Chapter 9

Chapter 9

It was over 20 days before Linda Brown’s due date. At Red Rain Bar, the colorful lights dazzled the eyes. A woman in a blue slip dress—stunning in both figure and looks—sat next to Ryan Wilson. Her name was Anna.

“Are you here alone, handsome?” she purred, looping her arm around his neck.

The bar was loud with thumping music, so she spoke right into his ear. The air grew thick with intimacy. After they kissed, she whispered, “I’ll be waiting for you in the room,” and left him a room key card.

A leopard can’t change its spots—and after going so long without women, Ryan Wilson took the bait.

He spent the night with Anna—the woman I’d arranged for him—in the hotel.

The next morning, I met Anna at the café across from the hotel, as we’d agreed. She pushed an envelope across the table to me—it was filled with photos. I opened it and glanced at them, satisfied.

“He didn’t use protection last night,” Anna said.

“You did a good job. There’s 200,000 yuan in this card— the password is six zeros,” I told her, handing her a bank card.

“Is there anything else you need?” she asked.

“Don’t come back to City S again,” I said.

“Sis, you’re joking, right? I don’t even have a ‘future’ anymore,” she laughed bitterly.

“Take care of yourself,” I said.

Anna was HIV-positive.

I flipped through the photos in the envelope, picked out a few of the most damning ones, took pictures of them with a new phone number, and sent them to Linda Brown as a multimedia message.