As soon as Lin Yi finished speaking, another voice sounded, extremely weak and full of blatant jealousy. “Zhou Ruo An, she already called you husband. Five hundred thousand really isn’t much.”
Following the voice, Zhou Ruo An looked beside him. Zhang Jin, dead for half a year already, was lounging in the empty chair and mocking him. “Nobody has called me husband once in my whole life. If somebody did, I’d pay a million.”
“In ghost money?” Zhou Ruo An asked the empty air.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. When he opened them again, Zhang Jin had vanished. Enduring the discomfort throughout his body, Zhou Ruo An picked up the pen, signed his name on the termination agreement, then took out his phone to transfer the money. “Five hundred thousand. I’ll pay you.”
Satisfied after receiving the money, the woman left. As she closed the door, she swept her gaze over the two men, clicked her tongue with a smile, and slowly pulled the door shut.
Once the sound of the closing door faded, only Zhou Ruo An and Lin Yi remained in the conference room, along with Zhou Ruo An’s rapid, heavy breathing.
Zhou Ruo An threw aside the pen and, clinging to the last of his clarity, asked Lin Yi, “Can you really help me take Jinggui Electronics?”
“What did you take?” Lin Yi answered with another question.
“Weren’t you going to sleep with me?” Zhou Ruo An leaned back in the chair, his gaze unfocused. “Come on, then. I’m letting you.” Lin Yi stood and walked around the table. Bending slightly, he blew cigarette smoke across that dazed face and said softly, “Zhou Ruo An, you really turn my stomach.”
Then he kissed him hard.
＊
Zhou Ruo An’s mouth was blocked, the not-so-soft touch grinding against his lips. Lin Yi’s kisses were just like the man himself—slow and measured, yet allowing no refusal. Beneath that calm exterior was nothing but roughness and tyranny.
He could clearly have entered Zhou Ruo An’s mouth with ease, yet instead he hooked a finger against his jaw and pried his teeth apart. “If you take the pill, you forget everything that happens afterward?”
The man’s gaze darkened. “Then I really can let myself go.”
Then he ordered coldly, “Stick your tongue out. Let me bite it once.”
Zhou Ruo An regretted it. He should have taken two pills. Then he wouldn’t still have those occasional flashes of clarity, or the anger and humiliation that came with them.
But whenever everything was finally ruled by desire, Zhou Ruo An still obeyed. He opened his mouth and slowly extended that softness, letting Lin Yi take his fill of it as though chewing and swallowing it, while all Zhou Ruo An could do was instinctively nestle into the man’s arms. He was very practiced at this movement now: don’t be stiff, be willing, lightly cling to the man’s shoulders, passionate and proactive.
Zhou Ruo An no longer knew how he had returned to Room 1601. He only knew that the large bed in the room went untouched the entire night.
He sat in a chair with the backs of his knees resting over the armrests, his eyes blindfolded with a necktie and his head tipped back. With Lin Yi’s fingers in his mouth, he was forced to keep it open and continuously swallow the saliva gathering there. In one of his extremely rare moments of clarity, Zhou Ruo An pulled the tie away from his eyes. As his vision slowly adjusted to the light, he saw Lin Yi standing in front of him.
Tall, strong, broad, solid—the young body held an abundance of force, and now all of that seemingly inexhaustible brute strength was being released without restraint. The chair had been pushed little by little from the center of the room all the way to the window until it struck the sill and had nowhere farther to go.
The force landed even more solidly after that. Zhou Ruo An endured it outright and could only plead for a little mercy with his eyes.
Lin Yi remained unmoved. A faint viciousness showed in his expression as he slowly withdrew the fingers from Zhou Ruo An’s mouth and said coldly, “What does it feel like to have someone else call you husband? Young Master Zhou should say it once too. Let me experience it.”
Unfortunately, this happened to coincide with one of Zhou Ruo An’s fleeting moments of clarity.
“No.” His answer was absolute. “Lin Yi, dream on.”
Lin Yi’s face darkened. He picked up the necktie draped over the back of the chair and tied it around Zhou Ruo An’s neck. Holding the loose end in one hand, he pulled hard. “Dreams are still worth having. What if one comes true?”
Zhou Ruo An couldn’t remember whether he ultimately called Lin Yi “husband.” Probably not. He had clenched his teeth for the rest of the night and refused to speak again, except when Lin Yi forced another kiss onto him…
＊
The next morning, Zhou Ruo An was awakened by his phone ringing. When he lifted his heavy eyelids, the room was pitch-black except for the air conditioner’s indicator light. Twenty-five degrees—the exact temperature Zhou Ruo An liked. Other than the irritating ringtone, there was no movement in the room. Lin Yi had probably already left, and Zhou Ruo An let out a breath of relief.
His whole body was weak and aching. Curled tightly beneath the silky blanket, he reached out and found the phone beside the pillow.
The call was from Ren Yu. Nothing important, only the usual work report.
Zhou Ruo An’s throat was hoarse. He responded perfunctorily a few times and hung up. Just as he was about to turn off the screen, he noticed a message from Lin Yi.
A voice message. Only ten seconds long.
He stared at the sender’s name for a long time before lightly tapping the screen. The audio began to play, and Zhou Ruo An heard his own low whimpers.
“What did you call me?” Lin Yi’s voice followed.
Zhou Ruo An’s temple throbbed. A shattered memory from one particular moment suddenly broke through the barrier in his mind. It had been when he was most helpless and least able to endure any more, Lin Yi’s relentless onslaught almost deranged. Zhou Ruo An hadn’t even had the strength left to beg. The empty room had held nothing but his low whimpers. Lin Yi had tightened the tie in his hand another notch, drawing Zhou Ruo An closer before asking again, “An An, what should you call me?”
Holding the phone, Zhou Ruo An shuddered violently and hurried to pause the audio, but he was still too late.
He heard his own voice, weak and soft, even carrying a faint trace of ingratiating submission.
“…Husband.”
“Say it again.”
“Husband.”
“Who’s your husband?”
“You, Lin Yi.”
“Shit!” The phone was hurled violently onto the floor. Zhou Ruo An’s expression instantly sharpened as he looked toward the chair by the window. The wrinkled necktie still hung over the backrest like a noose, slowly torturing what little dignity he had left.
But only a moment later, Zhou Ruo An slowly reached down and retrieved the phone from the carpet. The anger on his face receded like a tide, replaced by dark gloom.
The phone hadn’t broken and still worked normally. He reopened Lin Yi’s chat window, held down the voice-message button, and brought the microphone to his lips.
“That girl called me husband once, and I willingly paid five hundred thousand for it. Brother Lin won’t be stingy either, right? I’ll leave the electronics-factory acquisition to you.”
The reply came quickly, the steady male voice revealing no emotion. “The person who set up Shao Chen Feng is Jiao Feng, the youngest son of the chairman of Guangyu Real Estate. He has a secret base where he does all kinds of illegal, filthy things. If those things came out, eight or ten years in prison wouldn’t be out of the question.”
Another voice message immediately followed. “Go talk to Shao Chen Feng. Tell him that if he wants revenge, he should sell the company to you.”
Zhou Ruo An’s mind turned rapidly as he pressed the voice-message button again. “Is there any risk?”
“You’re worried about me?”
Zhou Ruo An got up and began dressing, frowning slightly when he pulled at one sore spot. “Before Zhang Jin died, he got scammed by a middleman selling cemetery plots and bought a joint burial plot. Leaving the other half empty would be a waste anyway. If you die, I’ll bury you with him and even save you the cemetery fee. But the condition is that your death can’t drag me down with you.” A quiet laugh came through the phone. “I won’t drag Young Master Zhou down. Just wait to claim the credit.”
His dress shirt was no longer wearable. Fortunately, a turtleneck had been left beside the pillow, just enough to cover the red marks around Zhou Ruo An’s neck from the tie.
Once dressed, his slender fingers picked up the silk necktie from the chair. Looking at the chaotic wrinkles across it, Zhou Ruo An leaned toward the phone with a cold gaze and said softly, “Then I’ll wait for Brother Lin’s good news.”
Stuffing the ruined tie into his pocket, Zhou Ruo An put away his phone and walked out.
The hotel stood in a bustling district, but after crossing a few streets and turning several corners, the surroundings became an old neighborhood filled with the smoke and noise of everyday life. Zhou Ruo An had barely eaten anything the previous day, and after the night he had just had… he was starving. He casually picked a roadside breakfast stall and stood there eating fried dough sticks and drinking soy milk.
The old alley was narrow and allowed only one-way traffic. A luxury sedan slowly drove in and stopped directly in front of the breakfast stall, almost brushing Zhou Ruo An’s shoe tips.
Two tall men pushed open the doors and stepped out, needing barely half a step to stand in front of Zhou Ruo An.
“Mr. Zhou, our boss would like to see you. Please come with us.”
Zhou Ruo An lazily lifted his narrow eyes and glanced at them. “Didn’t your boss teach you that when you speak to someone, you give your name first?”
One man immediately looked irritated, while the other remained relatively calm. “Our boss is Master Bai. He’d like Mr. Zhou to come sit with him for a while.”
The soy milk in Zhou Ruo An’s hand trembled faintly before becoming steady again. He lowered his head, took a sip, and replied indifferently, “Wait until I finish eating.” Then he added, “Move the car forward. Block someone else’s business and your whole family dies.”