Jiang Cheng’s lips were nearly pressed against her cheek, the smell of tobacco heavier than ever.

Zhou Jin turned her face away to avoid him. Her body was trembling faintly. She said, word by deliberate word: “Don’t touch me. You disgust me.”

Jiang Cheng’s entire body went rigid in an instant.

Zhou Jin grabbed the broom leaning against the wall behind her and drove it hard into Jiang Cheng’s chest, shoving him back.

Jiang Cheng was forced to retreat, putting considerable distance between them. He raised both hands in surrender, grinning that irreverent grin of his. “Why are you so rough with me?”

“Thanks to you, I ended up raiding my own fiancé during a sting operation. I’m one of a kind in the entire police force.”

Back then, Zhou Jin had still been assigned to the vice squad. After two weeks of staking out their target, the net was finally closing in. She kicked open the hotel room door — and found that the man lying in bed, lost in passionate entanglement with a woman, was Jiang Cheng.

It was like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky, striking her through and through. The shock and pain that surged from the hollow of her chest left her entire arm numb.

That feeling — Zhou Jin would never forget it for as long as she lived.

If Jiang Cheng had merely betrayed her emotionally, Zhou Jin would only have been heartbroken. Jiang Cheng not loving her — that was something she had no power over.

But she still harbored hatred. Hatred for his willful descent into corruption, hatred for his betrayal of his convictions, his beliefs…

The Jiang Cheng she had loved since childhood, the Jiang Cheng who would shield her firmly behind his back whenever someone bullied her, the Jiang Cheng who had sworn since he was young that he would become a good police officer…

That Jiang Cheng — so upright, so good — seemed to have died overnight. And the person standing before her now was the one who had “killed him.”

Zhou Jin raised an eyebrow. “Jiang Cheng, you had better not let me catch you committing a crime again. Because next time, I will put a bullet in you.”

Jiang Cheng pressed his lips together, his gaze dark and heavy.

“Get out of my way!”

Zhou Jin shoved him out the door, didn’t spare Jiang Cheng so much as a backward glance, and turned to stride away.

Jiang Cheng stood frozen in place. Several seconds passed before he let out a quiet, scornful laugh, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He leaned against the window and listened to the quiet sound of the rain.

He flicked off the ash. His fingertips held a barely perceptible tremor. Cloaked in the darkness of the night, he breathed out a long, slow breath. “Vicious little thing. You’ve got a sharp tongue.”

……

The opening celebration of the bar had begun. The music was deafening, and amid the dazzling lights, shreds of pink confetti drifted down through the air like snow.

The glittering, intoxicating night had only just begun.

Zhou Jin made her way to the circular platform in the middle of the second floor, from which the entire first-floor dance floor could be surveyed. Open-style private booths lined the edges of the dance floor; the one in the northeast corner was a spot very few people dared to approach.

She paid it particular attention and, before long, noticed that the group who had been with Jiang Cheng a short while ago were seated on the row of sofas there, drinking and talking with someone.

Zhou Jin recalled that one of them had said to Jiang Cheng: “We’ll head downstairs and keep Boss He company over drinks.”

Could that be He Wu?

Phoenix Fire was He Wu’s bar — it was only natural for him to be there to oversee the occasion. But would Lai San’er be with him?

Afraid of losing sight of them, Zhou Jin moved quickly downstairs, weaving through the dense crowd until she drifted near the booth.

Just as she was about to move closer, one of the men rose from the sofa, shoved his hands in his pockets, and came walking straight toward her.

He drew near. His gaze met Zhou Jin’s for two or three seconds — a teasing, appraising look that swept over her figure with evident satisfaction — then, without paying her much further mind, he brushed past her.

Those few seconds were more than enough for Zhou Jin to clearly make out the green dragon tattoo coiled around the man’s exposed arm, snaking its way all the way up to his neck — imposing and ferocious.

Lai San’er?!

Zhou Jin turned to look back, confirming the man’s silhouette again and again, studying the tattoo on his arm one more time.

She raised her hand toward her ear, ready to report to Tan Shiming — only to find her right ear empty. She had been afraid of being exposed, so before entering the restroom, she had hidden the Bluetooth earpiece under the washbasin outside.

Zhou Jin silently cursed herself through gritted teeth. In her rush to get away from Jiang Cheng, she had completely forgotten to retrieve it.

With Lai San’er on the verge of disappearing from her line of sight, Zhou Jin had no time to think further. She followed close behind him.

Lai San’er crossed the dance floor and made his way to the bar counter. He pushed aside the empty glass in front of him, snapped his fingers at the bartender, and ordered a drink.

Zhou Jin took stock of the situation around her. It still wasn’t confirmed whether Lai San’er was carrying a firearm — a reckless arrest was out of the question. And for the moment, she couldn’t find a single familiar face to relay Lai San’er’s position to Tan Shiming.

Lai San’er exchanged a few words with the bartender, tipped his head back and drained his glass, then rose and headed toward the exit of the bar.

He took the emergency passage, which led directly out to the street behind Phoenix Fire Bar. The street was cluttered with various odds and ends and had few pedestrians.

Lai San’er walked with an unsteady, swaying gait, as though he were drunk.

Zhou Jin followed behind him. Lai San’er wore tight-fitting jeans, and his pockets showed no obvious bulge — she could be fairly certain he wasn’t carrying a weapon on him.

Zhou Jin let out a small breath of relief. She was looking for an opportunity to make the arrest when, in the blink of an eye, Lai San’er vanished around a corner.

With his figure no longer in sight, Zhou Jin picked up her pace and followed.

Suddenly, a powerful rush of air swept toward her from ahead — Zhou Jin startled! She dodged at the last instant and spun around to find Lai San’er gripping a wooden club, having swung it through empty air.

He hadn’t hit her. He swore viciously: “Damn it — figured there’d be a cop on my tail.”

Zhou Jin saw she had been exposed. She clenched her fists, tense, and demanded: “Are you Lai San’er?”

“What if I am? What if I’m not?” Lai San’er hoisted the club onto his shoulder and looked Zhou Jin over without a trace of fear. “Which district are you from? You know whose territory this is? My cousin picks an auspicious day to open for business, and you lot come here on purpose to cause trouble — that it?!”

Zhou Jin knew there was no point in trying to intimidate him with words. Assaulting an officer? Lai San’er wasn’t afraid of that. He was the kind of reckless criminal who had killed people and treated it as nothing — prison was like a second home to him.

Lai San’er let out a sharp whistle. Behind him, five or six thugs began closing in one after another, each of them carrying a baseball bat.

“Pin her down!” Lai San’er’s eyes flashed with menace.

Zhou Jin fell back. One of the men raised a wooden club and lunged at her. Moving swiftly, Zhou Jin seized the descending weapon, immediately locked her arms around the man’s entire arm, and used the momentum of her shoulders and back to hurl him hard to the ground.

Lai San’er saw his man take a hit. He hurled himself forward and drove a kick with every ounce of his strength squarely into Zhou Jin’s back.

The pain hit her hard. Zhou Jin stumbled forward several staggering steps, nearly pitching face-first onto the ground. She grabbed at the wall in a panic, hissing as she drew in several sharp breaths, her vision going dark — yet she didn’t let out a single sound.

She had barely steadied herself when another violent rush of air came tearing at her from ahead. There was no time to react. By instinct she raised her arm to block.

In that split second of lightning and sparks, someone seized her firmly around the waist and pulled her back two steps.

A heavy, dull crack — a club striking bone.

Zhou Jin’s heart seized with terror. The agonizing pain she had braced herself for never came. Time seemed to stop. She breathed in ragged, uneven gasps — she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything.

She could only see the arm that had thrown itself in front of her, and feel the chest at her back rising and falling in rapid, urgent breaths.

……

“Zhou Jin.”

The cool, clear voice pulled Zhou Jin back from her daze and panic. She turned — and saw the pale, sharp, handsome line of a man’s jaw.

“Jiang Hansheng…”