Good. Aiden’s heart eased as satisfaction flowed through his body. Let them tear each other apart. I’ll make sure to help with that.

  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.

  Hovering over the guard, she held the syringe. “You have a choice here while you’re still able to think. Do you want to live and suffer in your final moments? Or do you want to die quickly?”

  “Kill…me…” the guard croaked.

  She fired the gun without blinking. Blood pooled around his head. She dropped the syringe to the ground and turned her attention to Aiden.

  Oh my god, who is she? Grunting, Aiden shoved himself and the chair back. The metal legs screeched against the ground. Why is she here? The handcuffs bit into his wrists. Did one of the family heads decide to hire her and have me killed?

  She smiled at him. A foxlike smile.

  The roar of blood in Aiden’s ears faded. The smile tickled his memories.

  All those different women pictured hanging by his brother’s side with different hair, different eyes, and even different noses. Different except for the smile that resembled a laughing fox.

  He continued panting, but his heart soared. He wondered. He had been wondering. He never stopped wondering who the woman was. He wondered if she would appear in that sparkling lime green dress he found in his brother’s bedroom. “…is it Celia?” He recalled his brother’s cold order to shoot the kidnapper. “Or is it actually Diane?”

  The smile grew wider. “Neither. I am Mindy.” She strode her way over and lifted the chair upright. The heel of her right boot retracted, and she pulled the knife out from the boot and cut the rope away from his legs. She helped break through the cuffs and kicked the chair to the side, while Aiden collapsed to the ground. “Move your shoulders and your legs to get your blood circulating again. Then we have to get moving. We don’t have much time.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him up.

  “Is someone else in trouble?” Relief washed over Aiden’s body. He rubbed his shoulders and paced the floor.

  “Your prince charming.”

  “Prince?” He blinked. “Brendan? What does he have to do with anything?”

  “Unfortunately, he has been looking for you. All over the place. Asking around on campus and posting about it on social media with your picture. Not to mention he has also reported you missing to the police.”

  “What?” He was never so thankful for the soundproof room. “What picture?”

  Mindy pulled out a folded missing person poster from her purse and handed it to him.

  Aiden snatched it. His jaw dropped.

  Aiden, in his shimmering hanfu, sat against the dark green grass of a clear spring night. The sky sparkled of starlight, and a moon guided its beams right onto his face while his eyes stared distantly into the sky.

  “Pretty good picture, too,” Mindy said, looking at it.

  “Damn it! That’s what he was calling after me for, the idiot.”

  “Yell at him once we rescue him.” Mindy showed him the gun. “You do know how to use this, right?”

  He nodded.

  She tossed the gun over to him before pulling her curled hair up into a ponytail. “There’s a camera only a few steps away from this room. Shoot the camera. I’ll stand at the end of the hallway to draw the guys’ attention, and you can kill them from the corner.”

  “No.”

  “Did you just say no?” She turned around, baffled.

  “We can escape without killing them. They’re not behind this.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “They imprisoned you and tortured you from the looks of your face.”

  Aiden shook his head. “I’m not going to kill. I’m not going to become them.”

  To his surprise, Mindy acquiesced almost immediately. “How do you suggest we do this?”

  “I’ll shoot at their limbs.”

  She clicked her tongue. “I suppose it won’t take much to incapacitate them.”

  She opened the door, and her heeled boots echoed in the empty hallway. Aiden followed after her, and, despite the pain rocking his body, aimed and shot the camera perfectly.

  The armed men barked orders at each other as Mindy stood unafraid in the hallway. The first raised his arm to shoot her, but Aiden shot the man’s hand. As the guard screamed and dropped the weapon, Mindy rushed forward to the first wounded man. She picked up the gun along the way, wrapped her legs around the man’s body, and swung him to the ground while shooting into two other men’s hands in quick succession.

  The remaining three scattered in their attempt to kill her. Aiden shot at one of them, but missed. Mindy promptly knocked out the first man and sliced the hand of another with a kick of her boot. Aiden could not tell how the heels retracted and returned so quickly, but every few seconds, a dagger hung out from where her heel was. She sliced their legs and arms with kicks before landing on the ground on a heel. Aiden only fired three shots in total before she subdued them. Some groaned, some were knocked out cold, and all bled.

  Aiden blinked and glanced upward. You would pick her, he thought.

  She kicked all their guns away and motioned for him to follow. “Careful not to step in the blood,” she called, striding toward the exit at the end of the hall. He followed after her.

  Aiden burst through the door with a gasp. The door slammed behind him, and his lungs gulped for the outside air. He gazed longingly at the grass, imagining the blades prickling against his skin, but he followed quickly after Mindy.

  She walked over to one of the guard’s fancy cars, withdrew a car key from her purse, and unlocked the doors.

  “How could you have—how much of this is planned?”

  “Questions later. Prince first,” she tutted.

  They sat in the car together. Mindy turned the engine on and sped into the night before Aiden properly put on his seatbelt.

  • • •

  Mindy slid the car into the parking lot of a closed store. Before waiting for her to fully park, Aiden stumbled out, collapsing onto the ground. “Come on.” Mindy pulled him again. “You can rest once we rescue him.” She started walking away.

  “Christina and Javier.” Panting, Aiden followed. His creaked with every step. “We need to check on them, too.”

  “They’re not in trouble.”

  “They’ll be looking for me with Brendan.”

  “It’s not the looking that’s trouble. It’s the background.”

  Aiden stopped and propped his hands against his knees, wheezing. The sound of Mindy’s heels clicked away. Clenching his hands, Aiden wiped the sweat from his brow and churned his legs forward to catch up.

  “What background? He’s definitely not involved with Infinite.”

  “Oh, you weren’t aware?” Mindy glanced back. “His father isn’t just an ordinary lawyer. He’s one of the best in the state, and his current case is to take down Infinite. He’s been working on it for years.”

  Aiden froze. For extra measure, he repeated her words back to himself until his brain finally processed and understood the implications. Grabbing his head, he bent over and groaned. “No wonder they wouldn’t believe me. Brendan looking everywhere for me just made it seem like I was the traitor even more!”

  “Yes, quite unfortunate for you. Or lucky? Either way, fate has a sense of humor, don’t you think?”

  Mindy’s lackadaisical attitude faded into the darkness when Aiden grasped the true sense of danger Brendan was in. He ran up to her. “What’s the quickest way to his apartment?” he asked, and the second she pointed, he sped past her, clutching the gun.

  He heard nothing except his heartbeats, and his eyes observed every shadow. The dim streetlights glowed, creating silhouettes ahead. One was a man with his hand on a gun, and it slowly approached another silhouette with recognizable long legs, tense shoulders, and slightly combed hair.

  His brother’s voice whispered in his ears.

  Do you sense danger? Shoot. Don’t rely on anything else but the weapon.

  He leveled the gun and aimed. A muted crack echoed on the street, and the stranger dropped to the ground, grasping at his leg.

  Brendan yelped at the sight.

  Aiden gasped, flying to Brendan’s side. He jumped around the writhing man and threw his arms around Brendan. His legs collapsed, and, amid Brendan’s confused cursing, the other still caught him, holding him from falling.

  He gripped Brendan tighter.