Chapter 129: You’re My Lord and Master!

Chapter 129: You’re My Lord and Master!

The bald middle-aged man had caved. Utterly. He no longer cared that a crowd of his own men stood watching across the café. The instant he decided to kneel, he knelt.

Because he was afraid of dying. Terribly afraid.

He was the kind of man who bullied the weak and cringed before the strong.

His name was Meng Junhao: owner of Jiangnan Dragon Shield Security Group, general manager of Donghai Changjiu Property Group, council member of the Jiangnan Provincial Security Association, and a representative to the Donghai Municipal People’s Congress.

He had begun as nothing more than a man with ties to the Ding family. Four years ago he had not even known Ding Ruilong—or rather, they had not been close. Meng Junhao had simply been very close with one of the Ding family’s direct-line members.

Men in the security business generally built their networks inside the public-security system. But Meng Junhao also owned a property-management company in Donghai, so his reach was broader than most.

Four years ago, not long after Li Ruobing came to Donghai to start her business, Ding Ruilong began sending people into the city, using his connections to buy off certain local figures and put them to work for him.

That was how Meng Junhao became one of Ding Ruilong’s men.

At first he had thought himself fortunate. To be connected to the leading figure of the Ding family’s third generation was a benefactor dropped out of heaven.

Ding Ruilong only asked him to keep an eye on things in Donghai and, now and then, to send men to watch Li Ruobing while she was in the city. Nothing else. Surveillance at most, and surveillance did not frighten Meng Junhao.

After all, Ding Ruilong had told him that all he wanted was to marry Li Ruobing—and that the Li family themselves wanted the match.

In other words, this one favor would tie him to Ding Ruilong without offending the Li family. At worst he would offend Li Ruobing alone, and Li Ruobing was going to marry Ding Ruilong in the end anyway…

However he ran the numbers, he saw only profit and no risk. So he stepped in.

Very soon he regretted it so bitterly he wanted to die.

Because he discovered that Ding Ruilong’s opponent in Donghai was not Li Ruobing at all.

It was Li Ruobing’s own younger brother, the eldest grandson of the Li family’s eldest branch—Li Ruotai!

Li Ruotai had come in as an outsider challenging the local powers.

When Li Ruobing first came to Donghai, Li Ruotai had only just finished university himself. But he had begun laying his groundwork two years in advance, and once he graduated and put down roots in the city, the speed of his rise left Meng Junhao stunned.

In a very short time every man on Donghai’s streets had been gathered under Li Ruotai’s banner. The city’s most powerful figures all had dealings with him, to one degree or another.

An outsider, and yet he had swiftly become a man who could summon the wind and call down the rain in Donghai. Somehow the city had become his ground.

And Li Ruotai was shielding his elder sister, Li Ruobing. With his life, if it came to that.

Nor was that all.

Over the years that followed, Ding Ruilong handed Meng Junhao a great many benefits—and the tasks he handed down grew steadily more dangerous. Ding Ruilong had even sent trusted men to Donghai and ordered Meng Junhao to arrange things: to plant them, respectively, beside Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai.

That was lethally dangerous. It was nothing like a bit of tailing. If a tail was spotted, the man simply shook it off; and if blame had to fall, it fell on Ding Ruilong directly. Nobody bothered digging through the intermediaries.

But personally arranging to slip Ding Ruilong’s trusted men in beside Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai? That was another matter entirely. If they were caught, there would be a reckoning.

Meng Junhao had no way out.

He was already in too deep.

So he did it. Using the peculiar network his industry gave him, he installed one of Ding Ruilong’s men as a security guard in the residential complex where Li Ruobing lived. He installed another of Ding Ruilong’s trusted men in the complex where Li Ruotai lived…

Later he learned that both men had vanished from the face of the earth. But nothing was traced back to Meng Junhao. A great deal happened after that, and none of it was traced back to him either.

But—walk by the river often enough and how do your shoes stay dry?

Last June, Meng Junhao had been asleep at his mistress’s place when a club came down on his head and he was carried off. When he woke again, he saw Li Ruotai sitting on a sofa, feeding rounds into a handgun.

He never learned how Li Ruotai had traced him. Only that he had.

To save his life, Meng Junhao dropped to his knees and knocked his head on the floor. Snot on his face and tears in his eyes, he sold Ding Ruilong out entirely—every last detail—and finished by promising Li Ruotai that he would serve as his informant: whatever Ding Ruilong assigned him from then on, whatever else Ding arranged in Donghai, Meng Junhao would secretly pass it along.

When his life was on the line, the man could be extraordinarily persuasive. Somehow, he actually talked Li Ruotai around.

And then he turned straight around and sold Li Ruotai out too, reporting everything to Ding Ruilong—because he was tangled up with Ding Ruilong far too deeply.

And because he feared him more.

Ding Ruilong did not kill him either. He used him instead, feeding false information to Li Ruotai through him.

And so Meng Junhao became a double agent.

He walked a tightrope between the two of them, and beneath the wire lay a bottomless abyss. One misstep and he was finished beyond redemption.

Put kindly, he knew how to play both sides to his advantage.

Put less kindly, he was courting death—and doing it spectacularly.

More than a year into it, Meng Junhao was reaching the end of his endurance. Ding Ruilong’s moves came more often now, and each was larger than the last.

He knew perfectly well that if either Ding Ruilong or Li Ruotai ever learned everything he had done this past year, he would die. Perhaps an “accident.” Perhaps a “suicide.”

He was scared out of his wits. He had even thought of abandoning his fortune and running abroad—but he could not bring himself to let it all go.

The café was utterly silent.

Thirty-odd men stared blankly at their boss, Meng Junhao, kneeling beside Wu Chen’s chair. Not one of them had any idea what had happened. It was so sudden.

Baffling, even.

Only Meng Junhao, close enough to the phone on the table, had been able to hear the voice coming out of it. The others caught nothing—faint sounds at most, nothing they could make out.

“Brother-in-law, say it! Who is it? Motherf—”

Wu Chen had gotten out one word, “He—,” and stopped, so Li Ruotai demanded an answer again, cursing, his temper white-hot.

Wu Chen glanced at Meng Junhao kneeling beside him, face full of pleading, then lifted the phone to his ear with a smile and said evenly, “Employee number C0812. One of the people at your place.”

“Right! Fuck! I’m going to pick him up right now!” As he spoke, hurried footsteps sounded in the background.

“All right. Handle it. Keep it clean.”

“Don’t worry, Brother-in-law. Thanks, Brother-in-law.”

“What’s there to thank? We’re family.”

Wu Chen hung up.

The traitor he had just named for Li Ruotai was real, of course. He knew there were other traitors and informants around Li Ruotai as well, but they were peripheral men who could not get near him directly. Naming them or not made little difference; sweeping them all up at once would only startle the snake in the grass.

With anyone, Wu Chen never laid down all his cards at once.

He put the phone away and glanced at Meng Junhao again, smiling.

“Thank you! Thank you, Mr. Wu! From now on, you’re my big brother! No—you’re my lord and master! Thank you, thank you!”

Meng Junhao was still on his knees, worked up, and the things coming out of his mouth—there was not a shred of dignity in them.

That was simply the man he was. It was also one of the reasons he was still alive.

And Wu Chen knew that this man’s attitude could never be trusted. If he meant to use him against Ding Ruilong, he would have to bring him wholly under control—and that would take a particular kind of handling.

“Can we talk now?” Wu Chen asked, still smiling.

“We can, we can, absolutely! However you want to talk, Mr. Wu, that’s how we’ll talk!” Meng Junhao got to his feet, backed off two steps, and bowed and nodded his way into a gesture of invitation. “Mr. Wu, let’s go upstairs. We’ll talk upstairs…”

Down here was no place for it. With thirty-odd men in the room, not one word of what they were about to say could reach another ear.

Wu Chen gave a small laugh, rose, straightened his suit, and started toward the stairwell to the second floor.

Meng Junhao followed close behind, back slightly bent.

The thirty-odd men on the ground floor stood staring like fools, their eyes tracking the two of them across the room.

Ring, ring…

Wu Chen had just set foot on the stairs when his phone rang.

He slowed, took it out, looked at the screen, and answered. “Brother Lu. Did it go smoothly?”

“Smooth! Smooth! Hahahaha!” Lu Guangnian’s laughter boomed, then his tone shifted at once. “Brother, where are you right now? I’m coming to find you—”

“I’ve got something to take care of,” Wu Chen said.

“What sort of something? Is it that man who threatened you on the phone earlier?” Lu Guangnian rattled on. “Screw him! Who is he? Give me an address, brother. I’ll come over and settle it for you…”