Chapter 42 The Price of Father and Daughter
Lin Wei was so enraged that she refused to listen to anyone's advice. With red eyes, she spent seven figures on hiring a team of Eastern European mercenaries with experience in regional conflicts, intent on ambushing Professor Klein the moment he left the manor.
But obviously, she underestimated Mo Xiaohan's defenses.
Just as the professor's car drove 500 meters out of the manor, three black armored vehicles suddenly blocked the road. Before the mercenaries could raise their guns, they were shot in the head by sniper rifles hidden in the dark.
When the captured leader was dragged in front of Mo Xiaohan, he was already scared out of his wits: "It was Miss Lin who ordered it, she, she——"
"Bang!"
The bullet pierced his forehead and blood splattered on the smooth marble floor.
Mo Xiaohan wiped the blood from his hands expressionlessly and said to A Tai beside him calmly, "Go and invite Mr. Lin."
In the manor's living room, Mo Xiaohan sat on a single sofa on the plush carpet, playing with a bullet with his fingertips, and a shadow cast over his angular jaw.
Lin Kun knelt in front of him, his forehead against the cold marble floor, and presented him with a share transfer document in both hands.
"The Lin family is willing to offer 51% of the casino's shares." His voice trembled, his forehead almost buried in the carpet. "I only ask you... to spare my daughter's life."
"Your daughter sent someone to assassinate Professor Klein." Mo Xiaohan said calmly, "You know my rules."
Lin Kun shuddered and lowered his head even lower: "She...she was just spoiled and confused for a moment..."
“Click.”
The bullet was pressed on the table, and the crisp sound it made seemed to hit Lin Kun's heart.
Mo Xiaohan slowly stood up and looked down at Lin Kun's trembling back: "I want to see her before sunset tomorrow."
When Lin Kun arrived at the secret river house club along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok in a daze, the representatives of the other factions were smoking cigars in silence. The dim light slanted on the table, reflecting the thoughts in their eyes.
"Songpa is done." Ruan Wenxiong blew out a puff of smoke, breaking the silence. "Those crazy people in Wa State even dug up his ancestors' graves. In the final analysis, isn't it all because of Mo Xiaohan's mood? His move is quite vicious! He killed someone with a borrowed knife and earned a favor from Wa State."
"We're not joining forces just to watch Mo Xiaohan monopolize Southeast Asia. To deal with him, we need to take a long-term view!" Haji extinguished his cigar and looked directly at Lin Kun, his eyes cold. "But your daughter hired a bunch of Eastern European bastards and dared to touch Klein. Isn't this telling Mo Xiaohan, 'I want to go against you'?"
Zakun glanced at Lin Kun, whose face sank, and sneered, "The Chamber of Commerce's ship will be passing through his waters next week, and your casino is still taking a cut on his territory." He raised his hand and crushed the half-smoked cigar in the crystal ashtray. "A falling out? How do you want to break up? Do you want the ship to sink, or do you want the casino to be demolished tomorrow?"
"Protect your daughter? Declare war on Mo Xiaohan directly?" Ruan Wenxiong flicked off his cigarette ash, his tone full of sarcasm: "Do you think we are crazy?"
"It's okay for your daughter to seek death on her own." Zakun's voice suddenly dropped, a warning in his voice, "but don't drag us into this."
Lin Kun clenched his fists, his face pale, and finally called A Tai: "...I will personally send Lin Wei to Mr. Mo."
The next evening, when Lin Kun personally escorted Lin Wei into the Mo Family Manor, she was still struggling and screaming until A Tai pushed her into the underground torture chamber. The thick rust mixed with the stench instantly choked her nose, and her scream was stuck in her throat.
The damp stone walls were hung with torture instruments: barbed iron whips covered in black blood, toothed pliers holding broken bones, and an iron cage in the corner covered with inward-protruding spikes, with dark brown flesh residue accumulating on the bottom.
A dim lamp hung above her head, casting Lin Wei's shadow on the wall, overlapping with the torture instruments stained with dried blood, as if she would be swallowed up at any time. She was finally scared, her makeup was smudged all over her face, and her expensive skirt was soaked with cold sweat.
"Mr. Mo!" Lin Wei struggled to crawl towards the man sitting on the high-back chair, "I was wrong! I really—"
Mo Xiaohan raised his hand, and A Tai picked up an iron hook from the torture rack. The tip of the hook was bent into a strange arc, as sharp as an eagle's claw, and the inside was covered with serrated barbs. It was tempered with a medicine that would cause wounds to fester, and some sticky meat threads were hanging on it.
"Your father is quite clever." Mo Xiaohan took the hook and looked down at the bloody mass. "This morning, he sold the casino, the docks, and the Southeast Asian shipping lines all at a discount. He turned the cash into cash and piled it in my study, just to beg me to spare his life."
Lin Wei suddenly looked up, a last glimmer of hope still lingering in her eyes: "He...he will come to save me! I am his only daughter——"
"Save you?" Mo Xiaohan's gaze shifted from the hook to Lin Wei's face. "When the cash was handed to me, he specifically said that as long as I could protect himself, I could do whatever I wanted with your life."
He slowly lowered the iron hook, and the tip of the hook brushed against Lin Wei's cheek, causing a stinging pain. The powder fell on her wound, causing it to instantly become red and swollen. She suddenly let out a shrill scream, but the pain changed her tone as the drug spread.
"Look," Mo Xiaohan's voice was soft and gentle, with a nonchalant smile. His profile was neatly outlined in the dim light, making him so handsome that it was dizzying. However, his eyes were filled with undisguised cruelty. "Do you still think he will come to save you?"
He turned his wrist slightly, and the iron hook swept towards her shoulder and neck with a cold light. The barbs instantly tore through the expensive skirt material, hooking the bloody flesh and lifting it up. The effect of the powder exploded in the blood, and the pain made Lin Wei twitch violently all over her body. Her screams suddenly rose, sharper and more desperate than before.
In this heart-wrenching pain, Lin Wei's chaotic consciousness was suddenly split by a cold light - as her father pressed the back of her neck with force when he forced her through the iron gate of the manor, the barbs on the iron hook were now as sharp as they were, drilling into the softest part of her heart.
She finally understood: Mo Xiaohan's power was unfathomable, his methods were ruthless, and her family's meager foundation was completely vulnerable in front of him. Even more heartbreaking was that when her father was weighing the pros and cons, she was the first weight thrown into the scales. Family ties, when it came to saving lives, were as light as a piece of paper that could be torn at the slightest touch.
The screams in the torture chamber were intermittent, lasting from dusk to dawn, and were finally crushed into tiny whimpers by the morning light.
The next day, the news reported that Lin Wei, the daughter of the Lin Group, had "disappeared" on a private yacht. The police salvaged a partially mutilated body in the nearby waters. The skeleton was covered with irregular lacerations, suspected to have been gnawed by large marine creatures. Lin Kun emptied out all the remaining belongings within three days and boarded a flight to Canada with a box of cash.
Ruan Xingchen sat on the manor's terrace, twirling a silver pen between her fingers. The evening breeze blew over the railing, stirring up the light in her hair. She lowered her eyes as she wrote in her elegant handwriting on a leather notebook: "As gentle as he was to me, he was as cruel to the world."
When she looked up, Mo Xiaohan was standing at the entrance of the terrace, his dark shirt half-bright and half-dark in the setting sun. She paused with her pen and added a sentence on the paper: "But this, precisely, makes me feel safe."
He approached, bent down, and gently embraced her from behind, his chin resting on the top of her head. His breath carried the crisp, slightly bitter scent of absinthe. "You're wrong, Xingxing." His voice was low, carrying the coolness of the evening breeze. "My cruelty is also a form of tenderness, but they don't deserve it."
His fingers rested on her pen-holding hand, his calloused fingertips brushing against her knuckles. A moment of silence passed before he suddenly spoke, his voice clear and cold, wrapped in his arms around her: "Lin Kun is alive."
Ruan Xingchen turned the page, the pen scratching lightly on the paper. Mo Xiaohan tightened his arms, pulling her closer to him. "Let him remember for the rest of his life how he said 'do whatever you want with it' when he handed over the cash. Let him remember when he's awake that he personally sent his daughter to hell, and even in his dreams at night he can't escape the sound of Lin Wei crying out for him—"
He turned his face to the side, his eyes reflecting the rosy glow, but deep within them was a frozen, unmeltable ice: "To protect myself, I refused to show even the last bit of kindness. This debt will have to be slowly endured with fear for the rest of my life."
The evening breeze blew past with the bitter smell of wormwood. Ruan Xingchen leaned in his arms, listening to the steady heartbeat in his chest. Suddenly, he felt that the words "feel safe" on the paper were heavier than when he wrote them just now.
There were two distinct worlds in his eyes - tenderness towards her, coldness towards others, the boundary between them was as clear as a knife mark, and this made people feel more at ease than any stable promise.
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