Deep in the night, the street was silent and deserted.

A dark car sat parked beneath a dim streetlamp.

The window was down. Jiang Hansheng sat in the driver’s seat, his gaze fixed with quiet concern on the mouth of the alley not far ahead.

They had followed Brother Hong here — the street was secluded and still, quiet enough that the barking of a distant dog could be heard clearly.

Brother Hong had only left Longjing Shore Teahouse in the early hours of the morning. He appeared to have had quite a lot to drink; he was visibly intoxicated, swaying as he walked.

The moment had come.

Zhou Jin told Jiang Hansheng to wait in the car, and went to intercept Brother Hong alone.

He had wanted to go with her.

Zhou Jin pulled on a black face mask. “You stay here. I’m not about to let my husband come along while I do something underhanded.”

It was a playful echo of Jiang Hansheng’s earlier line — “I can’t stop thinking about what my wife is doing” — delivered with more than a little teasing. But when it reached Jiang Hansheng’s ears, it landed like a sweet return blow, leaving him momentarily stunned.

Zhou Jin patted his shoulder and got out of the car by herself.

Jiang Hansheng sat for a moment, eyes following the shape of Zhou Jin’s retreating figure, watching as she called out “Brother Hong” from behind the man.

Brother Hong turned around quickly, looked her up and down, and after a few exchanged words, narrowed his eyes and dropped a hand onto her shoulder.

Zhou Jin seized his wrist and led him into the alley.

Before long, Brother Hong’s bellowing voice rang out from inside — he appeared to be hurling abuse.

Jiang Hansheng watched as Zhou Jin was shoved out of the alley entrance. Brother Hong pointed a finger at her face and yelled: “You looking to die?! Why the hell would I owe you any explanation about who works for me?! Don’t think I won’t hit you!”

He raised a meaty fist and made a threatening gesture in her direction twice, then brushed past her side, preparing to leave.

Jiang Hansheng’s brow furrowed. He was just reaching for the door handle when he saw Zhou Jin suddenly grab Brother Hong by both shoulders and yank him sharply backward.

Brother Hong was drunk and already unsteady on his feet. One strong pull was all it took — he went down with a crash, hitting the ground hard, the impact so sudden he was momentarily stunned. The world spinning around him, he could only try to work out what had just happened; he even forgot to cry out in pain.

Zhou Jin dragged his heavy body back into the alley.

What followed was the muffled sound of solid blows landing on flesh, accompanied by the man’s cries of pain — each one louder than the last, piercing and sharp in the stillness of the night.

Somewhere nearby, a dog began to bark more ferociously than before.

Soon, even the cries faded to silence. Roughly three or four minutes later, Zhou Jin walked out of the alley.

She pulled off her face mask, walked straight to the car, and dropped into the passenger seat with clean, unhurried movements.

Jiang Hansheng had not yet recovered from what he had just witnessed.

Zhou Jin was rotating her aching wrist and said to him: “Got what we needed.”

Jiang Hansheng: “…”

From a results standpoint, it had not been an ineffective approach.

According to what Brother Hong disclosed, he was not the one who had originally overseen the operations in this area — that had been a senior figure of his, a man called Yu Liang.

If it was information about a woman in the trade they were after, Yu Liang was the right person to ask. He also mentioned that Yu Liang had once been romantically involved with the woman who had the twin sons.

Brother Hong gave Zhou Jin Yu Liang’s home address.

Brother Hong lay in the alley with a bruised and battered face, and between the beating and the alcohol, he remained flat on the ground for half the night before finally recovering enough to feel the full extent of his aches and pains.

Touching the dried blood crusted on his face, he slowly pieced together the memory of what had been done to him.

Pressing a hand to his badly split lip, he fumbled for his phone and called Yu Liang, telling him to get out fast.

To his surprise, Yu Liang received the news without much alarm, and instead asked him: “Are you sure it’s Zhenzhen they’re looking for?”

“Absolutely certain,” Brother Hong said. “Brother Liang, I’m begging you to forgive me. I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was saying — I was completely out of my mind! You might as well just finish me off, I’m too ashamed to face you.”

He couldn’t bring himself to admit he’d been beaten into talking, and that the woman had threatened to expose his underground gambling operation to the police if he didn’t tell her everything.

All he dared say to Yu Liang was that the drink was to blame.

Yu Liang was quiet for a moment before answering: “It’s all right. They might be Zhenzhen’s family.”

Not long after he put down the phone, Yu Liang heard two knocks at his door.

He paused for a moment, then got up and opened it. Standing before him were a man and a woman.

The man was fair-skinned, tall and handsome, with a refined and scholarly air — except for his eyes, which were unusually dark, watching him with a calm, weighted gaze.

The woman’s manner was more relaxed. She gave him a small smile, then produced a police badge.

“We’d like to ask you about someone,” Zhou Jin said.

Not family, then.

Yu Liang seemed a little disappointed. He exhaled quietly and said: “I know who you’re looking for.”

Zhou Jin’s eyebrow rose in mild surprise.

Yu Liang said: “Her name was Qi Zhen.”

…

Zhou Jin and Jiang Hansheng sat on a bamboo sofa, a glass coffee table before them with two disposable paper cups sitting on top, wisps of white steam curling upward.

Yu Liang’s gaze had a slightly distant quality. He lit a cigarette and began to speak, unhurried: “When I first met Zhenzhen, she had come to Huaisha alone, bringing her son to try to make a living. She was a woman with no resources — the only way she could keep herself and the child fed was to sell her body.”

“Qi Zhen was very beautiful. The moment she arrived, the girls under me lost all their business, so I went to give her trouble a few times, and that’s how we got to know each other.”

“After we got close, I gradually came to know a little about her past. The child she’d brought with her was her own — originally twins. The older one had died, leaving the younger behind. His formal name I never knew; his nickname was something like An’an, or Yan’yan — I can’t quite remember. Zhenzhen was very guarded about anyone asking after her son, because she was terrified someone would take him away from her.”

“I remember one night — it was raining — she came and knocked frantically at my door, crying, saying someone had stolen her son. She was so frantic I reached for my phone to call the police, and she snatched it right out of my hand and absolutely refused to let me. She said those people had informants inside the Public Security Bureau.”

Zhou Jin caught on the phrase immediately and cut in: “‘Those people’ — who were they?”

Yu Liang let out a bitter laugh. “There were no such people. No one wanted to take her son. She said he’d been stolen, but the truth was I found the child hidden in a cabinet in her home. My guess was that because she’d lost one son before, she’d become somewhat… unhinged when it came to watching over the other one.”

“A cabinet?”

“Yes, a cabinet.” Yu Liang paused, then said: “Qi Zhen wouldn’t let her son go to school, wouldn’t let him go outside. She kept him in the house at all times.”

Jiang Hansheng suspected the child was almost certainly Qi Yan — the one the police had searched for at great length without ever finding.

All these years, the police had been unable to establish Qi Yan’s true identity for one simple reason: there was no record of him anywhere. He was like a ghost moving through the living world. His mother had never allowed him to become a person with a place in society. Outside of Qi Zhen herself, no one could definitively prove the child had ever existed.

Yu Liang said: “The boy was well-behaved. He was kept inside day after day, and he never cried or made a fuss. He stayed home reading and watching television. He was especially fond of the piano — he taught himself to play a few pieces. Beyond that, he loved to sing. His dream was to become a great star someday. I thought at the time, a child this bright should be in school — but Qi Zhen simply wouldn’t hear of it. I asked the boy himself if he wanted to go to school, and he shook his head too, and held onto Qi Zhen saying, ‘As long as I have Mama, that’s enough’…”

Yu Liang smiled — as if moved by the child’s gentle obedience — but gradually, the smile shifted into something more unsettled.

He murmured: “Back then, Qi Zhen was always convinced there was a group of people out to steal her son from her. She didn’t dare let him stray too far. If — if Qi Zhen had a client at home, she would lock the child inside the cabinet…”

…

A off-road vehicle made its way along a remote mountain path through the wilderness, flanked by six black cars — three ahead, three behind — encircling it like armored sentinels.

Qi Yan’s straight, prominent nose bridge sat behind a pair of dark sunglasses. He stretched one arm out of the window, letting the rushing wind pour freely through his fingers.

Qi Yan closed his eyes, drew in a long breath of fresh air, and began to whistle brightly — a nameless piano melody.

The sound of whistling echoed out along the rough and uneven road, striking a note that was jarring and strange against the surrounding silence.

His Uncle Seven sat upright beside him.

After a moment, Qi Yan asked: “Uncle Seven, do you know what it actually feels like to be locked inside a dark, sealed cabinet?”

Uncle Seven considered. “Fear. Wanting to get out?”

“Wrong.” Qi Yan shook his head, and smiled with a kind of casual ease. “You feel safe. Like an owl in the night — when you’re hidden inside, you can see and hear everything around you, but no one can see you.”

Hidden in the cabinet, he could see the vivid flash of a red skirt hem. He could hear a woman’s voice, sounds of pleasure and sounds of pain…

To watch Qi Zhen — who in his eyes was always a goddess — held and kissed by other men. Should he have felt revulsion?

No.

Not even a trace of it. What he felt was rage, and hatred — and alongside them, a secret, nameless desire stirring inside him, growing stronger and stronger.

Through the narrow gap in the cabinet door, he could watch that red-clad figure to his heart’s content.

He had come to believe it: from the very moment he was born, fate had already decreed that Qi Zhen could never leave him. It was destined. Qi Zhen could leave anyone in the world — but not him.

Qi Zhen belonged to him.

She was his, by right — and so was everything that came with her.