Late at night. The interrogation room.
Lai Zhengtian was slumped back in his chair, his face etched with exhaustion, eyes closed, hearing nothing and looking at nothing. On the rare occasions he responded at all, it was only to provoke the officer questioning him.
Zhou Jin watched Lai San’er’s every movement through the one-way glass, studying him carefully.
One of the officers inside the room was eating instant noodles straight from the cup, grumbling between bites. “This guy can really hold out. If it weren’t for the history between Guan Ling and him, I’d almost start wondering if we’d grabbed the wrong person.”
Yu Dan was going around distributing hot coffee, her voice gentle as she said, “The higher-ups are pressing hard. Everyone’s worked so hard tonight.”
“Thanks, Sister Dan.”
One by one, the recipients thanked her.
Yu Dan squeezed through the group and handed Zhou Jin a cup as well, then asked, “How’s it looking? Any new direction from Professor Jiang?”
Zhou Jin smiled. “There is.”
She looked at the left hand hanging limply at Lai San’er’s side. After a moment, she turned to Yu Dan. “Sister Dan, come in with me. I’ll do the questioning — your only job is to laugh along.”
Yu Dan frowned. “What do you mean?”
---
They walked into the interrogation room. Zhou Jin greeted the two officers inside, who nodded and stepped out, leaving the room to her and Yu Dan.
Seeing a familiar face, Lai Zhengtian was visibly more animated than he’d been a moment before. “Well, look at that,” he said. “If you’d sent two beautiful ladies to keep me company from the start, I wouldn’t have been so bored. Maybe if you got me in a good enough mood, I might even start remembering things…”
His eyes carried a filthy gleam as they kept drifting down toward Zhou Jin’s collar.
Zhou Jin sat down and asked him coldly, “Do you remember me?”
“Oh, I remember you. Pretty little thing — what made you go and become a cop?” He was deliberately provocative. “Honestly, if you were under my management, I could make you the most sought-after girl in the business. You know how many men would be crazy about you? The market’s been missing someone exactly like you.”
Yu Dan’s brow furrowed hard and she slapped the table. “Lai Zhengtian, watch your mouth!”
Zhou Jin, unbothered, turned it back on him. “What type am I, exactly?”
Lai Zhengtian rubbed his thumb across his lips, looking Zhou Jin over from head to toe, and grinned. “A little firecracker.”
He laughed shamelessly. “Officer, I’ve got a good eye for talent. That waist of yours, the uniform — perfect combination. Let me teach you a few things and you’d have men lining up — you’d make more in one night than you do in a month as a cop…”
Zhou Jin said, “So you personally handle the women who work under you? Including Guan Ling?”
Lai Zhengtian glanced up, his eyes curving into a smile, clearly on guard now.
He answered flippantly, “What’s she got to do with anything? I have standards. She’s not my type — you are.”
Zhou Jin tilted her head slightly, a smile threatening to break free at the corner of her lips, and asked in a low voice, “Are you even capable of that?”
She glanced over at Yu Dan, who caught on immediately and let out a short laugh.
Zhou Jin folded her arms and directed a look of profound, contemptuous disdain over every inch of Lai Zhengtian — until her gaze finally settled on his left hand.
Lai Zhengtian’s brow creased. He shifted his body sideways, angling his right side toward them. “What are you looking at?”
“You know,” Zhou Jin said, “we still haven’t secured direct evidence, so we’ve been digging around — and one thing led to another, and we ended up looking into something from a year ago. Lai San’er, I heard you spent quite a while in the hospital back then. How’s the left hand these days?”
“What the hell are you on about?!” His expression shifted violently, veins rising at his temples.
Zhou Jin’s face remained unmoved. “If that’s too hard to follow, let me put it a different way. Can you still get it up for a woman?”
In the adjoining room, Tan Shiming had just arrived. Hearing the exchange coming through from the interrogation room, he sensed danger with immediate sharpness. His brow snapped together and he barked, “What is Zhou Jin doing? Get her out of there!”
The officer who had just been rotated out spoke up in Zhou Jin’s defense. “Team Leader Tan, let’s wait and see. Lai Zhengtian is finally talking — that’s a good thing.”
---
Inside the interrogation room, Zhou Jin continued with a trace of a smile. “Actually, there’s something I’ve been genuinely curious about. Is it more satisfying to force yourself on someone else, or to be on the receiving end? I’d imagine you’d be the most qualified person to answer that.”
Lai Zhengtian’s jaw tightened. He let out a cold laugh. “You little bitch — I’m warning you. Don’t be there when I get out, or I’ll make sure you regret it.”
“You?” Zhou Jin’s lip curled.
She let a sneer spread across her face — cold, and dripping with contempt.
“For you, that night must have been quite unforgettable. Where did it happen again?”
Zhou Jin seemed to be genuinely puzzling over it. She turned to look at Yu Dan, as though searching for the answer, and after a long pause finally said, “Guoshan District. Funing Street?”
This time, Yu Dan genuinely wanted to laugh.
When Zhou Jin had been assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, she had come in tall and striking, and never left loose ends in her work — by any measure, she was the most capable recruit the unit had seen in years.
Yu Dan had always known Zhou Jin was tenacious and sharp. She hadn’t expected her to have this ruthless, cunning edge to her as well.
Zhou Jin continued to prod at his most sensitive, most fragile breaking point, pressing question after question. “How many of them were there? How long did they go at it?”
Lai Zhengtian slammed both fists down on the table. The handcuffs struck the surface with a sharp, ringing crash. He raised his blood-red eyes, and then — like a man who had lost his mind entirely — he lunged at Zhou Jin.
The chair went down with a crash, taking Zhou Jin with it.
The back of her head struck the floor with brutal force. A wave of dizziness crashed over her, overwhelming and complete — and then a sudden, violent constriction at her throat, the most vulnerable point on her body, brought a strangling pain so sharp it yanked her back to full consciousness.
Lai Zhengtian’s left hand was useless, but his right was savage. His fingers closed around Zhou Jin’s throat. “I’ll kill you!”
“Zhou Jin!”
Yu Dan cried out in shock. She hadn’t expected Lai Zhengtian to snap so suddenly and lunged to grab him by the collar.