Victor - Her Ruthless Husband (Ruthless Triad 3)

But it also pisses me off.

Victor and I never finished hanging our Christmas decorations. We never got to meet this kid we both already love so much. Forget a tropical destination wedding. We never got to get married for real at all.

But I want it. The decorations. The parenthood. The dream wedding…I want it all.

No, it’s not over for Victor and me. This isn’t how our story ends.

So many of my dreams have only come through because of Victor. If not for his interference, I’d be bored as hell, working as a doctor in some hospital right now.

But this latest dream is different. I need to chase after it myself. It feels impossible, but that doesn’t matter. It’s completely up to me.

And I’m going to make it come true or die trying.

A new determination surging through me, I climb out of bed and start pulling off the sheets.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asks, pausing in her tears. Her voice is tinged with wary curiosity. Like she’s afraid I’ve gone crazy.

Just in case the two cameras I can clearly see monitoring the room also have sound, I shuffle over to Lucy and whisper in her ear.

“Planning our escape.”

35

KUANG

Glee washes over Kuang as he watches the woman who ruined his partnership fitfully sleep on the computer monitor his men set up for him on top of his study’s coffee table. Her response to her situation has been immensely satisfying so far.

First came the screaming and begging to be let out. Then came the abject apologies to her friend for getting her into the situation.

Kuang hadn’t been sure about his instinct to keep the white woman alive after kidnapping her and using her to do his bidding. But he shouldn’t have doubted himself for a second. Her coworker served as a misery amplifier. And besides, how delightful will it be when the older woman is eventually killed right in front of Victor’s whore?

She sank to the floor and wailed for hours yesterday before finally climbing into the bed and falling into a fitful sleep. Kuang can just imagine how she’ll respond when he sends the man who kidnapped her down there to slit her friend’s throat. The thought of it fills him with triumphant laughter and makes him happy that he ignored his daughter’s advice about transitioning into legitimacy.

So many of the younger crime lords are doing that these days. Using their washed money to start businesses and even buy entire corporations as The Silent Triad had—that should’ve been Kuang’s first warning that they would eventually become his enemy.

But times like this offered an argument against legitimacy. In his underworld, lawyers are never needed to solve grievances. Insults never have to go unanswered. Justice can be served without the aid of a court.

And enemies can be vanquished by any means necessary.

Of course, there is always the fear of retaliation. He doesn’t live in a heavily guarded compound for nothing.

But he has also become so good at removing his rivals from the equation that he’s never had to use the panic room he had built, which makes his implementation of it as a prison now that more special. Knowing that his enemy is watching this same security camera feed has quickly turned this particular television show into Kuang’s favorite.

Kuang closes his eyes as he so often has over the last twenty-four hours, imagining the look on Victor’s face after receiving that link. Watching his ill-chosen, heavily pregnant fiancé suffer must be killing young Zhang. And her death will destroy him. Kuang is sure of that.

That father of his was never the same after the murder of his wife. Sure, he managed to hold onto his territories due to the unexpected death of his rival. And Kuang heard that the nanny responsible for taking the boy in the first place had met an untimely end after everything that happened. According to the surely paid-for police report, she had somehow pulled out all of her own nails before jumping out a window of an apartment building located in a mid-sized city in the mainland. There were also occasional reports of Red Diamonds who dared to steal from the Dragon being handled in the old way.

Before the death of his wife, Raymond Zhang claimed Hong Kong territories with such unrelenting ambition that he attracted the most gruesome of rivals. However, that drive disappeared over the next fifteen years. Kuang’s former Red Diamond source even told him that shortly before his death, Raymond Zhang released his son to live a civilian life.

Victor appeared so promising at first. But Kuang should’ve known he’d eventually succumb to his father’s weakness.

And to think he actually used to feel sorry for Raymond Zhang. That his rival could be so cruel as to kill his wife and deform his son.

Kuang’s own wife had just given birth to his son back then, and the thought of anything similar happening to him had filled him with such horror. Involving innocent family members seemed beyond the boundaries of cruelty. And he’d wondered what could have pushed the rival to such violence.