? How many days do you need?”