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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 6: Blood Contract
The chill from the convenience store's refrigerator still lingered in my ribs, while Zhao Ming's bodyguard pressed the barrel of a gun against my lower back. The red dot of Zhou Yi's encrypted location on my phone screen flickered wildly, reminiscent of the trembling needle he used to stitch my wound last night.
"Miss Lin, it's time to settle up." The man in black sliced open the third button of my shirt with a Swiss Army knife, the blade reflecting the stock certificate signed by Lin Yichen. Suddenly, the ventilation duct filled with the smell of rust, mingling with the gunpowder scent that always clung to Zhou Yi's combat uniform—exactly like the antiseptic from the delivery room three months ago.
As a steel rod crashed against the shelf near my ear, Zhou Yi's military boot had already shattered the man's jaw. He tore off his tie to bind my bleeding wrist, the red glow of a micro-tracker hidden in its silk lining matching perfectly with the sparkle of the diamonds on Su Ya's engagement ring.
"Crouch down!" I was shoved into the shadow of the fire cabinet, and the cabinet door rattled as it dislodged a medical file bag that Mother had hidden for twenty years. The footsteps of six men in black crushed shards of glass underfoot, while Zhou Yi's ceramic knife glided across the throat of the third man, droplets of blood splattering onto a photo of a fetal heart monitor.
The dull thud of a bullet hitting a load-bearing column made my molars ache. As I felt for the Glock hidden in my coat, the fifth bodyguard's skull exploded over Su Ya's covertly taken prenatal check-up form. Between the pages lay a copy of Lin Family's money laundering ledger, the smell of ink mingling with blood and rushing to my head.
When Zhou Yi's lower back slammed against the hood of a Benz, the bulletproof glass reflected his blood-soaked combat pants. The bullet hole that Lin Yichen had burned through with a cigar was oozing blood, and the sourness of whiskey mixed with his salty sweat made my eyes burn.
"Run!" The pull tab of a smoke grenade snagged on my necklace, and the platinum pendant brushed against his bloodied lips. Tear gas poured in through the ventilation system; I counted Zhou Yi's bloody footprints—each one precisely corresponding to the dates when Lin Family’s stock prices collapsed.
As a file box fell from the ventilation duct, my high heel got stuck in Mother’s accident investigation report. The moment Zhou Yi shoved me into the freight elevator, a bullet pierced his left shoulder with a dull sound that overlapped with the rain from that night when the fetal heartbeat stopped.
"Close your eyes." His bloodied palm covered my vision, and his gun callus scraped against the corner of my eye where I had been cut by steel beads last night. In the cracked reflection of the elevator mirror, Zhao Ming's sinister smile spread; he held a Browning pistol engraved with Lin Yichen’s initials, and dried blood was lodged in the groove of the letter L.
When the warehouse iron door slammed shut, Zhou Yi finally collapsed into the shadow of a shipping container. He ripped off a tourniquet and tore out the listening device from my brooch; it rolled into a mountain of embryonic research data, moldy pages brushing against my hand like something from a morgue.
"You've long since..." My fingertips trembled as they brushed against the bullet hole beneath his collarbone; its scabbed pattern matched perfectly with Lin Family Crest. Zhou Yi suddenly grasped my retreating hand tightly, his thumb pressing hard against a bruise on my wrist inflicted by Lin Yichen, making me gasp in pain.
As the blue flame of the acetylene torch licked at the iron door, Zhao Ming's crocodile leather shoes crushed the shell casings dropped by Zhou Yi. I felt the merger agreement from 1995 in the file cabinet behind me; my mother's blood had stained the signature area of the first party with brown splotches, while the logo of Zhao Ming's company was embedded in the indentation of the second party's steel seal.
Zhou Yi's breath, tainted with blood, brushed against the back of my neck as his satellite phone in the hidden pocket suddenly vibrated. Lin Yichen's voice pierced through the static, "The net is closing." Almost simultaneously, the acetylene torch sliced through the first crack in the door, illuminating the dried bloodstains on his combat uniform—shapes reminiscent of a stunted embryo from the B ultrasound report.
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