By the time Wang Cheng returned home, Bodyguard A had already been back for a while. They had originally expected ten minutes to be enough for him to slip into Madam Li’s house. With everything that had happened afterward at the clinic, however, he had had more time than he needed.
The things that had been set up outside the doorway had already been removed. Old Madam Wang really did not dare camp outside Wang Cheng’s home again. She had even secretly asked Madam Li to check the quilts for any hairs or flakes of skin she might have left behind. Wang Cheng could hardly be bothered to comment on such transparent behavior. Her attempts to conceal the truth were ridiculously easy to see through.
“How did the job go?” Wang Cheng asked Bodyguard A to follow him inside. Only after making certain nobody was listening did he ask.
Bodyguard A carefully pulled a woven sack out from behind the door. It seemed to contain something heavy. He opened a small gap in the top. “Young Master Zhou, it’s done. That woman was downstairs the entire time. She never noticed me.”
Through the opening, Wang Cheng saw thick stacks of pink banknotes. They were the money he had sent Bodyguard A to steal from the safe in his eldest uncle’s home. There was more than he had expected.
“How much is here?”
“Two hundred thousand yuan.”
“They still have two hundred thousand?” Wang Cheng was astonished. He had heard that Wang Ningkai’s company had collapsed, which should have left the family in debt. There was no reason for them to have so much cash. He had thought they might have a hundred thousand at most.
“Young Master Zhou, I found these things in the safe too.” Bodyguard A took a bundle of documents out of the sack. He had only glanced over them and had no idea whether they would be useful, but since he was already there, he had decided to take them as well.
Madam Li still had no idea the safe had been emptied. Only Wang Ningkai and his father knew the combination, and with both men away, no one else in the house could open it.
Wang Cheng accepted the documents and flipped through them. At last he understood how Wang Ningkai’s household had come to have another two hundred thousand yuan in cash. They had swindled it from a business partner.
Once it became clear that bankruptcy was inevitable, Wang Ningkai and his father had someone calculate their prospective losses. The amount was more than they could bear, so they began transferring some of their assets. Even after doing so, they could not fill the financial hole. Their attempt to borrow money from Papa Wang had also failed. Around that time, they happened to accept an order from a businessman who had come from elsewhere to do business. The man paid them five hundred thousand yuan. Wang Ningkai and his father promptly decided to keep the money.
Wang Ningkai had used three hundred thousand to repay part of their debts. The remaining two hundred thousand was what they had planned to set aside for their own use. Thus, even though they had cash, they had refused to use it to pay the workers.
“Those two are really bold,” Wang Cheng said in surprise after reading the documents. He was certain that Madam Li and Old Madam Wang had no idea where the money came from. He also finally understood how the family had managed to keep its city apartment despite the company’s collapse.
Bodyguard A asked, “What should we do with the money now, Young Master Zhou?”
It was money obtained by cheating a business partner, so Wang Cheng had no intention of simply giving it back to his uncle’s family. Originally, he had meant only to frighten them, expose the fact that they still had money, and return the cash once he found a suitable opportunity. But since the money had turned out not to belong to them in the first place, that changed things.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
The discovery had complicated his plan. Wang Ningkai and his father might even end up in prison. What they had done constituted fraud. Once that business partner found his way here, neither father nor son would escape the consequences. Wang Cheng doubted they could hide this forever, but clearly the two men had not considered that possibility. Otherwise, they would not have spent the money. At this rate, they might have no choice but to sell their city apartment, whether they wanted to or not.
Wang Cheng told his parents nothing about the day’s events, least of all that he had sent someone to steal money from his uncle’s home. Both were honest country people. If they learned what he had done, they would demand he return it immediately. They might even give him a beating.
As for whether Papa Wang was truly Old Madam Wang’s biological son, Wang Cheng could not let the matter go. A DNA test could establish the truth, but he was now eighty percent certain Papa Wang was not her son. What he wanted more than anything was to learn the story behind it.
How had Papa Wang become Old Madam Wang’s son more than fifty years ago?
The difficulty was that over fifty years had passed. People and places had changed beyond recognition, and Wangjia Village no longer existed as it once had. Investigating would not be easy.
After returning home from the clinic, Madam Li and the two elders immediately called Wang Hongwei to report that their plan had failed. Today was the deadline; the workers would return tomorrow.
“How could it have failed? Did Wang Cheng lay hands on Mom?” Wang Hongwei could hardly believe it. His mother was not the type to give in so quickly. He knew her well: for the sake of his family, she would make life miserable for his third brother’s household without sparing any effort.
Madam Li stole a glance at the two elders sitting in the living room. She took the phone into the kitchen and lowered her voice. “Something happened. Third Brother may not actually be Mom and Dad’s biological son. Did you know anything about that?”
“What?” Wang Hongwei exclaimed in shock. He knew nothing about it. The three brothers were fairly close in age, and he was only four years older than the youngest. He had been too little to remember anything clearly back then. Even if he had witnessed something, he would have forgotten it by now.
Madam Li recounted how Wang Cheng had tricked Old Madam Wang into revealing her unease. Even she could tell that the old woman was hiding something. Wang Cheng would certainly have noticed as well. Old Madam Wang had made her guilt far too obvious.
Wang Hongwei reached the same conclusion. “No. We absolutely cannot let anyone find out that Third Brother isn’t Mom and Dad’s biological child.”
Their family dared cause trouble precisely because of the bond of blood between the two households. They had counted on that being a fact nobody could erase. For Old Madam Wang in particular, the blood relationship was a protective talisman. No matter how unreasonable she became, Wang Hongxin would eventually have to bow to his filial obligations. If that protection vanished, the outcome was easy to imagine.
Old Madam Wang and her husband might still have the claim of having raised Wang Hongxin, but many people knew how poorly they had treated him since childhood. His obligation to support them would not seem nearly so heavy.
“I know. I’ll keep Mom and Dad at home for the time being. But shouldn’t you and Ningkai come back?” Madam Li knew very well what was at stake. Fortunately, suspicion was not proof. Without evidence, Third Brother’s household could not yet deny the blood relationship. All they had to do was prevent a DNA test.
Wang Hongwei said they would return that afternoon, then ended the call.
“Dad, do we really have to pledge the apartment to Wang Cheng?” Wang Ningkai could not bear the idea. If they held on to it for another two years, its value might rise by another hundred thousand or so. Besides, it was the family’s last upscale property.
“I’m afraid there’s not much room to maneuver, unless we decide not to borrow the money,” Wang Hongwei said. He disliked the idea too, but Wang Cheng had them cornered.
After thinking for a moment, Wang Ningkai said, “Dad, why don’t we just give up on the loan?”
They had come up with the scheme to cheat his third uncle’s family out of money. Now it required them to pledge the very apartment they were relying on for their future. If they went through with it, there would be nothing to gain.
“Ningkai, don’t forget the five hundred thousand,” Wang Hongwei reminded his son uneasily. He, too, would have liked to get the three hundred thousand without paying any price, but matters were clearly not going as they had planned. If the businessman discovered the fraud and tracked them to their hometown, both father and son would be in serious trouble.
Wang Ningkai’s expression changed. He had not forgotten.
“As things stand, there are two paths we can take,” Wang Hongwei said. “First, we could pledge the apartment to Wang Cheng, but we can bargain over its value. It’s worth around a million yuan at present. We might be able to push the figure higher.”
“And the second option?”
Wang Hongwei’s eyes grew darker. “I’d rather not use that unless there’s no other choice. It concerns what your mother just told me. If we really can’t keep that secret hidden, perhaps we can make use of it before it comes out.”
Wang Ningkai did not quite understand, but he knew his father had a plan.
While father and son were still plotting their next move, Wang Cheng had already sent people to investigate two matters.
The first concerned events from more than fifty years ago. Too much time had passed for the younger generations, or even the generation before them, to know much about it. He could only seek out elderly people of Wang De and Old Madam Wang’s generation. Fortunately, Wangjia Village had a pleasant environment of green hills and clear waters. Many of the older residents lived into their eighties or nineties.
The second matter was the fraud committed by Wang Ningkai and his father. Wang Cheng contacted Zhang Wu directly and asked him to investigate the company’s business partners before its collapse. A five-hundred-thousand-yuan order would have been substantial for Wang Ningkai’s company. If the story was true, it could hardly have left no trace.
Zhang Wu agreed and immediately got to work. The investigation went unexpectedly smoothly and required very little effort.
Wang Ningkai and his father had kept the company’s impending collapse fairly quiet, so few people initially knew it had shut down. The cheated businessman did not realize something was wrong until several days later. When Zhang Wu’s men looked into the matter, they happened to discover the unfortunate man searching everywhere for Wang Ningkai and his father.