Chapter 316: You’ll Take Anyone’s Money? Do You Have a Death Wish?

Chapter 316: You’ll Take Anyone’s Money? Do You Have a Death Wish?

With the message written, Wu Chen entered the recipient’s number but did not send it.

Instead he scheduled it for later, a function most modern smartphones offered.

After that Wu Chen really did rest.

He set an alarm, lay down on the sofa, and went to sleep.

He had been extremely busy of late. He had spent the previous night with Wu Yurong, and although he had not gotten up until after nine that morning, he genuinely had not slept enough.

Since he had the time, resting and recovering a little was sensible.

Two and a half hours later, it was nearly four in the afternoon.

The alarm rang.

Wu Chen opened his eyes and sat up. He put everything away, then rose and left the lounge.

The corridor outside had almost emptied.

Li Ruobing’s bodyguards were gone. Gu Ruibo’s were gone. Ding Ruilong’s were gone too.

Looking down the long corridor, only a few figures remained.

All of them Li Ruotai’s men.

Ma Yuan was there as well, sitting on a bench.

Seeing Wu Chen come out of the lounge, he stood and walked briskly over.

“Mr. Wu.”

Wu Chen handed him the phone with the scheduled message.

“You know what to do?”

“I know.” Ma Yuan nodded and lowered his voice.

Li Ruotai had given him his instructions the previous night. He did not understand the whole situation, but he knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

“The boss and the others went down to the ninth floor,” Ma Yuan added.

Wu Chen nodded and headed for the elevators.

He had known they would be on the ninth floor even without being told. On the phone yesterday he had arranged for Li Ruotai to suggest, provocatively, that Ding Ruilong join him for cards on the ninth floor at around three that afternoon.

Wu Chen had only learned that morning that the Tang family was sending someone today.

But Tang Jingbin’s presence did not affect this step of the plan.

Wu Chen rode the elevator down to the club’s ninth floor, crossed the main hall, and entered the corridor. Before long he reached a private room with a great many bodyguards stationed outside.

“Mr. Wu.” One of Li Ruotai’s men greeted him and opened the door at once.

Inside, everyone was present except Gu Ruibo.

Gu Ruibo had already made an excuse and left rather than join the game. He had Wu Yurong and Lei Cheng to meet.

Li Ruobing was there but not playing either. She sat behind Li Ruotai and watched.

The four at the table were Li Ruotai, Ding Ruilong, Sun Yongzhang, and Tang Jingbin.

By the look of the table, the stakes were not high.

Cards could strengthen a relationship when it went well and turn men into enemies when it did not, and no one in this room was there for the size of the pot. Li Ruotai would make a show of wanting to beat Ding Ruilong, but Sun Yongzhang would certainly rein him in and keep the stakes from growing.

Small wins, small losses.

Conversation was still the point.

Wu Chen came in, swept his eyes over the room, and moved behind Li Ruotai.

Because he really had slept, his clothes were slightly rumpled. Li Ruobing noticed and reached up to smooth them without thinking, tugging his collar into place.

A perfectly natural gesture.

Ding Ruilong noticed.

His hand jerked, and he nearly tore the cards he was holding.

But he kept his emotions in hand well.

“Brother-in-law, want in?” Li Ruotai tossed down his cards and looked back at him.

Wu Chen smiled and shook his head.

He was not playing.

Small stakes were dull.

And if they played big, Sun Yongzhang, cooperating with the act, would have to stop him.

So Wu Chen simply watched, offering Li Ruotai a few pointers now and then.

That was enough.

Half an hour later, with Wu Chen prompting him repeatedly, Li Ruotai had taken a little over five million yuan off Ding Ruilong.

Ding Ruilong’s face grew steadily worse.

Not because of the money, but because Li Ruotai kept needling him.

“Ding Ruilong, can you actually play? Your luck is this rotten and you still dare sit down? Why don’t you just hand me all your money and save everyone the time…”

At the same moment, out in the corridor—

Ding!

A text message arriving.

It came from a tall, lean bodyguard of about thirty.

His name was Jiang Hongguang, one of Ding Ruilong’s trusted personal bodyguards.

He heard the alert and felt the phone vibrate. He drew it from his pocket and looked.

An unfamiliar number.

He opened it.

—Comfortable in that ocean-view apartment in Sanhai City? You’ll take anyone’s money? Do you have a death wish?

Jiang Hongguang froze at the short message.

Then his pupils contracted sharply and the color drained from his face.

The message was brief. It explained nothing.

But Jiang Hongguang understood immediately.

Someone was threatening him.

And the threat was to his life.

Jiang Hongguang was from Su City. He had served in the military, and not long after his discharge he had joined the Ding family as a bodyguard. Later he came to work for Ding Ruilong.

By now he had been with Ding Ruilong five years.

He lacked the reputation and seniority of the handful of famous old confidants around him, but he was still highly trusted.

Ding Ruilong was ruthless and vicious.

As the saying went, the kind of boss determined the kind of men beneath him. Over the years Jiang Hongguang had naturally handled plenty of dirty work for him.

His own hands were far from clean.

In five years with Ding Ruilong, besides a salary of several hundred thousand yuan a year, he had also come into money that could never see daylight.

He had “taken” Ding Ruilong’s money.

Not stolen from his boss, and not betrayed him.

There was simply money to skim in the course of doing the work.

Going out on a job always meant expenses. Looking into things for the boss meant palms to grease. There were countless places money had to go, and Ding Ruilong’s affairs involved no shortage of dirty business.

Naturally, illegal transactions did not come with receipts.

When Jiang Hongguang took Ding Ruilong’s money, it usually meant padding what he claimed.

There were other methods, but that was the main one.

If a job had really cost seventy or eighty thousand yuan, he might report a hundred thousand.

If the boss handed him a million yuan to buy something illegal, and the item cost eight hundred thousand with another few tens of thousands in expenses, then whatever was left…

if no one mentioned it, there was no need to hand it back.

Ding Ruilong had no real sense of money.

He was simply too rich, and had been rich since birth.

Large sums he noticed, of course.

Small ones?

He did not care.

There was plenty of money to skim when working for Ding Ruilong. Sometimes there were kickbacks, even outright gratuities.

Jiang Hongguang even knew that a few years back Jiang Chuan, then the boss’s number-one confidant, had accepted a million yuan from a businessman. The man wanted to latch onto Ding Ruilong and meant to present him with a woman, but he had no way of reaching him directly, so he went to Jiang Chuan instead.

Among the bodyguards this hardly counted as a secret. The rumors had always been there, and no one would ever carry it to the boss.

A good deal of that extra money was split among several men anyway.

The truth was that water too clear holds no fish.

Most of the time Ding Ruilong turned a blind eye.

He knew what went on.

These men risked their lives for him, and he could not be bothered to make an issue of something so small.

Once was a small matter.

Twice was a small matter.

But if a man kept at it, growing bolder and bolder, that was another story.

Jiang Hongguang was on the daring side.

He was loyal to Ding Ruilong, and he also believed there was money he was entitled to take. Everyone else did it.

Why shouldn’t he?

In August of the previous year Jiang Hongguang had wired six million yuan to his parents and had them buy an ocean-view apartment in Sanhai City in their names. He had even stayed there himself while on leave earlier this year.

Of that six million, only a small part came from what remained of his salary and bonuses after years of expenses.

The rest he had accumulated, a little at a time, from what he had skimmed.

That was lethal.

Taking a few tens of thousands at a stroke was a small problem.

But once those small amounts piled into three or four million…

if Ding Ruilong found out, he would send Jiang Hongguang off to meet his ancestors.

Jiang Hongguang knew exactly what kind of temper the man had.

He also knew not one of the boss’s other bodyguards was entirely clean.

But they were not the ones being threatened.

He was.

Who was it?

Panic surged through him. He forced himself to look calm as he put the phone away and adjusted his sunglasses. Then he turned to the bodyguard beside him and said quietly, “Going to the restroom.”

And he hurried out of the corridor.

Before long Jiang Hongguang found the public restroom on the ninth floor. He pushed the door open, went from stall to stall knocking on each door, and only once he was certain no one else was inside did he take out his phone again.

He did not call.

He replied by text first.

—Who are you?