“I didn’t mean to. I
only wanted the phone.”
Minh Quan ran down and
pressed two fingers to his wife’s throat. A few seconds later, he drew them
back. No calling of her name. None of the panic of a husband who’d just lost
his wife. In his eyes there was only cold calculation.
“Where’s the phone?”
Linh Chi burst into tears.
“Quan, is she still alive?”
“I asked where the phone
is.”
“It’s under the chair.”
Minh Quan picked it up. The
screen showed an emergency call already connecting. Mai Ngoc had hit it by
accident before she fell. On the other end, a dispatcher’s voice was asking for
the location and the victim’s condition.
He ended the call, then
used Mai Ngoc’s fingerprint to unlock the phone, deleted the recording she’d
just made, and texted back that the call had been a mistake.
Linh Chi sank down onto the
floor.
“We have to call an
ambulance.”
“Are you insane? Call now
and we both go to prison.”
“But she’s…”
“Already dead.”
Linh Chi choked on a sob,
both hands clutching her head.
“What do we do now?”
Minh Quan looked at his
wife’s body for a long time. Perhaps, in some corner of him, he still
remembered the woman who had stood by his side for years. But that memory was
far too weak against the instinct for self-preservation and the ambition rooted
deep in his brain.
“First, we make her
disappear.”
“The police will
investigate.”
“Then we hand them a
different culprit.”
Minh Quan and Linh Chi set
to work on their plan at once. They dragged Mai Ngoc’s body into a sack, wiped
the scene clean of traces, and began moving the corpse out to the car. Neither
of them had any idea that everything they were doing had been captured, by Hoa,
Mai Ngoc’s private secretary, who had quietly driven out behind her and
photographed it all.
On the very first
morning of Mai Ngoc’s disappearance, Khai Minh received a text from her number.
An Nhien read it aloud to him.
“Minh, I’m going away
for a while to rest. Don’t look for me. For anything at the hospital, just talk
to your uncle.”
“What do you think?” Khai
Minh asked.
“It doesn’t sound like how
she texts.”
“You know how she texts?”
“She once messaged me to
come to the east wing. She wrote everything out properly, careful with her
words. She’d never send something this blunt.”
Khai Minh tapped a finger
lightly against the face of his watch.
“My aunt just lost the
right to sign that contract, and I dragged the old case out into the open in
front of everyone. She could have run out of fear.”
“Could have.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe it
either.”
Khai Minh fell silent. What
unsettled him wasn’t the content of the message, but the last line. Mai Ngoc
had never once told him to run everything past Minh Quan. For six years, she
may have leaned on her husband, but she’d kept management of Vinh An firmly in
her own hands. A woman that hungry for power would never simply hand it all
over and vanish overnight.
His phone suddenly rang
again. An unknown number. An Nhien glanced at the screen and passed him the
phone.
Khai Minh answered.
“Hello.”
On the other end, there was
only heavy breathing. A few seconds later, a hoarse man’s voice rasped out.
“You’re Lam Khai Minh,
aren’t you?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m the man who cut the
brakes on your parents’ car.”
Khai Minh’s hand went
rigid.
The room still had the hum
of the air conditioner, the sound of the staff outside. But all of it seemed
shoved very far away. Only that one sentence stood right at his ear, so clear
it dragged back the smell of gasoline, the sound of rain, and the heat of the
blast from six years ago.
“Say that again.”
“I took money to kill your
whole family. It was all arranged. You were the only one who survived, and that
wasn’t part of the plan.”
Khai Minh shot to his feet.
His knee cracked against the table, but he felt no pain.
“Who hired you?”
The man let out a laugh,
panic threaded through it.
“Ha… ha… you’re asking the
wrong question.”
“Who are you?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter
anymore. They’re hunting me. I’m calling to make a deal. If you want to know
who’s behind it, come find me.”
“Where are you?”
A loud crash came from the
other end, like a door being kicked in. The man swore under his breath, his
breathing ragged.
“Research Lab Seven… the
cabinet next to the cryo-sample room… the red raincoat…”
“What are you saying …!”
There was a thud of impact,
and the call cut dead.
Khai Minh kept the phone
pressed to his ear.
For six years, he had
imagined that if someone one day told him his memory was real, he’d feel
vindicated. He’d be furious. He’d hunt the killer down at once and force every
last person who’d called him a hallucinating child to bow their heads.
But the first thing that
surged up in him was relief.
A relief so painful he
could barely breathe.
He wasn’t insane.
The figure in the red
raincoat was real. The cut brake line was real. His parents had been murdered,
real. Not an accident.
The thought both freed him
from six years of doubting his own mind and drove him into a deeper grief.
Because if he wasn’t insane, it meant all of them had lied together. The
doctors. The police. His own family. All those people who’d bowed their heads
in pity over a blind boy. They hadn’t just buried his parents under the word accident.
They’d buried his sanity along with them.
An Nhien stood a few steps
away, not daring to speak. She’d seen Khai Minh furious before, seen him wield
a few cold words to leave others with no room to argue. But right now, he
didn’t look like a man about to take revenge. He looked like a child who’d just
heard someone confirm that the fire years ago was real, and that every year he’d
lived since had been built on a lie.
“Khai Minh.”
He didn’t answer.
“Sit down first.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re gripping that phone
so hard it’s about to shatter.”
The wound in his palm from
the day before had split open again, blood soaking through the gaps of his
fingers. An Nhien stepped closer, but before touching him, she stopped and gave
warning, just as she’d once promised.
“I’m going to take the
phone out of your hand.”
Khai Minh didn’t object.
She gently pried the phone
loose, set it on the table, and took out gauze. As she wrapped it around his
palm, she could feel his fingers still trembling, faintly.
“Are you afraid?”
Khai Minh gave a thin
laugh.
“That’s a pointless
question.”
“Then let it be pointless.
When someone’s afraid, they have the right to say they’re afraid.”
“And if I drag you into
danger?”
“Are you about to tell me
to stay away from you?”
“A desperate person finds
it all too easy to pull others down into death with him.”
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