Before leaving the bedroom, Pei Jiheng first changed out of his wet clothes.
His shirt and suit trousers were soaked through, clinging wrinkled to his skin. He simply stripped them all off, tossed them casually into the laundry basket, and pulled a bathrobe from the wardrobe to wrap around himself.
He walked back to the bedside, adjusted the air conditioner to a comfortable temperature, and only after doing all this did he turn off the bedroom light, gently pull the door closed, and head to the study.
This villa had been purchased only after his return to China, and the study had not yet been properly organized. More than half of the bookshelf was empty, holding only a few casually placed financial magazines and a stack of pending documents. The desk, however, was spacious with very few items on it.
Pei Jiheng sat down in the chair, leaned against the back, and combed through everything that had happened tonight from beginning to end.
His reason for staying in Binshi was very simple.
Two years ago, he opened a racecourse in Binshi. It had operated normally for two years, but in the past few months, the accounts had looked bleak and performance had plummeted off a cliff.
He suspected someone was pulling strings behind the scenes. Of course, if it were merely business competition, it would not warrant his personal attention, but what if Pei Yunjun wanted to strike at him and keep him under surveillance? Therefore, Pei Jiheng had returned to China to take a look.
The first step, naturally, was to approach the competitor.
Guanlan Club was the largest and most high-end entertainment venue in Binshi. On the surface, it was respectable and upscale, but beneath that, it encompassed various hidden businesses. After investigating for two months, Pei Jiheng discovered that Guanlan had been intentionally or unintentionally intercepting the racecourse’s customer base. Those high-end clients who should have been spending money at the racecourse were being courted, guided, and intercepted by Guanlan through various means.
Tracing all the way up to the ringleader, there was still no sign of Pei Yunjun’s involvement.
He simply decided to buy out Guanlan and purge it from within.
During this period, he had repeatedly made appointments to meet Zhao Yu, talking about the acquisition on one hand while probing whether this man was merely a merchant blinded by greed or a pawn directed by someone else.
The result turned out to be the former.
Pei Jiheng tapped his fingers lightly on the armrest.
Then he truly had been overthinking things, and this matter could be put to rest.
However, the matter concerning Luo Huai could not be put aside.
Pei Jiheng’s brows knitted slightly as his mind began replaying the scene in that private room tonight, where Luo Huai had been slumped on the sofa, unconscious.
There were two possibilities.
First, Luo Huai had simply been wandering around on his own and was targeted by bad actors who wanted to drug him, kidnap him, and carry out some kind of crime. After all, with that face of his, coupled with being an Omega, it was nothing out of the ordinary for him to be targeted when left alone in a place like that.
Second, Luo Huai had provoked someone he shouldn’t have and caught someone’s covetous eye. The physical build, techniques, and reaction speed of those two men did not resemble opportunistic thugs; they looked much more like well-trained hitmen directed by someone behind the scenes.
Pei Jiheng suddenly found himself thinking about Luo Huai’s identity prior to being found by the Luo family: a child who grew up in an orphanage and drifted outside for more than a dozen years.
Who would set their sights on someone like that?
He ought to investigate.
With this thought in mind, Pei Jiheng reached out and picked up the desk telephone receiver, dialing an extension number.
After two rings, the other end answered.
“Investigate someone,” Pei Jiheng’s voice was as flat as if he were recounting a daily routine. “Luo Huai, the son of Luo Congqian in Binshi. Look into his life history, as detailed as possible.”
A brief acknowledgment came from the other side of the phone without any extra questions.
Pei Jiheng hung up.
With official business handled, he leaned back against the chair. The lamplight fell upon his profile, casting long shadows from the bridge of his nose and his brow bones. The collar of his bathrobe was slightly open, revealing a section of his collarbone and neck.
Pei Jiheng closed his eyes, beginning to examine his own reactions tonight with rational thinking.
He had always prided himself on doing things meticulously. Every step was calculated, every decision had sufficient reason, and every strike left no future troubles. He never did anything out of line for irrelevant people.
Yet tonight, he had eliminated two people with whom he had no grievances.
Those two men deserved to die, but deserving to die and executing them with one’s own hands were two different matters. He had been impulsive; he could have let Iris handle it, making things cleaner and leaving fewer traces. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t even thought much about it, his body had moved on its own, and his finger had pulled the trigger on its own.
Pei Jiheng opened his eyes, his gaze somewhat unfocused.
He remembered earlier when he crouched by the bathtub and saw Luo Huai shedding silent tears, that nameless, indescribable feeling that surged up from the depths of his chest.
Was it heartache? He wasn’t sure if he was capable of feeling heartache for someone. It felt more like a certain fragility that he thought he had completely eradicated when he was in his teens, growing out of the cracks bit by bit.
Luo Huai was clearly nothing but trouble.
From that very first morning waking up in the hotel, he had known this person was trouble. He knew how to put on an act, used his secrets as leverage, smiled brightly as he called him “Uncle,” and then played tricks right under his nose.
In the past, he wouldn’t even have spared a second glance at someone like that.
Yet tonight, he intervened anyway. Not only did he intervene, but he also brought the person home, and even used his own pheromones to soothe an Omega that didn’t belong to him.
Perhaps it wasn’t just tonight that felt abnormal; starting from that incident at the lounge bar, he had actually been the first to back down? Ever since that absurd night of Luo Huai’s wedding, he had never truly pushed this person away.
Could pheromone compatibility really be this powerful? Powerful enough to sway one’s mind?
Pei Jiheng massaged the bridge of his nose.
Forget it.
Back when he first got to know Luo Congqian, that man had considered helping him to a certain extent. Luo Congqian didn’t know his true identity, but he had given him plenty of conveniences in the business world and looked after him as a brother.
Taking care of the man’s son now wasn’t a big deal, and it could be considered living up to every single “Uncle” that Luo Huai called out.
At this thought, Pei Jiheng stood up and turned off the desk lamp.
The study plunged into complete darkness.
As Pei Jiheng walked to the study door and pulled it open, his footsteps paused for a moment. At the end of the corridor, the bedroom door was still closed, with a thin line of warm yellow light seeping through the crack.
He remembered turning off the light; perhaps Luo Huai had woken up.
Pei Jiheng stood in the hallway, looking at that line of light, hesitating for a second. Then he lifted his foot and walked toward the bedroom, returning to the doorway and casually pushing the door open.
The bedside lamp in the room was on, casting an orange glow across the bed. Luo Huai was sitting there in a daze.
Bare-skinned, wrapped in a quilt with only the part above his collarbone and his two arms exposed, his complexion was very poor, white to the point of being nearly translucent. The entire person looked profoundly dazed and fragile.
Upon seeing Pei Jiheng, Luo Huai first froze for a moment, then his shoulders slumped slightly as if a heavy burden had been lifted from him, letting out a deep sigh of relief.
But the next second, he furrowed his brows again.
“Uncle, is that you?”
Luo Huai’s voice was hoarse and tentative, as if he still wasn’t sure whether he was dreaming.
“Your way of judging dreams nowadays is certainly much gentler.” After sorting out his thoughts, Pei Jiheng actually found himself in the mood to joke a little.
He adjusted his glasses and walked toward the bedside.