Saito was shocked again when he saw the girl’s face in the photo.
How did her photo end up there?
Then he remembered the background that had been deliberately erased around the girl, and he let out a startled cry.
“I told you, she must have some connection with Barrola!”
Saito had been learning Chinese recently, and wherever he went, he spoke with a terrible accent that grated on everyone’s ears.
Zhou Zheng frowned slightly and shot him a disdainful glance. He didn’t know that the boss knew this girl.
“Should we get her out?”
Saito asked anxiously.
“Wait a little longer.”
After a few seconds of silence, Luo Jin said in a low voice.
If she was someone important to Barrola,
the police station would definitely make a move.
He could wait—maybe something useful would surface.
What Saito was thinking was: could that frail girl even survive the rough treatment inside?
She’d better not die in there.
After Zhao Jingwan was taken away by the police, she wasn’t even given an interrogation. She was thrown directly into a detention cell.
It was a large communal cell holding dozens of people—mostly Indians and Pakistanis, with fewer Blacks and Whites, and almost no Asian faces.
In the cell she was put in, she was the only Asian.
The moment she stepped into the cell, she received several hostile looks. The eyes fixed on her were predatory.
Not daring to meet anyone’s gaze, she kept her head down and shrank into a corner as soon as she entered.
Police officers appeared occasionally—either bringing someone in or taking someone out.
They never answered any questions.
The space was small, with only a dirty, stinking carpet on the floor, yet some people were still willing to lie on it.
The first night, she stayed alert until the early hours before she finally drifted into a dazed sleep.
She didn’t know what time it was when she was jolted awake by a cup of ice-cold water splashed on her face. She opened her eyes to see a large Black woman glaring at her with a fierce expression.
“Chinese?”
Not knowing what was happening, she nodded blankly. The Black woman suddenly grabbed her hair and yanked it hard.
A slap came flying across her face. As she hit her, she cursed. Zhao Jingwan managed to piece together fragments of information from the woman’s accented English.
It turned out the Black woman’s boyfriend was Chinese.
During their relationship, he had tricked her into partnering in an illegal business. Now he had run off, leaving her to take the fall.
The Black woman had a belly full of rage with nowhere to vent, and the moment she saw Zhao Jingwan, she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
The others in the cell just watched the spectacle.
Against the Black woman’s overwhelming strength, Zhao Jingwan had no power to resist.
Any words were useless—the woman just wanted someone to take her anger out on.
It wasn’t until a guard brought in a new prisoner and saw the scene that he asked no questions and simply locked the two of them together in a solitary confinement cell.
The solitary cell was even worse—a cramped space barely big enough for one person, cold, damp, and reeking of filth.
One meal a day, a single flatbread. If you couldn’t get enough to eat, you went hungry all day.
By night, her body couldn’t take it anymore. A high fever raged, her scalp throbbed, and the places where she’d been hit burned with pain.
Zhao Jingwan curled up on the ground, her mind foggy and heavy, despair pressing down on her. She didn’t know if she would ever get out of here.
She didn’t know how long she’d been in there. When she was finally brought out, a police officer took her to an interrogation room.
Throughout the process, they repeatedly asked her one question: where were the drugs hidden?
She couldn’t answer. All she could do was repeat, over and over, everything that had happened to her—
including Chu Ning’s disappearance and what she had seen at the club.
But the police had verified that there was no entry record for Chu Ning in Dubai.
And she was working illegally, her status already questionable. She had no evidence, and no one believed what she said.
The intense interrogation pushed her to the brink of collapse. Just as she was about to break, she was thrown back into the communal cell.
She’d been there for less than half a day when a guard called her name.
She was told someone had come to visit her—a man she didn’t recognize.
He was wearing a suit and looked refined. When he saw her, he nodded politely.
“Zhao Jingwan?”
“You are…”
She asked weakly.
The man remained expressionless.
“I’m here to bail you out. The paperwork is being processed. You’ll be out soon.”
After confirming she was unharmed, the man stood up to leave. Zhao Jingwan hurriedly called out to stop him.
“Did Sheikh send you?”
The man pushed up the glasses on his nose, his expression turning serious.
“My name is Zhuang Ze. I don’t know the person you mentioned.”
Before leaving, he left her with a meaningful remark.
“You’d better not know him either.”
While Zhuang Ze was processing the paperwork, he was suddenly stopped. The police told him the girl couldn’t be bailed out for now.
A team sent to search a villa Zhao Jingwan had visited had discovered a large batch of drugs. Orders had come down from above—she couldn’t be released.
The news was unexpected. He quickly made a phone call.
“We were too late. To get her out, we might need to pull strings higher up. It’s not convenient for you right now. I’ll think of another way.”
Luo Jin had just arrived in Turkey. The moment he got off the plane, he received a call from his subordinate. Zhou Zheng explained the situation at the police station.
“Should we get her out?”
If they didn’t act soon, the girl would be transferred to Al Aweer Prison tonight.
Once the charges were confirmed, getting the person out would be much harder.
Walking out of the airport, Luo Jin bent down and got into a commercial van. A moment later, he said coldly,
“Bring that lawyer back too.”
Zhao Jingwan, locked back in her cell, had cheeks flushed red from fever, looking extremely weak. Her body was exhausted to the breaking point, aching all over—whether from the fever or from being beaten, she couldn’t tell.
A police officer called her name again. This time, it was to tell her she could leave.
The lawyer was waiting outside. Seeing her come out, he called her into the car without delay and drove straight toward the airport.
“I’m sending you back to your country. Don’t come back again.”
Zhao Jingwan assumed he knew she’d gotten herself into trouble and was sending her home for that reason, so she nodded.
Staying here right now was indeed very unsafe for her.
“Did he give you a key?”
She was startled, then realized what he was asking about.
Before Sheikh left, he had indeed given her a key to a villa, saying that if he hadn’t come to pick her up within half a month, she should go there and find a man named Sifu.
A few days ago, she’d gone there, but no one was around.
“Give it to me.”
The man said calmly.
Zhao Jingwan frowned slightly, looking at the person beside her with some wariness.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I can’t explain more right now. That key is a big problem for you. I went through all the trouble of pulling you out of there—do you think I’d want to go back in because of this?”
The lawyer’s words left her at a loss. After thinking it over, she asked cautiously,
“What’s in there?”
Zhuang Ze glanced at her and said flatly,
“Drugs.”
Her heart jolted with shock. Could it be that the man knew what was in there, and that was why he’d used that excuse to send her in?
“I barely managed to clear your name. Do you still want to hold onto a hot potato?”
Perhaps police were staking out near that villa right now, just waiting for the person behind the deal to show up.
Afraid she still had doubts, Zhuang Ze deliberately made the situation sound more serious than it was.
Zhao Jingwan lowered her head to rummage through her pocket. Before she could even pull out the key,
A car suddenly slammed into them from the side. The massive impact instantly deployed the airbags inside the vehicle.
Before she could see what was happening, both of them blacked out at the same time.
“Do you want to kill someone?”
Zhou Zheng looked at the crumpled car, casting a cold glance at the man behind the wheel.
“I lost control…”
Saito was a bit embarrassed. He’d forgotten they needed to keep them alive, only thinking about stopping them…
Inside the car, just before losing consciousness, Zhao Jingwan vaguely saw a familiar figure walk up to the vehicle.
Her eyes closed weakly as she sank into unconsciousness, and in a daze, she heard a clumsy-sounding Chinese phrase:
“You’re still alive. How lucky.”