By the time Zhou Jin saw Zhan Wei, it was already afternoon.

Zhan Wei had a natural squint to his eyes when he looked at people, giving him a face that seemed to carry a permanent smile — as though nothing in the world could make him angry. He was tall but lean, his features refined and scholarly, with nothing about him that suggested he had ever served in a special police unit.

When Zhan Wei spotted Zhou Jin, he raised a hand and waved.

“Zhou Jin.”

She walked over. She had on heels, a red dress, and over it a black coat that fell to the same length as the hem of the dress.

Zhan Wei looked her over from head to toe. “Dressed so lightly? If your brother were here, he’d have something to say about that. Come on, get in the car.”

He pulled open the passenger door for her.

Zhou Jin settled in. Zhan Wei came around to the other side, got in, and reached over to turn up the heat.

Zhou Jin asked with a smile, “For someone as young as the baby, how much should the red envelope be from a little auntie like me?”

“We’re not accepting red envelopes nowadays — don’t want any suggestion of bribery,” Zhan Wei said. “Your being here is more than enough.”

Zhou Jin raised an eyebrow. “So the old Party secretary is still holding the one-month banquet at the estate?”

She had never been to the Nanshan Estate, but just from the name, she knew the scale would be anything but modest.

Zhan Wei paused briefly, then turned to look at her. “He is. It’s a beautiful place. How about after dinner, I take you over there for a look?”

“As long as it doesn’t take up too much of your time.”

“An hour or two at most. It’s no trouble.”

The car moved smoothly forward.

The fear of what she didn’t yet know settled into Zhou Jin as a quiet, restless tension. Instinctively, she reached up and twisted the wedding ring at her throat.

She glanced at the rear-view mirror. Behind them, traffic stretched back like a winding river.

Qi Yan was lurking somewhere in the dark — perhaps even now, he was watching her every move from behind, waiting for the right moment to strike.

She was waiting for him to strike too. It was why she had deliberately put on the red dress — a red dress designed to stir up Qi Yan’s hatred, in the hope of drawing him out sooner.

But first, Zhou Jin needed to test the waters. She had to find out whether Zhan Wei was connected to any of this.

If he was, Qi Yan would not let such a prime opportunity pass. If he wasn’t, she and Zhan Wei needed to part ways as quickly as possible — she had no desire to drag another innocent person into harm’s way.

She thought for a moment, then tried, casually: “Not long ago, the Major Crimes Unit identified a member who had turned traitor — someone called Zhao Ping. He worked as an auxiliary officer with the special police unit for a period. Do you have any memory of him?”

Zhan Wei said, “Don’t know him.”

A cold alertness struck Zhou Jin. Zhan Wei was lying. But why would he lie?

Seeing Zhou Jin go quiet, Zhan Wei turned the wheel and changed lanes, heading in the direction of the ring road.

“I heard this person jumped off a rooftop in the end,” Zhan Wei said. “Were you there at the scene?”

Zhou Jin deflected. “I was part of the arrest operation.”

Zhan Wei gave a quiet “oh” and nodded.

They fell into silence for roughly half a minute before Zhan Wei spoke again, on his own initiative. “Did Zhao Ping say something to you before he died? Is that why, when you called last time, you were already beginning to suspect me?”

Beneath the surface of a still lake, dark currents had been surging for five years. Zhan Wei’s words were like a small stone dropped into that water — and in the instant the stillness broke, great waves came crashing upward.

A cold draft seemed to crawl up Zhou Jin’s spine. Her hand moved into her bag, fingers searching for her phone. “Suspect you of what?”

“Don’t play dumb, Zhou Jin. The fact that you found your way to me at all — that’s already impressive.” Zhan Wei’s expression didn’t change. His eyes stayed in their familiar soft squint, still smiling, as he said, “What a pity — I knew Zhao Ping far too well. That boy was too soft-hearted, too useless. I told him many times: find an opportunity and get rid of you. He wouldn’t listen. You see — if he had listened to me, he’d be living abroad right now with money in his pocket, starting a brand new life. Perfectly free, perfectly unbothered.”

Zhan Wei mentioned Zhao Ping with nothing but contempt and disdain. Then his expression darkened.

“That’s why I say — people who don’t listen come to a bad end. Zhou Jin, I advised you too. Don’t be so stubborn, don’t be so stubborn… You’re a girl. Wouldn’t it be perfectly fine to just get married, have a child, and live a safe and peaceful life? Why do you have to be just as insufferably relentless as Zhou Chuan?”

It was the first time Zhou Jin had ever heard Zhan Wei speak of Zhou Chuan that way — calling him “insufferably relentless,” using words that amounted to saying he deserved what happened to him.

She had begun to suspect Zhan Wei from the start, but now that it was confirmed — truly confirmed — Zhou Jin still could not quite believe it.

“It really was you,” she said. “You betrayed my brother. You betrayed the whole special police unit…”

“Your brother was the one who was going to betray me!”

Zhan Wei slammed his fist on the steering wheel.

Zhou Jin’s shoulders tensed. She watched the perpetual lightness in his eyes vanish, replaced by a deep, simmering ferocity and resentment.

“Did I make some unforgivable mistake? All I did was follow orders — lead the unit out, make the arrest, bring in a group of street thugs who’d been brawling with weapons. Because someone ended up dead, the situation got serious. Their boss took the chief of the Fengzhou Public Security Sub-bureau out to dinner, hoping the police would bury the case and let it go — they’d take care of the rest themselves. And me? I was just someone sitting nearby, keeping the drinks flowing. After they’d squared things with the chief, they slipped me two hundred thousand as hush money. Two hundred thousand — I didn’t earn that in a full year of wages…”

Zhan Wei let out a short, mocking laugh.

Zhou Jin shot back, “One human life — and that wasn’t worth two hundred thousand to you?”

Zhan Wei narrowed his eyes again, casting Zhou Jin a sideways glance with that strange, fixed smile. “Those exact words — your brother said the same thing to me. Word for word. That’s why I hated Zhou Chuan so much — because you people always stand on the moral high ground and look down at me in judgment. Easy to stand there and talk!”

“Get this straight — the one who actually took the bribe wasn’t me, it was the chief. What was I supposed to do? Stand against them openly? Refuse the two hundred thousand? Risk losing my job — or worse, my life — to report them? Zhou Jin, I was just a junior special officer. Choosing to take the money and keep my mouth shut — is that really so impossible to understand?”

“Your family didn’t have a gambling-addicted father. You didn’t have a mother bedridden with illness for years. When you were in university, Zhou Chuan certainly never went from relative to relative on his knees begging to borrow tuition money. He never ate plain buns with pickled vegetables for a month at a stretch. But I did. Zhou Chuan — how noble he was, how kind. He would lend me living expenses every month without ever asking to be paid back. Back then I was genuinely grateful to him. I thought — to have a friend like Zhou Chuan in my lifetime, dying would be worth it.”

“But do you know what Zhou Chuan did that made me sick to my stomach? Behind my back, he rallied everyone in the class to donate money for me. Thirty thousand yuan in total. Thirty thousand — and because of that, I could never hold my head up among those classmates again. When I saw the girl I’d always liked start looking at me with that pitying stare — and then look at Zhou Chuan with admiration — I understood something. Was your brother truly that kind-hearted? No. In his eyes, I was nothing more than a tool. He needed to find his own value through the act of giving to me. He needed to stand on top of me to prove to the world how great he was.”

The more Zhan Wei spoke, the tighter his grip on the steering wheel became. He floored the accelerator like he was releasing something pent up inside him, overtaking one car after another.

“From university straight through to work — Zhou Chuan competed with me in everything! He fought me for everything! Women, positions, career prospects — everything!”

Zhou Jin could no longer contain herself. She said in a low, sharp voice, “He didn’t compete with you for any of it.”

“The ones who don’t fight for it are more infuriating than the ones who do!”

Zhan Wei’s eyes had gone red.

“I bowed and scraped before the chief, flattering him at every turn. I even spent three months in a row picking his son up from school and dropping him off. That little brat, for fun, pressed cigarette butts into my back — and I still had to smile like a dog and take it. I did all of that — for what?! The promotion I wanted so desperately ended up going to Zhou Chuan. How could I just accept that?!”

Zhou Jin’s chest rose and fell sharply as she stared straight ahead through the windshield, her heart hammering.

Inside her bag, the recording was still running.

“Haven’t you always wanted to know how your brother died? I’ll tell you the truth right now.”

Zhan Wei’s voice came through gritted teeth, his face twisted into a vicious smile.

“It was me. I shot him dead.”