“I was entrusted with a job, so I’m here to take care of someone’s trouble.” The man’s low voice seemed to pour directly into Xue Bao Tian’s ear, every word perfectly clear.
“Fuck.” Xue Bao Tian’s smile spread lazily across his face as he pointed at Zhang Chi. “Anyone in this room has the right to come at me—except fucking you.”
He pulled the woman tighter against himself, turned his head, and planted a loud kiss on her cheek. Smiling, he asked, “Do I treat you well?”
Women who worked in nightclubs were used to scenes like this. Even with the intimidating Zhang Chi standing right in front of her, she still nestled delicately against Xue Bao Tian. “Young Master Xue treats me the best. I love Young Master Xue.”
“Good girl. Call me Master Xue.” Xue Bao Tian indulgently patted her cheek. “A man should naturally treat the person in his bed well.”
He straightened his back and leaned closer to Zhang Chi, lowering his voice so only the two of them could hear. “You’ve fucking slept with me three times. Even a fleeting affair is still an affair. If you can really bring yourself to do this today, I, Xue Bao Tian, will find a way to kill you sooner or later.”
They stood so close that the heat from their bodies mingled. Zhang Chi’s expression did not change despite the threat. He lowered his head and breathed lightly against Xue Bao Tian’s neck. “You changed your perfume again.” Without waiting for an answer, his warm lips seemed to brush the skin there, and his husky voice followed. “Don’t dodge in a minute.”
“What… do you mean?”
Zhang Chi abruptly pulled away. One hand seized Xue Bao Tian by the collar and hauled him upward, while the other lifted a glass bottle and smashed it hard against his head.
Bang! The bottle shattered.
Before Xue Bao Tian even had time to register the pain, warm liquid was already running down his forehead. He touched it, then stared incredulously at the red blood on his fingertips. “Zhang Chi, you’ve got fucking guts! I thought I was already enough of a bastard, but there’s always a bigger bastard. Grandpa’s really had his eyes opened today!”
Fury surged through Xue Bao Tian. He grabbed another bottle and tried to smash it over Zhang Chi, only for the man’s large hand to shove him down against the sofa, pinning him there so firmly that he could not move.
Zhang Chi still held the shattered bottle, Xue Bao Tian’s blood staining the broken glass. He turned toward Fourth Young Master Qi, who was seated on the sofa. “Boss, is that enough?”
Fourth Young Master Qi looked pleased. He poured himself another drink, lazily swirling the glass as he drawled, “It’ll be enough when Young Master Xue admits defeat.”
Just as Xue Bao Tian was about to start cursing, the pressure on his shoulder increased. Then he heard Zhang Chi say, “We agreed to stop once there was blood. Boss, there’s blood now.”
Fourth Young Master Qi set down his glass in irritation. “You’re playing word games with me? Is that what ‘stop once there’s blood’ was supposed to mean? I hired you to vent my anger for me. You go up there, make one token move, and that’s it?”
Zhang Chi seemed to understand. He offered a perfectly reasonable suggestion. “Next time, Boss, you can make the terms clearer. That way, misunderstandings like this won’t happen.”
Fourth Young Master Qi ground his teeth. “Do I fucking need you teaching me how to do things? Keep beating him. Hurry up! Young Master Xue is getting impatient over there!”
Zhang Chi removed the hand pinning Xue Bao Tian’s shoulder and tossed aside the broken bottle in his other hand, its edge sharp as a blade. Calmly, he said, “Sorry, Boss. I do things according to the agreement. There’s blood now, so I can’t keep going.”
By now, Xue Bao Tian had figured out what Zhang Chi was doing. He pulled out a few tissues and wiped the blood from his forehead, hissing at the pain. After muttering a curse, he lounged back against the sofa, lit a cigarette, and drawled, “He leapfrogged straight to the target. Not a bad hire, Fourth Young Master—your KPI’s secured ahead of schedule.”
Zhang Chi sighed softly and shot Xue Bao Tian a sidelong glance.
Sure enough, the provocation sent Fourth Young Master Qi over the edge. He glared at Zhang Chi. “I hired you because I didn’t want to dirty my own hands. Never thought a nobody like you would dare fuck with me too. Fine. I don’t give a damn anymore. Once I’m finished with Xue Bao Tian, I’ll deal with you next!”
He shot a look behind him, and someone immediately swaggered forward aggressively and planted himself in the middle of the private room.
At its root, the conflict between Fourth Young Master Qi and Xue Bao Tian had been Fourth Young Master Qi’s fault. The Xue family was also wealthier than the Qi family. Their businesses might operate in different fields, but money always gave a person a little more backbone. Because of that, the Qi family had explicitly ordered Fourth Young Master Qi not to cause trouble this time. Unable to swallow his anger, however, he had hired an outsider to teach Xue Bao Tian a lesson, agreeing that the beating would stop once blood was drawn and that Zhang Chi would bear full responsibility for any consequences.
Now Fourth Young Master Qi was so furious that he had lost his head. Ignoring his family’s warning, he called out his own lackeys. The men who followed him around all had some ability to bare their teeth and wave their claws, and they certainly looked intimidating enough.
“Go. Teach Young Master Xue a lesson without drawing blood, so he understands that not everyone in this world is someone he can provoke!”
Just as the men were about to move, Zhang Chi slowly stepped forward and planted himself directly in front of Xue Bao Tian. His expression was calm and resolute as his lips moved slightly. “I’d like to see who dares touch him.”
The rowdy drinking companions and nightclub women had already slipped away along the edges of the room. Now only the two opposing sides remained.
Fourth Young Master Qi did the math. He had four men; the other side had only two, and Xue Bao Tian was just a beanpole who did not count. Full of confidence, he said coldly, “Touch him? I’ll deal with you too, you traitorous bastard!”
The moment the words left his mouth, all four men moved at once, relying on sheer numbers to overwhelm their opponents.
Zhang Chi was faster. He strode forward and struck first, driving a fist into one man’s abdomen. The man doubled over and staggered half a meter backward before collapsing straight onto the sofa, teeth bared in pain and temporarily unable to fight.
A rush of wind sounded beside his ear. Zhang Chi shifted aside, dodging a sneak punch from behind, then seized the arm before it could retract and twisted hard. With a crack, the shoulder joint dislocated, and the scream nearly tore through the private room.
He shoved the man backward onto the one already sprawled on the sofa, piling one body on top of the other, and two muffled groans followed.
Before the echoes had faded, Zhang Chi heard a low curse strangled with pain. He spun around and saw Xue Bao Tian surrounded by two men, already at a disadvantage.
At the start of the fight, Xue Bao Tian had leapt onto the sofa and brought the bottle in his hand crashing down on one of his attackers.
The bottle burst apart, beer foam streaming down the man’s face, but there was no blood. Xue Bao Tian cursed, “Fuck,” and wildly brandished the jagged bottle in self-defense. Surrounded by two men, however, he could block one but not the other. Caught off guard, his wrist was twisted and his arm wrenched behind his back.
“Brother Chi, save me!”
Zhang Chi was tall and handsome, but his face was strikingly young, occasionally still showing traces of boyishness. He was obviously much younger than Xue Bao Tian, yet Xue Bao Tian had already grown used to calling him that both in bed and out. Now that he was in danger, he had even less room to care about embarrassment.
Seeing Xue Bao Tian restrained, Zhang Chi’s eyes instantly turned icy. He stepped onto the bar counter for leverage and launched a full-force kick without holding anything back.
Xue Bao Tian watched the man in front of him go flying from Zhang Chi’s kick with a scream, crashing straight into the opposite wall. If the wall had not stopped him, there was no telling how much farther he would have flown.
Before Xue Bao Tian could close his mouth from the shock, another cry of pain came from behind him. Somehow, Zhang Chi had already seized the man twisting his arm and repaid him in kind, wrenching his arm behind his back. No one knew how much force Zhang Chi had used, but the man’s shoulder blade looked visibly twisted out of place, and his unbroken cries of pain were enough to make anyone listening break out in a cold sweat.
A large, warm hand briefly closed around Xue Bao Tian’s wrist. Zhang Chi leaned close, his breath brushing the back of Xue Bao Tian’s ear. “Give it to me.”
Xue Bao Tian knew what he wanted. He relaxed his hand, and the jagged bottle changed owners.
The muscles in Zhang Chi’s arms bulged like coiling dragons. He restrained the lackey with one hand and held the broken bottle in the other as he slowly walked toward Fourth Young Master Qi.
Fourth Young Master Qi’s expression shifted from shock to fear. He backed away step by step until the edge of the sofa caught him behind the knees and he dropped onto it. Only then did Zhang Chi speak, his mild tone utterly at odds with the violence surrounding him. “Boss Qi, it’s better to make peace than deepen a grudge. You and Two Hun—Boss Xue should sit down and talk. There’s nothing that can’t be worked out.”
Zhang Chi glanced back at Xue Bao Tian and heard a thoroughly reluctant click of his tongue before Xue Bao Tian dragged his feet over and sat opposite Fourth Young Master Qi.
Xue Bao Tian lit another cigarette and put on an imposing air. “Congratulations, Fourth Young Master. You tried to get the better of me and only made things worse for yourself. Know why I like dogs so much?” A faint smile appeared on his face. “The longer I spend dealing with people like you, the more I like dogs.”
“Two Hundred.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s talk business.” Xue Bao Tian exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “How are you planning to compensate me for what happened today?”
“Compensate you?” Fourth Young Master Qi laughed in fury. “You set a trap for me and made me jump into it. Why the hell should I compensate you?”
“A trap? What trap did I set?”
“You already knew this bodyguard. The two of you teamed up to set me up, didn’t you? I knew you were despicable, but I didn’t realize Young Master Xue was such a talented strategist.”
Xue Bao Tian glanced at Zhang Chi, whom he had genuinely run into by coincidence today, and felt he did not quite deserve the praise. He coughed twice and replied vaguely, “You flatter me.”
With one arm draped over the back of the sofa, he looked completely at ease. “Since Fourth Young Master and I can’t reach an agreement, we can just keep going back and forth like this. I’m an only son, after all. No matter how useless I am, my father can’t replace me.”
Fourth Young Master Qi ground his teeth, his face gray and withered, yet he had no choice but to swallow his anger. “What does Young Master Xue think we should do?”
Xue Bao Tian thought for a moment around the cigarette between his lips. “I’ll burn incense for your ancestors and apologize. What sincerity are you offering in return?”
“I heard Young Master Xue likes cruise parties. I’ll cover the cost of a half-month cruise.”
The offer landed right on Xue Bao Tian’s soft spot. He deliberately pondered for a moment to keep up appearances. “And buy my dog a burial plot too.” He rose and headed for the door, then could not resist adding, “Fourth Young Master, you don’t need to burn incense for it.”
As he passed Zhang Chi, Xue Bao Tian gave the corner of his suit a light tug. “Let’s go, my chess piece.”
“Fuck, Zhang Chi, that was impressive!” Out in the clubhouse corridor, Xue Bao Tian was so pleased he was almost beside himself. He offered Zhang Chi a cigarette; when Zhang Chi declined, he did not care and simply stuck it between his own lips instead. “How’d you get connected with Fourth Young Master Qi?”
“Someone introduced us. I wanted to earn some extra money.” Zhang Chi’s voice was slightly hoarse, and he spoke slowly, as though distracted.
Unfortunately, Xue Bao Tian did not notice. Still basking in the exhilaration of escaping disaster, he bit down on the cigarette and patted himself down for a lighter as he said absentmindedly, “Big Brother’s treating you to a late-night snack tonight.”
“Okay.”
A warm, large hand suddenly settled on the back of Xue Bao Tian’s neck. Before he could react, Zhang Chi swept him into his arms and pulled him into the empty private room next door.
The door shut, and an unlit cigarette dropped to the floor.