Chapter Twelve: Nan Huai of the Nan Family (1)
When she woke, it was already daylight.
She could vaguely recall last night’s dream, only that it had felt warm. She had never seen what Cheng Muyang was like as a child. These fragments all came from what the old housekeeper in his family had described back at Qiandao Lake.
For the next dozen or so days, she remained tied to the bed like this. Du brought in a Filipino girl, seven or eight years old. Whenever he was not in the room, the girl would sit there, unblinking, watching her. When Du returned, he would cuff her right hand and lock her in the bathroom, still leaving the girl to watch her.
Only now, the girl held a gun.
Nan Bei had tried a few times. The girl did not understand English at all. The way she held the gun was clumsy, as if Du had only just taught her.
When Du came back on the fourteenth night, he was injured.
As he had the girl bandage him, the first thing she did was hold out her palm, asking for payment.
Du cursed in Filipino, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a handful of things, tossing them messily onto the wooden table. There were a few banknotes among them. He threw one to the girl, and only then did she finally begin to dress his wound.
Nan Bei had a towel stuffed in her mouth, watching all of this.
Du suddenly dropped his usual silence. He yanked the towel away and pressed the gun to her forehead. “I dream of killing you.”
He spoke in Chinese.
The tone was not entirely standard, but his enunciation was heavy.
Nan Bei looked at him and said coldly, “Me too.”
She had always been on the thin side. After these past days of torment, her face looked even smaller. The corners of her eyes tilted slightly upward, her dark pupils reflecting the gun barrel so close to her. She had eyes very much like Nan Huai’s, only without the brutality, carrying instead a trace more brightness.
Under her gaze, Du felt a flicker of uncertainty.
Uncertain whether he could really trade her life for his wife and daughter.
Irritated by her eyes, he slammed the gun against her, pressing her into the wall. He leaned over her, close to her ear, cursing viciously.
“Do you know how many people are hunting me? The CIA, your brother’s people, the Russians. As if I’m the real arms dealer king, some drug lord, unforgivable, destined for hell. You, you should have gone to hell the moment you were born, and yet you’ve lived until now!”
The impact made Nan Bei dizzy, nausea rising in her throat.
Her temple throbbed where it was pressed. Her hands and feet were bound, leaving her no strength to resist.
But Du’s words sounded like some great joke to her, making her let out a cold laugh. “Who should go to hell? The world is so big. Is there any country that doesn’t have your agents? What are you all doing? Trying to make the people of every country into dogs for you Americans. Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. Which of them wasn’t prosperous at first, with its people only just beginning to live stable lives, before you incited their governments against them?”
Listening to the commotion outside, she felt some sorrow for this people.
“It’s the same here. What use is the Philippine election? They can’t even elect a president without your support. Let me tell you, the CIA isn’t God, and you weren't born to save humanity. How many wars and civil wars has your American Dream brought to other countries? We’re all the same, our hands stained with blood. No one is any more noble than anyone else.”
She watched him from the corner of her eye.
In one thing, she was stronger than him.
No matter which family it was, their origins had been to protect the people on their own land.
They had never existed to seize others’ land or monopolize others’ resources.
Du was left speechless by her words.
His hand tightened around her throat. With one hand, he could take her life.
Yet her expression remained calm, as if she had already seen through the fact that he did not dare act.
In the end, he gave a hateful laugh.
“You believe in Buddhism?”
His grip on her throat made it hard for Nan Bei to breathe, even harder to speak.
“Those of us who believe in God have all heard a saying, ‘Joy may end in grief,’” he lowered his head, his voice squeezing through his teeth, hatred mixed with a kind of grim satisfaction as he explained it to her. “It means that when joy reaches its peak, sorrow is bound to follow. Miss Nan Bei, I imagine Buddhism has something similar.”
Du laughed a few times for no clear reason, and a sudden unease rose in Nan Bei.
“These past few days, in order to get evidence to blackmail the Russian security service, I risked my life and obtained some CIA materials. They’re several video clips.” There was a strange excitement in his voice. “I think you and Mr. Cheng Muyang must have had a very happy time together recently. Otherwise, he wouldn’t care about you this much.”
Nan Bei’s eyes widened abruptly. She jerked her head toward him, staring hard.
He mentioned Cheng Muyang, spoke of “joy turning into grief,” and wore that revenge-driven excitement in his smile. Every detail made her heart pound with dread. He said Cheng Muyang “cared” about her. Why would he say that?
Du laughed again, pulled a phone from his jacket, and handed it to her.
A video was playing on it.
It was extremely bloody. The moment Nan Bei saw the image, she froze.
She did not know where this was, nor who was being killed. But she recognized the man, his steps unsteady, his body slightly bent, gripping a short blade.
There was blood everywhere.
She suddenly felt nauseous.
Her heart pounded wildly. Countless possibilities flashed through her mind, slipping away before she could grasp them, everything falling into chaos. Du’s voice came at just the right moment, as if afraid she would not understand, explaining in a low tone:
“That day, while you were being intimate with me in the interrogation room, Cheng Muyang was right next door. Only a pane of glass separated you. It’s a pity you couldn’t see him, but he could see you.”
The world spun before her eyes.
Every word he said struck directly into the deepest part of her.
“What a madman. Tell me, did he lose control because you betrayed him, or because of what we did together? Or because you were separated by a sheet of glass, and he couldn’t protect you, so he lost his mind?”
She looked at him, just looked at Du, and tears began to fall without warning.
He would never doubt her. Through all those days and nights, starting from Belgium, they had had too much time that belonged only to the two of them. Only they understood each other’s feelings.
Du lifted her chin with the gun, looking at her tear-filled eyes, wet from retching. “If he hadn’t slaughtered like that, we wouldn’t have lost so many people. And I wouldn’t have ordered his death. One explosion, and our great arms dealer was gone.”
Nan Bei’s pupils contracted sharply.
“Gone means dead. Nothing left of the body.”
Du’s voice went on speaking.
Nan Bei could no longer hear anything.
Cheng Muyang was dead?
Nothing left of the body.
It sounded like a dream.
From the moment they met again, his gaze had never left her.
He said, “Beibei, my memory has always been good. Here… I’ve always remembered you.”
He said, “When this matter is over, come back to Moscow with me, okay?”
He said, “I rarely fire a gun. Just now, I was afraid you were in danger.”
He said, “To me, you have never represented Wanding. I only know the Nan Bei who owed me gambling debts just now.”
He said, “I could have been a good person. Unfortunately, the one who tempted me was you.”
…
In the darkness, his voice was like the fine, soft sand along a shoreline at midnight, cool, yet comforting. Sometimes it felt far away, sometimes very close. Only she could not open her eyes, could not see him.
This had originally been a flawless plan. Her appearance had been the first accident, followed by one danger after another. Perhaps at the beginning, she had been dragged into this clash between Moscow and the CIA because of him, but in the end, she became the greatest accident of all. She was the one who got Cheng Muyang killed.
Nan Bei remained unconscious for a full day and night. Where she had been bound, red rashes had begun to appear.
At first, Du did not think much of it, even felt a trace of satisfaction. But late at night, when he saw that she had begun to cry again without stopping, her body burning with a frightening heat, he finally grew restless. Nan Huai had only one condition: Nan Bei must be returned to him completely unharmed, not a single hair missing. Only then would Du’s wife and daughter reach England safely.
Irritated, he slapped awake the sleeping little girl and told her to find a doctor.
The one who came was a local doctor.
An old man, and blind.
Seeing his difficulty in moving, Du felt somewhat reassured, but still kept his guard up, holding his gun, wary of any accident. The old doctor looked to be of Chinese descent. After taking Nan Bei’s pulse, he said in very halting Chinese, “Sir, your wife is pregnant.”
Du froze for a moment, then suddenly laughed.
This was perfect.
A pregnant Nan Bei would be enough to force Nan Huai to yield faster.
These past days, Nan Huai had been emboldened by the fact that Du was being hunted by multiple parties at once. After years of cooperation, Du understood Nan Huai’s nature all too well. He would repay every slight tenfold, even at great cost to himself. Du had once heard a rumor that Nan Huai had spent fifteen years, alone, killing every single person involved in his parents’ deaths.
This was a man no one wanted as an enemy.
The old doctor quickly prescribed some mild medicine, trying to avoid affecting the fetus while improving Nan Bei’s condition.
Nan Bei was Du’s greatest bargaining chip. Though he hated her to the bone, he could not let anything happen to her. He obediently followed the doctor’s prescription and gave her the medicine. Two nights later, in the dead of night, Nan Bei finally regained some awareness.
“Awake?” Du walked over, bending down to look at her.
Nan Bei’s eyelashes trembled twice before she slowly opened her eyes. They were swollen, aching, her vision blurred.
Days of unconsciousness had ground her awareness into fragments. She could not distinguish her situation.
“The wife is awake?” the old doctor smiled. “Good that she’s awake. She should move around a bit, otherwise it’s not good for the fetus.”
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