Chapter 144: Who Are You? Why Are You Around My Daughter?

Chapter 144: Who Are You? Why Are You Around My Daughter?

Li Ruobing shot to her feet. “Alone? What is there to say behind my back?”

Her reaction was violent because she was frightened. Once again she had no idea what Wu Chen was planning. And she knew perfectly well that if she were not in the room, her father would never speak to him with this much restraint.

And now Wu Chen was the one asking for it?

“Bingbing.” Li Maoren looked up at his daughter with a frown. “Take your brother and go outside.” It was not an invitation to discuss the matter. It was an order.

“I’m not going,” she fired back at once. “What have you got to say that’s so unfit for daylight? I’m not even entitled to hear it?” She was only reaching for an excuse.

“Xiao Wu is the one who asked to talk alone. Why are you arguing with me?” Li Maoren’s face darkened as he threw it back at her.

That actually left her with nothing to say.

“Ruobing.” Wu Chen stayed seated on the sofa. He reached up and tugged lightly at the hand of the woman standing beside him, then looked up with a smile. “Let me talk to your father alone. Don’t argue. There are things Uncle and I can’t easily say with you here. He’s been managing your feelings this whole time. Some things are better said in the open…”

Li Ruobing turned her head and glared down at him sidelong.

She was angry.

Furious.

In the car on the way over she had explained the situation to him in detail: her father had flown in first thing that morning because of Atai, and meeting his daughter’s boyfriend was only incidental. All they had to do was handle it carefully and get through it.

Wu Chen had never told her what he intended to do.

And now it had come to this.

Yet angry as she was, she could hardly turn her temper on Wu Chen. She could not argue with him. That would make her look far too guilty, as though there were something she was afraid of having exposed.

She glared coldly at him for several seconds, then abruptly shook off his hand.

“The two of you talk, then.” She turned, came round the sofa, and strode out on her heels.

Li Ruotai followed his sister at once.

On his way out he added, “Uh… Dad, Brother-in-law, you two talk. Sis and I will step out…”

The siblings left the room.

The corridor outside was full of bodyguards.

Li Ruotai came out last and drew the door gently shut. Li Ruobing, meanwhile, was seething. She stopped a few paces on, face like ice, then spun round and asked in a low voice, “Atai. Are there cameras in that room?”

“Uh… yes.” Li Ruotai hesitated, then nodded. “But they’re not on.”

Crown Entertainment had hidden cameras practically everywhere, used for filming people quietly and collecting leverage. That included this artfully appointed suite of his. It was called his private suite, but in practice it served for receiving important clients, and the cameras were generally only switched on when an important client came.

Today the guest was his own father. Of course he had not turned them on.

“Can you turn them on? Where can we watch?” Li Ruobing asked.

“Well…” He hesitated, and glanced around.

The corridor held not only his bodyguards and Li Ruobing’s but Li Maoren’s as well. Every one of them his father’s trusted man.

Was it really wise for his sister to say this so openly?

For Li Ruobing there was nothing unwise about it at all.

She simply wanted to know what Wu Chen meant to discuss with her father, and she did not care in the least if her father found out that she wanted to know.

“We’re only going to watch. You know Dad’s temper—aren’t you afraid something happens? And you know what your brother-in-law is like,” she said rapidly. “Just the two of us. When they’re done, delete it.”

Several of Li Maoren’s bodyguards in the corridor wore rather odd expressions as they listened.

But they would certainly not speak up, nor try to stop them.

At most they would tell Li Maoren afterward.

Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai were his own daughter and son. They were hardly going to harm their own father.

“Hurry up.” Li Ruobing glared at her still-hesitating brother.

“Mm… it’s… across the way…” He hesitated, then finally raised a hand and pointed across the corridor, diagonally opposite the big suite, very close.

“Let’s go.” She turned at once.

They went into the room opposite—another large suite, with several bodyguards sitting in the living room. This suite was for the guards. They all stood when the siblings came in, but neither Li Ruobing nor Li Ruotai said anything; he led his sister toward a room deeper inside.

They went in.

By its shape it should have been the suite’s bedroom, but there was no bed, nothing of the kind. Instead there were long tables, a great many computers, a whole wall of monitors, and several “staff members” seated in a row before the screens.

“All of you, out for now,” Li Ruotai said as he entered.

Everyone stood and left.

He picked a computer at random and sat down, worked the controls himself, entered a password, and activated every hidden camera in the big suite.

The instant the feeds came up, both siblings’ faces changed.

Some of the views were already gone. No signal.

But one camera still had an image, and it happened to be framing Wu Chen’s face at close range—

And then that feed cut out too.

…

In the big suite, once Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai were gone and the door had closed again, only Wu Chen and Li Maoren remained, seated across from each other in the living room.

“Bingbing does what you tell her, Xiao Wu…” Li Maoren’s tone had changed outright. With his daughter gone, there was no further need to keep up appearances.

“Not really. It’s only that she and I have always been reasonable with each other.” Wu Chen was exactly as before, smiling.

“You—” Li Maoren began.

“One moment, Uncle.” Wu Chen cut him off, stood, straightened his suit, and turned toward the liquor cabinet.

Li Maoren watched his back, face dark.

What was this supposed to mean? He wanted a drink?

No.

Wu Chen crossed the room, opened the clear glass door of the cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of red wine. The bottle was solid black, opaque, and the neck looked faintly wrong—nothing anyone would notice without taking it out.

Wu Chen did not even examine it. He simply smashed it on the floor.

Crash.

The bottle shattered, and no liquid sprayed out, because inside were batteries, wires, electronic components—all of it connected to a very well disguised pinhole camera in the neck.

Having smashed it, Wu Chen brought his leather shoe down on it once.

Then he walked to another corner of the room, took a small decorative sculpture off a cabinet, worked at its underside, and removed the battery.

Next he crossed to another part of the room, to the shelf against the wall not far from the piano. An old-fashioned gramophone stood on it—the kind of thing that gave a room an air of sophistication these days—with a great many vinyl records beside it.

Wu Chen lifted the gramophone, shifted it to one side, then reached behind and yanked out its power cord.

Three dealt with. He started back toward the sofa and coffee table.

Once seated opposite Li Maoren, he reached back and took a metal ornament from the side table beside the sofa: a wealth-attracting beast. He unscrewed the base and pulled out a tangle of things from inside—battery, electronic components, a camera.

When the pinhole camera came away with the rest, one of the beast’s eyes was gone. An empty socket.

The camera had been installed from within, disguised as the eye.

Four hidden cameras disabled.

But then Wu Chen reached under the coffee table, felt about, picked at something, and tore free a black box taped to the underside. A red light on it was still blinking. A close-range audio recorder.

He switched it off and set it aside.

Looking at Li Maoren, he crossed one leg over the other again and smiled. “There. Now we can talk, Uncle.”

Li Maoren stared at him, his face dark.

He had watched every bit of it.

Still staring, he suddenly reached out, took the pistol from the middle of the coffee table, came to his feet, and leveled the muzzle at Wu Chen.

“Who are you?” he asked coldly. “Why are you around my daughter?”