I don’t know what Zhang Mei will do to me, but it is certain that she will never show me any mercy.
I kicked the door open and Zhang Mei had already secured this doorway of ours with security guards, each with a gun pointed at my head.
Guns are banned in the country, and they probably got their guns from Shi Sheng, so no wonder Shi Sheng and Nightfall were on such good terms.
“It’s been five years, Auntie.”
Zhang Mei and I looked at each other, and from her eyes burst a fierce hatred, stronger than five years ago; time hadn’t let her go, it had made her hate me even more.
Five years ago this person was just thinking of leaving me seriously injured in the hospital to destroy myself, and now she had so many guns pointed at my head.
I yanked Li Ge out of the way and held her in front of me as she struggled and screamed.
Zhang Mei was calm and told everyone to put the guns down for now.
“I thought you’d become a bit of a man after you became a soldier, but I didn’t expect you to be the same as you were in high school, still a coward who only dares to hide behind others.” Zhang Mei said.
I said, “Do you think I’m stupid? Can I still walk out of here alive if I let Li Ge go? Don’t think I’ve forgotten how vicious you are.”
Zhang Mei grimaced and cursed, “Zhang Chao, your parents broke my family and left you, a little debt collector, to insult me? You beast, I should have thrown you out on the street back then and let you freeze and starve to death. The son of a sinner like you, look who will adopt you. You beast, you should have gone to hell a long time ago!”
She had always been arrogant and graceful, but when confronted with me she suddenly cursed out so much that it startled the others.
But I had heard these words too many times, and there were more vicious things she had done to me than these words could ever be counted.
Zhang Mei gritted her teeth: “Your parents, those irresponsible sons of B*tches, did this to me, you should atone for their sins! Still don’t let Li Gongzi go and behave yourself and kneel down!”
It was like a reflex, I was in a cold sweat, the words were like a curse, my hands and feet were stiff and I couldn’t say a word.
I wanted to say that it wasn’t like that, that my parents weren’t irresponsible, that they too had been victimised, but Zhang Mei’s scolding made me not have the courage to open my mouth at all.
Seeing that I still wouldn’t let go of Li Ge, Zhang Mei sneered and nodded: “Oh, I’m not surprised, I expected you to be like this, you’re a wolf cub. You’re just like that B*tch of a mother of yours, you’re both wolf-hearted and dog-hearted. Over the years, how many times have I thought of the way Ah Ming breathed his last, and how Xiao Qiang and Xiao Wei watched their father go, crying so heartbreakingly. All because of your parents who died by a thousand cuts! Why didn’t you follow them to their deaths?!”
I felt a chokehold on my throat, the words felt like a deadly sharp blade, stabbing my heart to pieces. Even if my parents were killed, they did drive drunk, my aunt was indeed innocent, it was indeed my parents who caused the separation of their family’s yin and yang, and caused Su Xiaoqiang and Su Dawei to lose their father.
“You’re alive because your parents, a pair of irresponsible dogs, are in the eighteenth level of hell, waiting for you to atone for their sins! They only deserve to be reborn as dogs and pigs in their next life, not as human beings.”
As if a large stone was blocking my chest, I tied the chain around Li Ge’s throat and yanked it hard, and Li Ge screamed in terror at me.
Zhang Mei didn’t think why I didn’t tie my hands, when I was a child she scolded me like that I would cry and beg her not to blame my parents anymore, I would atone for their sins.
“Are you done yet?” My voice choked and I asked in a mute voice, “My mother is the most beautiful and kindest woman in the world, she’s not the selfish one. Who are you to say anything about her?”
Zhang Mei’s mouth was open in response, and it was a while before she scolded, “Oh, you know to speak up for your B*tch of a mother now?”
I said, “Zhang Mei, if you still want to use that childhood trick to control me, you’ve got the wrong idea. I won’t tell you how great the things my mother did when she was alive are, and you, a short-sighted person, won’t understand. But even if everyone in the world scolded my mother, you would be the one who is least qualified. What you eat, what you use, all the money you earned when my mother and father were alive, atonement? Even if they were at fault, isn’t that enough money to atone for their sins? Oh, and why would you sleep with that ugly bullfrog-like Qi Bureau when you’re so rich? You don’t talk about true love, you had to take pills to last the 10 seconds you were with him. That Qi must have thought you were really in love with him. You claimed to have loved my aunt for so many years, what would he be like if he knew about this.”
“You’re full of sh*t!”
Zhang Mei blurted out, pointing her finger at me and shaking, staggering back two steps, her face worse than white paper.
I took a heavy breath, trying to vomit out the depression that had accumulated in my chest for over a decade.
“Zhang Mei, from now on you are no longer my aunt. You want me to atone for my parents’ sins, even if they have a heavenly sin, I have already done it for them. You can sleep with whoever you like, it’s none of my business. From the time I was seven years old until I became a soldier at eighteen, for eleven years in between I have not lived a day like a human being or eaten a day like a human being. I’ve been to hell, and now I’m not the same little kid I was before.”
She grabbed the pistol herself from the man next to her and hissed as she raised it at me, by this time she had lost all her grace and looked like a terrible mother beast.
Undaunted, I grabbed the back of Li Ge’s head and pressed it against Zhang Mei’s gun.
The smell of urine filled the air and Li Ge’s two strands trembled as a bubble of hot, turgid piss soaked out of his crotch.
“You let go!”
“You shoot.”
We both went toe-to-toe, with at least a dozen guns pointed at my head, but no one dared to shoot without Zhang Mei’s order.
Zhang Mei’s teeth were clacking and the veins at the corners of her mouth were popping up.
My heart was about to explode from my chest, and although I was calm on the surface, my palms were actually covered in cold sweat.
I said, “Zhang Mei, I’m all alone. My girlfriend has been forced to break up by Chu Huaien, and the only person I trusted, Uncle Han, is dead. But you still have Su Xiaoqiang and Su Dawei, if I die in your hands, will you still be able to live?”
Tears dripped from Zhang Mei’s face into her mouth as she looked at me with wide eyes.
The two of us remained in a stalemate for another five minutes before Zhang Mei laughed harshly and cursed, “Zhang Chao, you and your B*tch mother are so much alike, you are both equally poisonous. Zhang Jun is blind, how could he marry such a poisonous girl?”
She let go of her hand and slid her gun down, her men saw this action and let go of their guns a little.
“Zhang Chao, don’t you want to know how I knew you were in that private room?” She asked with a sudden smile.
I did want to know, Zhang Mei obviously didn’t know that I had just been hiding in her room as well, Li Ge and Xiao Ke were both under my control and couldn’t have gone to call someone.
Zhang Mei said, “Just now my people said you would be coming to the night today, to come for Li Ge.”
“Impossible!” I yelled low.
There was only one person who knew about this, Xia Gehuai.
But how could it be, it couldn’t be! He couldn’t have betrayed me.
Zhang Mei said, “I can’t kill you, after all, you are still my own nephew. Although I hate to see you dog go to hell, I still speak of feelings. But I think there is one person who must hate to kill you with his own hands, have someone invite Boss Shi.”
I had a bad feeling about this.
Zhang Mei said, “Zhang Chao, you saved Sun Qiaoqiao, right? You saved Sun Qiaoqiao, but unfortunately the B*tch didn’t have a good life and still died when she arrived at the hospital. You are right, you are indeed a loner, a born B*tch like you will have no family and no friends.”
I grabbed Li Ge and staggered back, but Li Ge was already dazed. I took two steps with Li Ge in my hands, when suddenly there was a sharp pain in the back of my head, and I was kicked violently several times.
Even though I had practiced, my head was still a relatively weak spot, and the kick made my eyes blink and my whole body went half numb, almost falling to the ground, not to mention holding onto Li Ge.
By the time I had recovered, Shi Sheng’s furious face had already appeared in front of me.
The kick that I had just received probably gave me a concussion. I forced myself to hold back the pain, and before I could stand up, Shi Sheng had thrown several heavy punches at my stomach.
I was bent over and dry heaving, and Shi Sheng wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to clean me up with an elbow to my back.
I was on the ground and he stomped on my head again.
Between dizzy spells, Zhang Mei’s high heels appeared in front of me, and between completely pa*sing out, all I could hear was Zhang Mei saying, “Zhang Chao, blame your B*tch parents, you deserve this. Boss Shi, do it, in a moment there will be a car downstairs that can pull it straight to bury it.”
