Chapter 320: Three Shots! The Gun Blew Apart!

Chapter 320: Three Shots! The Gun Blew Apart!

Tang Wu’s face shifted slightly at the question.

But almost at once he asked, in a tone of confusion, “Boss, what do you mean?”

He looked as though he genuinely did not follow.

Tang Wu was thirty-three, a former special-forces soldier. His psychological composure was excellent.

“I’ll ask you again. On the night of my birthday last year, what did you do with Liu Xiaoyu?” Ding Ruilong stared at him and repeated almost the same words.

“I…” Tang Wu looked lost, as if searching his memory.

It had been nearly a year ago.

If nothing unusual had happened, not remembering would have been perfectly natural.

The others watched him. Seeing him apparently rack his brain, their faces turned uneasy.

Not because they knew anything.

They simply knew who Liu Xiaoyu was.

And they understood what a question like that meant.

Liu Xiaoyu was a student at Nanguang University, in modern dance at the dance school. Young, pretty, sweet-tongued, good at pleasing.

From June of the previous year through the period around Ding Ruilong’s birthday, she had been the woman he favored above all others.

It was only at the end of that year that he stopped seeing her and let her go.

He had simply grown tired of her.

And for him to question Tang Wu like this now meant one thing.

He suspected Tang Wu had cuckolded him.

If Liu Xiaoyu had taken other men after leaving Ding Ruilong, it meant nothing. If she had been with men before she met him, that meant nothing either. Neither would count.

But if she had been with another man while she was his—

that was different.

The bodyguards and assistants had no idea why Ding Ruilong had suddenly begun suspecting Tang Wu, nor whether it was true.

But if it was—

Tang Wu was going to die.

“Boss, I—it was so long ago. That night, I…” Tang Wu finally spoke, acting the part of a man who simply could not recall.

“Convincing performance.” Ding Ruilong stared straight at him and grinned.

“Boss, if you’ve heard something, or you suspect something, could you give me some hint? I really…” Tang Wu said.

Ding Ruilong said nothing.

He raised the hand holding the gun, muzzle angled upward, his eyes never leaving Tang Wu.

“Boss, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I swear to you, I have never done anything to betray you.” Tang Wu still sounded relatively steady as he gave his word.

In truth—

Ding Ruilong himself also thought Wu Chen had invented it.

Wu Chen had named many women accurately, which proved he had indeed looked into him.

But names were easy to learn.

Li Ruotai could have supplied them outright.

Even so—

there was a fire burning in Ding Ruilong.

From the moment he laid eyes on Wu Chen that afternoon until now, his anger had only grown while his emotions grew more and more penned in.

There had been nowhere to let it out.

He simply wanted to explode.

And now that Wu Chen had said this particular thing, Ding Ruilong knew it would sit in him like a knot unless he verified it.

After more than ten seconds of silence he took out his phone with his other hand and scrolled a long while before finding Liu Xiaoyu’s number.

He called.

And put it on speaker.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

“Hello? Darling, you finally called me. I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”

A girl’s sweet, coquettish voice came through.

She started off acting spoiled, sounding a little excited that Ding Ruilong had contacted her again.

“On the night of my birthday last year, what did you do with Tang Wu?” Ding Ruilong asked flatly, his voice low.

The line went silent.

Roughly three seconds passed.

“N-nothing. After the banquet ended Tang Wu drove me back to my apartment, and then—then he left.” Liu Xiaoyu’s words came out stammering, thoroughly unnatural.

Her nerve was nothing beside Tang Wu’s.

Ding Ruilong narrowed his eyes slightly.

“You remember it clearly enough,” he said without emotion.

“Y-yes. I’ve always had a good memory. You know that. What’s wrong?” She finished in that coquettish tone again.

“You didn’t lie to me?”

“Of course not. How would I dare lie to you?”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure!”

“Then why did Tang Wu tell me you grabbed hold of him first and wouldn’t let him leave? That you started taking your own clothes off, shameless as that? Tang Wu told me everything, and you still dare say you didn’t lie to me?” The last words came out as a roar.

He was bluffing her.

Drunk as he was, he still knew a simple way to get at the truth.

The line went silent again.

Only heavy breathing came through.

“If you tell me exactly what happened that night, I can spare your life, and your parents’. This is your one chance,” Ding Ruilong said into the phone.

As he spoke, his eyes stayed locked on Tang Wu.

Tang Wu’s face had already changed.

He was close to breaking.

A few seconds later.

“Uwaaah—darling, he forced me! He saw I was drunk—waaah—I was afraid you’d be angry, afraid you’d think I was dirty, so I didn’t dare tell you—waaah—and afterward that bastard Tang Wu even used it to threaten me, saying I—”

Liu Xiaoyu’s sobbing poured out of the phone.

Ding Ruilong had claimed she initiated it.

Liu Xiaoyu claimed instead that Tang Wu had forced her while she was drunk.

Who had started it did not matter.

What mattered was that it had happened.

Ding Ruilong really had been cuckolded.

He did not let her finish. He ended the call and put the phone away.

His eyes stayed on Tang Wu.

The hand holding the gun trembled once.

Thud.

Tang Wu dropped to his knees.

He knew he was finished. Liu Xiaoyu had neither the nerve nor the composure to keep a thing like this buried. She was going to get them both killed.

“Boss! Boss, listen to me. It wasn’t like that. Liu Xiaoyu is lying. She started it. She started it—” On his knees, Tang Wu spoke frantically, hands moving as he talked.

Sweat had already broken out across his forehead.

“That night she was the one who wouldn’t let me go. She even said you must be blind to take a liking to Xu Piaopiao. She said it—”

He gave Ding Ruilong no chance to speak.

He confessed it all in one rush.

Above everything he wanted to explain himself, and he was afraid of being shot before he finished, so he talked as fast as he could and did not dare stop.

By Tang Wu’s account, Liu Xiaoyu had been the one who started it.

At Ding Ruilong’s birthday banquet the year before, the guests had included a great many wealthy businessmen. One of them, Xu Bin, had brought his niece Xu Piaopiao and deliberately introduced her to Ding Ruilong.

Xu Piaopiao truly was beautiful.

Ding Ruilong had genuinely taken a liking to her.

At the time Liu Xiaoyu had been the woman he doted on. But because Xu Piaopiao appeared, Ding Ruilong told Liu Xiaoyu to go back to her apartment early instead of staying at his side.

And Tang Wu, as his bodyguard, drove her home.

In the car Liu Xiaoyu flew into a rage and cursed Xu Piaopiao the whole way.

She had plainly sensed she was about to lose his favor.

At the apartment Tang Wu finished his task and prepared to leave.

Liu Xiaoyu caught hold of him and would not let him go.

Then she kissed him first.

Using the drink as her excuse, she was “taking revenge” on Ding Ruilong.

Cuckolding him deliberately.

That was Tang Wu’s account.

And it sounded very near the truth, because his explanation held together.

But whether it was the whole truth no longer mattered.

One fact had been confirmed absolutely.

Tang Wu really had cuckolded Ding Ruilong.

Wu Chen had not invented it.

It was true.

Tang Wu talked rapidly for several full minutes, laying out every detail, sweat streaming down his face.

“Finished?” Ding Ruilong sniffed abruptly and cut him off.

“Boss, Boss, I know I was wrong, but I—”

Bang!

A gunshot.

Ding Ruilong raised his hand and fired. No suppressor.

Bright red bloomed across Tang Wu’s chest.

Bang!

Bang—crack!

He stood and fired twice more. One round struck Tang Wu in the forehead.

But on the third shot something went wrong.

Flame burst in Ding Ruilong’s hand.

“Ah—fuck!” He screamed and flung the gun away.

The gun had blown apart.

The odds of a handgun suffering a catastrophic failure were extremely low.

But Ding Ruilong’s gun had blown apart on the third shot.

“Boss!”

Cries of alarm filled the living room.