Lin Yi was surrounded in a deep alley, with walls on three sides. It was a dead end.
His face was bruised, and the skin over his knuckles was red and raw. He had taken hits and dealt plenty himself. Leaning lazily against the wall, Lin Yi dusted off his clothes, lifted his eyes, and glanced at the people in front of him. “Why are you coming at me one wave at a time? It’s winter. Aren’t you cold standing around watching?”
Someone answered, “That’s what the employer told us to do—drag it out. The longer you spend getting beaten,” he glanced back at the man filming with his phone, “the more fun he has watching.”
“Alright.” Lin Yi nodded in acknowledgment. “I dropped five in the first wave. How many are you sending this time?”
The man who had answered looked displeased. “A capable fighter under Master Bai really is something. We’ll send seven this time to play with you, Brother Lin. If that still isn’t enough, we’ve got a third wave. The employer said to wear you down with a war of attrition.”
Lin Yi suddenly smiled. Looking at the phone recording him, he drawled lazily, “Young Master Zhou really is attentive, going to all this trouble for me.”
Then he turned back to the men in front of him, his gaze cooling as he mocked them lightly. “Come on. If you took someone’s money, at least put on a good show for him. Don’t all fight like a bunch of fucking weaklings.”
Their faces darkened instantly. One of them signaled to the others. “You hear that? Treat him properly. Don’t pull your punches.”
Before he had even finished speaking, a blur of fists appeared in his peripheral vision. The man cursed, “Shit! You sneak-attacking bastard—”
A heavy punch landed squarely on his face. With a muffled grunt, he staggered backward, the flesh of his cheek seeming to lose all support and flap with the force like the loose jowl of a Shar-Pei. Lin Yi grabbed him by the hair, yanked him back, then drove his knee hard into his abdomen. “If you wanted to be a gentleman, you wouldn’t be in this fucking line of work.”
Turning the man around, Lin Yi clamped his fingers around that vulnerable throat and held him in front of himself as a shield. “I can’t take a war of attrition, so you can help me absorb a few more punches.”
Then he twisted the man’s face forward, directly into an incoming fist.
＊
By the time Zhou Ruo An arrived, the fight had already been decided. Outnumbered, Lin Yi was covered in injuries and sat against the wall with one hand braced on his knee.
The other side had won, but only barely. Almost every face was bruised, and some of them looked even worse than Lin Yi, curled against the wall and breathing heavily.
Zhou Ruo An parted the crowd and slowly approached. He looked down at Lin Yi for a while before crouching and smiling. “Like it? My return gift to you.”
“Like it.” Lin Yi rested the back of his head against the old wall, his chin slightly raised. His face was mottled purple and blue, with blood at the corner of his mouth.
He looked battered, yet there was no sense that he had come off worse. If anything, the dark sharpness in his eyes seemed even fiercer, wildly defiant.
One arm rested on his raised knee as his fingers curled slightly. “Young Master Zhou, spare me a cigarette.”
Zhou Ruo An studied that spectacularly bruised face before finally fishing a cigarette from his coat pocket and tossing it over.
The cigarette landed against Lin Yi’s disheveled clothes, but he couldn’t pick it up. “My fingers are numb. Can’t straighten them. Trouble Young Master Zhou to light it for me.” Only then did Zhou Ruo An look at Lin Yi’s hand. The back was swollen and red, the skin over his knuckles split open and seeping blood. Probably from sheer exhaustion, the hand rested on his knee and trembled faintly.
Zhou Ruo An looked away, picked up the cigarette, put it between his own lips, and lit it. He took a deep drag, then shoved it none too gently into Lin Yi’s mouth. “This is only the appetizer. Young Master Zhou still has a full course waiting for you.”
Lin Yi drew on the cigarette with some difficulty and smiled faintly. “How much did you pay them, hm?”
When Zhou Ruo An didn’t answer, he continued, “Anything over ten thousand was too much. They aren’t worth it.”
“You fucking—” A man curled up nearby cursed through gritted teeth. He was the one Lin Yi had ambushed and used as a shield earlier, and his visible injuries were even worse than Lin Yi’s.
Ignoring the nonstop cursing, Lin Yi calmly continued proving to Zhou Ruo An that he had gotten a bad deal. “This many people, and not one of them went for a vital point. They avoided everywhere that mattered. Nobody went for the kill.”
The cursing abruptly stopped. The man looked at Zhou Ruo An. Zhou Ruo An lowered his gaze and asked coldly, “Lin Yi, what are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying…” Lin Yi tapped the cigarette, ash falling in soft flakes as his low, hoarse voice spread through the small space. “Not going for the kill—that was your instruction, wasn’t it?”
Zhou Ruo An frowned. “How could I possibly…”
Amusement appeared in Lin Yi’s eyes. Gathering what strength he had left, he suddenly reached out, hooked Zhou Ruo An toward him, and dragged him forward into a hard kiss.
“Holy shit!” The dozen or so spectators cursed in perfect unison. Even the ones groaning from their injuries kept the rhythm.
The man Lin Yi had ambushed pushed himself upright against the wall, suddenly enlightened. “So this is about collecting on a fucking love debt.”
The kiss was short. Their lips parted as soon as it made a sound, and as Lin Yi left that softness behind, he still couldn’t resist running his mouth. “Thanks for caring about me, Young Master Zhou.”
A cold, hostile gleam surged through Zhou Ruo An’s eyes. He shoved Lin Yi hard. “Nobody went for the kill, huh?” Standing, he planted one foot on the hand Lin Yi was using to support himself and slowly twisted. “Didn’t Brother Lin say having your fingers stepped on hurts the most? But if you’ve never tried it, how do you know? Practice is how you find out. I’ll help you learn today.”
Putting his full weight into his foot, Zhou Ruo An held out a hand and asked for a wooden stick. He bent down toward Lin Yi, whose brows had drawn slightly together, picked up the cigarette that had fallen to the ground, and put it back between the man’s lips. “Take a drag. Makes the pain easier to bear.”
Then Zhou Ruo An straightened, raised the wooden stick high, and brought it down hard across Lin Yi’s back.
With the cigarette clenched between his teeth, Lin Yi let out a muffled groan. The leather shoe pressing on his hand finally lifted, and Zhou Ruo An’s cold voice came crashing down. “Lin Yi, the thing I regret most in this life is ever knowing you. Don’t let me see you again.” Throwing the stick aside, Zhou Ruo An turned to leave. The man Lin Yi had ambushed earlier nudged the lackey beside him and muttered, “See that? Don’t date men. When it goes bad, they really do beat the shit out of you.”
“Zhou Ruo An.” Still against the same old wall, Lin Yi slowly leaned back. The moment his fresh injuries touched it, the muscles in his cheek tightened. “Do you still want Jinggui Electronics?”
Zhou Ruo An, who had already made it out of the crowd, stopped dead and looked back. “What do you mean?”
Lin Yi put the short cigarette stub between his lips and took a drag, suppressing the pain before speaking. “You’ve vented your anger. Now it’s time to talk business.” He tilted his head slightly. “Come here.”
Although Zhou Ruo An and Lin Yi were currently at each other’s throats, years of living side by side had given them an absolute understanding of each other. One look was enough for Zhou Ruo An to know what Lin Yi meant.
Too many eyes and ears around. This wasn’t something to discuss openly.
He looked at the dozen or so hired thugs nearby, considered it for a moment, then turned and walked back to Lin Yi.
Tilting his head back, Lin Yi said quietly, “You want to acquire Jinggui Electronics. Have you ever thought about why its owner wants to sell?”
“Because the equipment was upgraded, the capital chain broke, and they couldn’t repay their bank loans, so the company went bankrupt.”
“That’s the story everyone can see. If you don’t grasp the real cause, how are you supposed to hit the snake at its vital point?”
Zhou Ruo An stood there without speaking, which was his way of telling Lin Yi to get to the damn point. “The owner of Jinggui fell into someone’s trap and got scammed out of everything. He had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. And the person who ruined him is a regular at our club. I’ve got something in my hands that I think could help Jinggui’s owner vent his anger.”
A flame ignited in Zhou Ruo An’s eyes, like someone trapped at the end of a dead road suddenly seeing a locked door.
Lin Yi added fuel at exactly the right moment. “We’ve already slept together. Don’t you want to get something out of me in return?”
The old wall cast a heavy shadow, and Zhou Ruo An seemed to merge into it. His eyes were nearly black, unable to conceal the undercurrents churning beneath them.
“Lin Yi, you’re scheming against me again.”
The hand Zhou Ruo An had stepped on until it was bloody rested on Lin Yi’s knee. Lin Yi picked several small stones out of the wound. “The road is right in front of you. Either walk away as cleanly as you just did, or stay and see the bargaining chip I’m holding. It’s up to you, Young Master Zhou.”
Zhou Ruo An was better than anyone at weighing gains and losses, yet this time he hesitated for a very long while. The cold night wind swept into the alley, struck the old wall, and curled back again, repeating until his whole body had gone cold from the inside out. Only then did he speak, his voice just as icy.
“Yeah… I can’t let you sleep with me for free. I should get something back.”