Chapter Twelve
Incessant clapping that could only belong to Mr. Yang dragged Aiden out of his slumber. He screwed his eyes open and kept his breath steady. Mr. Yang pranced over and knocked him on the head. “Anyone still present in that brain of yours?” he sang.
“Do you want to know about the Guo family, too? You’re asking the wrong person,” Aiden forced the words out before Mr. Yang kept talking.
Mr. Yang paused. A full-chested laugh burst from his mouth, and he slid his own chair over in front of Aiden before plopping himself in the middle with his legs spread apart.
“Chen and Zhou have been bothering you about that family, haven’t they?
They keep saying the Guo family was just another disgraced member of Infinite they kicked out, but their insistence on the matter makes it all the more intriguing.
So? What do you know?” Mr. Yang tipped his head.
“You’re going to die anyway so might as well spill every secret. ”
I knew it. Aiden pressed his mouth in a line. He knows the least of Infinite’s top families’ histories. “You’re asking the wrong person.”
“Ah, not this, Hui Lang. You can do better than that. The other two have already told me how you’ve denied all accusations yet have nothing to show for it.
We’re arranging something between a family relative of mine with your stepsister, you know?
Why would your stepmother go as far as to request such an arrangement if she plans to just betray us all to the government? ”
“If you want to know more about the Guo family, you need to ask Zhou.” Aiden raised his head, leaned forward, and stared into the empty eyes before him.
He willed himself to keep contact, and he kept his face tight and straight.
His fingers grasped onto each other behind him.
“He’s the one who has all the information about that family. ”
A shadow fell over Mr. Yang’s face. “Why do you say?”
“He keeps detailed records of people who loiter around the business buildings in which he owns and operates. Every single person who even hints at involving the Guo family is noted down. Whatever I do know about the Guo family, I know because of him. Chen doesn’t think much of the Guo anymore, but Zhou still sees them as threats. ”
“Is that so…?” Mr. Yang tilted his head upward. Aiden refused to look away. Ask me for more. He willed his thoughts into the atmosphere. Ask me for every detail I know.
“Say—you wouldn’t have an inkling as to why Chen has already disregarded the Guo family, but Zhou still considers them a threat, do you?” Mr. Yang leaned forward with a lighthearted grin.
Aiden shook his head. “I do remember most of the reports written about them,” he added.
His nails dug into his palms, and his heart pounded louder against his chest. He leaned forward with a grin.
“It’ll take me some days to tell you everything.
I don’t understand why they have such different views of that family, but maybe you will once I’ve told you all the details. ”
“I’m still going to torture you after you give me everything.” The words dropped like an anchor in Aiden’s chest. Mr. Yang rose from the chair and stared down with those lightless eyes. “I know you’re just buying for a few extra days, but since I find Zhou and Chen annoying, I will humor you.”
That’s fine. Fear reared its ugly head inside him, but he pushed his tears back. It’s better than nothing. He bit the inside of his cheek, drawing blood. It’s better than dying today.
He nodded.
The playful light returned to Mr. Yang’s eyes. “Good! Give me what you know today in the hour remaining—I am a very busy man after all.” He gestured to his men outside the door.
With a purposeful flourish, they brought in packages of needles, wedges, and other instruments into the room and laid them out on the floor.
Another man handed Mr. Yang a locked package.
He opened it and showed the alignment of chemicals strapped inside.
“This one was what I used on Lu Han. The guy you refused to kill.” He pointed to a syringe before having the package locked away.
Aiden pressed his feet to the ground to keep his legs from shaking. Even just one day, he told himself, opening his mouth to spill what he knew of the Zhou family. Just one extra day to find something or someone to escape.
· · ·
A woman’s scream cut through the darkness, but Aiden didn’t even flinch. His eyes wanted to stay shut, but he forced them open. He watched one of the guards drag a woman in by her badly dyed blonde hair and threw her to the ground.
“I know an agent when I see one,” the guard growled and slammed the door shut. “Who are you spying for?”
The woman sobbed and held her head. Trembling, she scrunched herself into a ball, but the guard pulled her up and slapped her so hard that she fell to the ground again.
“Stop that…” Aiden groaned.
The guard leveled a glare at him. “She’s one of yours? You know her?”
His head felt like lead through the drowsiness, but he managed to shake it.
“Then stay out of it!” The guard grabbed the woman’s leg and pulled the crawling woman back to slap her again.
Blood trickled from the side of her mouth, and she wiped it away, sobbing.
The guard reached for the woman’s purse, but with a screech, she clutched it to her chest. Muttering, the guard easily shoved her to the side with one arm and emptied it.
An array of makeup, business cards, and a tape recorder shaped like an external battery dropped to the ground.
The listening device would fool anyone with an untrained eye, but even Aiden’s own paranoia toward the law saw through the disguise.
The guard smashed the recorder against the floor and picked up a business card.
“Mindy Albertsen. Oh, I see. A reporter at one of those gossip news outlets.”
“I thought there was a story here. I’m a new reporter! I didn’t know any better!” she wailed. “Please, let me go, good sir! I didn’t mean anything of it!”
She leveled her gray eyes to Aiden and threw herself at his feet. “Please—tell him I mean no harm!”
“He is a prisoner, just like you. You are foolish to think that he can provide you any help.”
Aiden flinched, watching her crawl to the guard and hug his legs only to get kicked backward. She sobbed into her hands. Her white daisy print dress was soiled with splotches of dirt, and green streaks like the color of grass stained her white gloves.
The guard pulled her to her feet, and her legs stumbled on her black-heeled boots.
He grabbed a ring that hung by a gold chain from around her neck.
“And is this secretly recording us, too?” he demanded.
He tried to pull the ring away, but Mindy screeched and bit at the man’s hands. “Give it to me!” he roared.
“It’s a ring. It’s just an ordinary ring. It’s important to me—you can take anything else in my purse if you want, but this is personal.” Mascara streamed down her cheeks. Every time she wiped her face or felt her busted lip, she spread her bright red lipstick across her face.
“Give it!”
“You’re not helping your case if it is a recorder of some sort. What if it’s getting listened in on?” Aiden could not believe he needed to point that out to the guard, and his own self-preservation screamed at his stupidity. However, he continued. “Besides, you already have her.”
The guard cursed in Chinese and walked toward the metal table in the back of the room. Mindy dropped to the ground, cradling the ring in her hands.
Aiden’s heart sunk as the guard opened the drawer and retrieved one of the many needles and chemicals Mr. Yang left behind. “Can’t you just let her go?” he pleaded.
“I won’t tell anyone! I don’t even understand what’s happening here, so I can’t tell anyone!” Eyes wide, she crawled closer to the guard.
“You’re not going to kill her, are you? Don’t do that!” His limbs roared in sudden energy. Aiden slammed his wrists against the metal bindings, and his legs tried to move, but he only managed to turn his chair over sideways. “Don’t!”
“I can’t believe you have the time to worry about others,” the guard scoffed, preparing a needle.
“What…what is that?” Mindy stammered.
“It’s a drug.” The guard slipped on his gloves. “You won’t remember much of anything with this, so don’t worry. This is the best option for everyone here.”
Aiden’s face paled. He opened his mouth to continue protesting, but the room's chaos abruptly dissipated. In seconds, he watched Mindy’s terrified eyes calm.
Tears stopped dropping, and her whimpers disappeared.
The skin on her face smoothed. She stood up.
As the guard turned around to administer the needle, she calmly ducked underneath him and positioned herself to throw the much larger man over her with little effort.
She placed her right knee against the guard’s neck, and the heel on her left foot retracted to reveal a knife, which she promptly stabbed into the man’s hand.
The guard’s eyes and veins bulged, and she swiftly picked the needle from the ground and jammed it into the man’s neck. The heel closed around the knife, and she walked over to the table where he had prepared it.
Aiden could only stare from his place on the floor as the guard babbled and gasped.
“Yes, this would be what you all use to do your dirty work.” She held the liquid to the light. “It shuts the lungs down slowly, so you feel like you’re drowning.”
She swept her blonde hair to the side. Her heels clacked against the clean ground, and she grabbed the guard’s gun.
She checked the bullets and swept her purse from the ground, only to turn it inside out and open another pouch.
“Magic gadgets are such great inventions, don’t you think?
” She winked at Aiden and attached a silencer to the gun.