Chapter 263: Let Me Go!

Chapter 263: Let Me Go!

“Testing me?” Wu Chen looked at her.

“Yes.” Wu Yurong nodded. That was exactly it—testing whether he truly knew everything.

Wu Chen smiled.

The corner of his mouth curled oddly.

Then he reached out, hooked a finger into the neckline of her dress, pulled it open a little, and glanced inside.

“White.” He smiled and let go.

She had asked him to guess. He had simply looked.

“I told you to guess… You’re awful.” She thumped his shoulder lightly, reproach in her voice.

“Why guess? It isn’t as though I can’t look.” Wu Chen laughed.

Wu Yurong could feel that he was deliberately concealing something. He did not want it revealed, so he had used this to sidestep her question.

“Then… you still haven’t answered me. How did you know Xuanxuan and I would come together?” She asked him outright again.

“A guess,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

The more he behaved this way, the more deeply she suspected he possessed some special ability of the sort only extraordinary people possessed. She had already thought him extraordinary before. Now the feeling ran stronger.

Wu Yurong thought a moment and glanced toward the door.

Then she looked back, moved closer, hooked her arm through his, and asked in that soft, sweet voice, “Hubby, tell me, won’t you?”

Very quietly.

She was acting spoiled.

At her age—

it did not feel out of place. She had once been a perfect ten, and she still looked young.

“What is it you want me to tell you?” Wu Chen asked with a smile, turning to meet her eyes.

“Just tell me—” Wu Yurong began.

Then she stopped abruptly. “Never mind.”

She simply stopped asking.

Had she been a young girl, she would almost certainly have kept pressing, unable to hold back her curiosity and determined to get to the bottom of it.

Wu Yurong’s maturity and turn of mind were nothing like a young girl’s.

She understood. Wu Chen did not want to say. Pressing him would only earn his irritation.

Why did she have to know?

It was enough to understand in her heart that Wu Chen was different.

“Li Ruobing went home with you yesterday?” Wu Yurong asked, changing the subject herself.

“Mm-hm.” Wu Chen nodded.

“You two… how many times?” she asked, still gentle and sweet.

A few minutes later.

Footsteps in the corridor. Then the door opened. Song Xuan had finished her call.

Wu Chen and Wu Yurong sat side by side, both holding coffee cups, looking for all the world as though they had been chatting easily.

“Senior, An Menglan says she wants to meet me and talk. She wants to meet you too. She might call you…” Song Xuan was still bright and buoyant. She came over, sat down across from them, and laid out the situation quickly.

Put simply, nothing had been settled. They would have to meet in person.

Song Xuan had explained her family circumstances and her mother’s position, and An Menglan had said she was willing to come to Donghai to meet her.

The person she chiefly needed to meet was Wu Yurong.

An Menglan wanted to meet Wu Chen as well.

She might even call him beforehand.

But she had not said when she would come to Donghai, or when she would call him.

Nothing was fixed.

“Senior, why aren’t you excited at all? What’s the matter with you?” Song Xuan asked when she had finished.

She felt his reaction was far too flat.

“An Menglan is coming to meet you! She wants to talk to you face to face! Aren’t you happy?”

“Mm. Happy.” Wu Chen smiled.

Utterly perfunctory.

“I really don’t understand you…” Song Xuan pouted faintly.

An Menglan was her idol. She adored her. And Wu Chen seemed to feel nothing about her at all.

Naturally she would never imagine that Wu Chen had slept with An Menglan.

“I’ve looked over the contract… there’s no problem…” Wu Chen said, steering them back.

At last they returned to the business at hand.

Wu Chen and Song Xuan signed the revenue-sharing contract.

Under its terms the share counted as part of his compensation as lyricist and composer.

The percentage was outrageously high.

Once it was signed they talked a while longer, then went downstairs, said their goodbyes, and parted.

Around 3:40 in the afternoon.

Wu Chen took the Lamborghini back onto the road.

He drove fast.

He was keeping to the clock.

A little over twenty minutes later.

West District, Donghai City. Bailiu Street. Liu’an Apartments.

One of Donghai’s older high-rise apartment buildings, finished near the end of the last century and more than twenty years old now. The surrounding blocks were aging office buildings and residential towers. Population density was high, and a great many of the residents were renters.

Wu Chen parked at the curb downstairs and walked straight into the building.

He took the elevator up.

No one paid him any attention.

The elevator was very old. Cigarette butts on the floor, small advertisement stickers all over the walls.

The eighth-floor corridor had the same grubby feel: long, dimly lit, apartment doors spaced along it, both walls covered in printed phone numbers. A great many advertised professional locksmiths. There were stickers, posters, and small ads besides.

Nearly everyone here was renting. Long-term, short-term—you could rent by the day.

Wu Chen headed south.

Soon he reached the door of Room 819.

This was the place Old Dao’s men had rented, and where Jiang Chuan was being held. Management was terrible and all sorts of people came and went. Many eyes, and yet for that very reason it was safer.

Everyone who lived here understood one rule.

Mind your own business.

Knock, knock, knock.

Wu Chen knocked.

No answer from inside, though he could faintly hear footsteps approaching fast.

Then the door opened a crack. A security chain held it, so that was as far as it would go.

A short-haired man in his thirties looked out through the gap. He stood perhaps 1.6 meters tall and looked very thin.

He saw Wu Chen and recognized him at once. Turning his head, he called, “He’s here, he’s here.”

As he spoke he shut the door, slipped the chain, and opened it wide.

Wu Chen walked in with one hand in the pocket of his suit pants.

“Mr. Wu.” The small man stepped aside and greeted him with great courtesy.

“Mr. Wu.”

“Hello, Mr. Wu.”

Two more men were sitting on the living-room sofa. One was broad-shouldered and powerfully built; the other was a fair-skinned man in glasses. Both stood when Wu Chen came in and greeted him with a measure of deference.

All three were Old Dao’s trusted men.

They had never met Wu Chen before and had not come to Donghai with Old Dao on the earlier business. But Wu Chen had arranged with Old Dao to come see Jiang Chuan at this hour today, so naturally they had been shown photographs. Old Dao had certainly given them their instructions.

“Where is he?” Wu Chen paused, sweeping his gaze over a living room littered with cigarette butts and instant-noodle cups, and asked directly.

“This way, Mr. Wu.” The small man walked briskly inward, ushering him toward the inner room.

The apartment was not a studio. One bedroom, one living room.

The small man went ahead and opened the bedroom door.

Wu Chen walked in.

Jiang Chuan was inside, tied to a chair, trussed from head to foot, a rag stuffed into his mouth.

The instant he saw who had come in, his eyes went wide. He had never laid eyes on Wu Chen in person, but naturally he had seen photographs too.

“Mmph! Mmph!”

Jiang Chuan struggled violently. The chair rocked under him, creaking. With his mouth gagged, all he could produce were muffled sounds.

“Untie him.” Wu Chen stood in the doorway and tipped his head at the small man.

The man said nothing. He pulled a dagger from his waist, went over, cut through the ropes, tugged them loose, and tossed them aside.

Jiang Chuan was still glaring at Wu Chen. With the small man standing beside him holding a knife, he did not dare move rashly.

“Wu Chen! You—” Jiang Chuan began.

Then, suddenly—

his hand shot out and caught the small man’s wrist. He twisted, surged to his feet, and came around behind him; a turn of the wrist and the dagger had passed into his own hand.

The blade hooked against the small man’s throat.

Jiang Chuan had taken him hostage in the space of a single breath. The movement was extraordinarily fast.

And utterly sudden.

“Let me go!” Jiang Chuan shouted at Wu Chen.