Love Born of Mutual Suspicion (Part 3)
At that, Elena went rigid, as if struck by lightning. Then she collapsed over the coffee table, weeping.
At the hospital, I heard a completely different story from Victor.
He grabbed my wrist with what strength he had left. "Arrest them—both of them! The adulterers!"
He claimed Elena and Wesley were in cahoots, trying to extort three million from him, and he wasn't about to let them get away with it.
And then he dropped the bomb: Xiao Xu was Wesley's child.
Victor had loved Elena. Loved her so much he'd tried to bind her to him through degradation, reshaping a privileged young woman into a servant. When he discovered that Elena and Wesley were still in contact, his love curdled into loathing. A married woman, still capable of attracting other men—it ate away at him.
But Victor couldn't let go. He needed Wesley to understand: Elena was his property. So he hired the man who'd been his rival, gave him a job as his personal assistant, and paraded his own success—beautiful wife, enviable lifestyle—in Wesley's face every day.
Victor thought he'd won. What he didn't know was that Wesley used his access to the household to start an affair with Elena all over again.
Two years ago, when Xiao Yang fell gravely ill, Victor discovered the boy's blood type didn't match his own. The paternity test confirmed it: Xiao Yang was not his biological child.
Victor remembered the week Elena got pregnant. He'd been in Shenzhen on business for several days. Wesley, who'd just had appendix surgery, had stayed in town to handle company matters. Plenty of opportunities for a secret meeting.
Victor confronted Elena in a rage. The first time he ever hit her.
Elena swore the children were his. She wept daily, playing the victim, making him feel like a fool.
The truth, to Victor, was undeniable: Elena was a cheat. The campus rumors he'd once dismissed now twisted inside his brain like barbed wire. The more he'd loved her, the more he despised her. And he despised Wesley even more.
" She knows I can't live without her," Victor said, each word soaked in venom. "That wicked woman—she lives off my money, eats my food, and makes me raise another man's bastard!"
I frowned. "So you deliberately tipped off the kidnapper. You wanted Wesley to kill your own son?"
Victor's throat worked. He didn't answer.
I grabbed him by the collar. "You're out of your mind! He's five years old! Five! What kind of monster—"
Victor shoved my hand away, eyes bulging. "Monster? The monster is that woman! She and her two bastards deserve to die! And Wesley—I gave the man a job, a meal, and he repays me by sleeping with my wife!"
Victor said he couldn't endure his marriage anymore—the glittering facade concealing the rot inside. But he refused to divorce. He'd rather hold Elena captive forever, making her life unbearable, giving her no exit.
From the moment he suspected Wesley, Victor had seen the kidnapping for what it was: a scheme between Elena and her lover.
"I knew something was wrong from the start. She refused to call the police. She wanted me to pay the ransom," Victor panted, forcing the words out through his agony. "She's the one who sent him to swimming lessons—on my dime! If she cared so much about her little bastard, how could she not know which pool he was at? She put on quite the performance. Could've won an Oscar. She's been running that act for years—tears on tap. All she wanted was for me to cave and hand over money to her boyfriend!"
Victor admitted that when Xiao Xu called out "Daddy" on the phone, his heart had softened—briefly. But the thought of Elena and Wesley conspiring to extort him with their illegitimate child pushed him over the edge.
"He can kill his own son if he's got the guts. Ha! You think he will? They want money, and I'm not giving them a dime. Let him take the kid. Let him raise the little bastard himself. If he can't afford it, let him finish what he started! I'm not their ATM. And Elena tried to kill me! If I die, she and Wesley can ride off into the sunset together. I'll press charges for attempted murder. I'll make sure they rot in prison!"
---
Two irreconcilable stories. Hal and I stared at each other, our heads spinning.
What made our heads spin faster was that Wesley was apprehended—alone.
A tip from a local witness led officers to nab Wesley on a provincial border road east of the city. In an abandoned factory near Xiaochong Ridge, they found Xiao Xu's body.
I strode into the interrogation room with the evidence file. Wesley sat in the restraint chair, head down, eyes unfocused. I didn't bother sitting. I stood there, taking deep breaths that did nothing to quench the fire in my chest. Then I slammed the file folder onto the table and pointed at him.
"Let me make this clear. Even if you sit there all night without saying a word, the evidence still convicts you. Kidnapping is one thing. Murder is another. You think you can run? Dream on."
Wesley flinched. I hammered the table with my fist, not caring that it hurt. "Are you even human? He was five years old. Five!"
A colleague tried to pull me back, but a broken moan escaped Wesley. "I—I didn't mean to... I never wanted to hurt the child. I'm sorry... I just wanted to take him somewhere else, relocate him. He didn't want to go. He said he was waiting for his daddy to come. I tried to pick him up, and he ran—I couldn't grab him... It was an accident. I never thought he'd fall like that, right onto the rebar. I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
He clawed at his scalp, rocking back and forth. "It's Victor's fault! If he hadn't said what he said on the phone, the boy wouldn't have—he's dead, and Victor's responsible too! That bastard... I just wanted the money. My mother is sick, and I couldn't afford her surgery. I just needed that money... I never wanted to hurt the child. I went to Victor first, I begged him for a loan, and he told me he wouldn't give me a dime. That's why I—"
"So you went to Elena instead."
Wesley's face was slick with tears. "Elena—she's a monster too. I tried to reach her, but she blocked my number. I called from a coworker's phone, and the second she heard my voice, she hung up. I thought she'd at least feel guilty! Both of them—Victor stole my future, Elena turned her back on me—two rich cheapskates who won't even take care of their own flesh and blood. Three million? They bought a ten-million-yuan villa without blinking, and that money could've saved my mother's life! Bastards..."
Wesley's confession left me staggered. "Who's your accomplice?"
"Accomplice? What accomplice? If someone had been helping me, would I have had trouble controlling a five-year-old? I just wanted the money..." His voice cracked. "He was their only child. How could they... how could they not pay?"
Wesley, desperate and broken, answered every question put to him. He'd done time. He knew that only full cooperation offered any hope of leniency—or the chance to see his mother one last time.
In his version of events, Victor and Elena were nowhere to be found.
The kidnapping had been born from desperation—a coincidence. While servicing the outdoor pool's filtration system, Wesley had stumbled across Aunt Chen and Xiao Xu. Deep in debt and unable to borrow money anywhere else, he saw an opportunity.
On the day of the kidnapping, he'd timed the filter replacement knowing the owner would be away. The owner trusted him and handed over the key. While Aunt Chen was in the bathroom, Wesley used his dinosaur-print bag to catch Xiao Xu's attention, lured him to a quiet corner, and sedated him. Then he'd hidden the boy in the equipment room and walked out of the complex in plain sight.
To avoid being recognized by Elena, he'd used an AI voice modulator for the calls. He'd tried Victor first, but Victor was on a flight and unreachable. That was why the second call went directly to Victor's phone.
Wesley had assumed that since Xiao Yang had died young, Xiao Xu would be cherished beyond measure. Three million should have been easy money.
When he realized Victor had gone to the police, the blow was devastating. He turned on the child, snarling abuse. Terrified, Xiao Xu tried to escape—and that was when the boy fell.
The rebar went through him. Wesley panicked and ran.
What he didn't know was that Xiao Xu was still alive.
The autopsy showed the rebar had missed vital organs. If he'd been taken to a hospital in time, the child could have been saved. But in his panic, he'd thrashed and bled out.
When I walked out of the interrogation room, I asked Hal to run one more check.
When the results came in, my vision went gray. I sat at my desk and stared at nothing until dawn.
---
After the case closed, I bought a bottle of liquor and knocked on Chief Sharp's door. I gave him a lopsided grin. "You're not working tomorrow, right?"
He'd been out of the force for over six months, working security for a real estate developer—better pay, brighter outlook, healthier than he'd ever been.
He stepped aside to let me in. We drank until the small hours. Mostly, I drank. He watched.
When the baijiu was nearly gone, I let out a belch. "Chief, is trust really that fragile between people? I still can't figure out where it all went wrong. How does a married couple get so suspicious of each other that they each try to kill the other? Two children dead because of it. And that little boy—"
"Xiao Xu was Victor's," Sharp said quietly. "Or rather, Xiao Xu was Victor's biological child. Xiao Yang was Wesley's."
I stared at him, blindsided. "How do you know that?"
He was right. The last thing I'd asked Hal to verify was the paternity test.
I didn't believe Victor's paranoid accusations. He wasn't delusional—he was pathologically possessive, unable to tolerate another man touching what he considered his. If he'd decided the children weren't his, he had his reasons.
Victor's blood type was AB. Elena's was A. Two years ago, when Xiao Yang turned out to be type O, the paternity test was a foregone conclusion.
And Wesley's blood type was O.
Enraged, Victor had withdrawn medical treatment from Xiao Yang. The child died.
But I also didn't accept Victor's depiction of Elena as a loose woman. She'd kept her promise—she'd cut all contact with Wesley.
The pregnancy date Victor had cited wasn't the actual date of conception. Doctors calculated from the last menstrual period, and the true window of conception fell approximately two weeks later. Even if Elena and Wesley had been together during Victor's business trip to Shenzhen, conception was biologically impossible at that point.
Sure enough: Xiao Xu shared Victor's AB blood type. The paternity test showed a 99 percent match.
There's a phenomenon in medicine—superfecundation, sometimes called heteropaternal superfetation. It's vanishingly rare. A woman releases two eggs during a single cycle, and both are fertilized by sperm from different men, producing fraternal twins with two different fathers.
Elena had insisted the children were Victor's. She'd even accused him of forging the test results, because she had no idea Wesley had ever touched her.
According to Wesley, on the day of his appendectomy, he'd come to the Zhang house to deliver a contract to Victor. Victor thought the terms were too harsh and called the other party's chairman to negotiate. Wesley couldn't hold his bladder anymore and went looking for a bathroom.
The bathroom door on the first floor was broken. He went upstairs. Walking past the bedroom, he heard muffled sounds.
He pushed the door open—and found Elena bound to a chair, blindfolded, gagged, and naked.
The sight of his ex-girlfriend in such a degrading position—combined with the resentment from Victor's constant humiliation—sent the blood rushing to his head. In a fog of rage and arousal, Wesley unzipped his pants. Nervous and terrified of being caught, he finished almost immediately, then fled downstairs like he'd just used the bathroom.
Elena didn't know. Victor didn't know. Even Wesley didn't know—for a long time—that this one act had gotten Elena pregnant.
From that day on, three adults—and two children—were locked on a collision course with tragedy. In the end, Xiao Xu was killed by his parents' mutual distrust.
I'd read the paternity report and finally understood. Sharp had seen it before I did. I managed a bitter smile and lifted my glass, but I couldn't swallow the liquor.
"Chief..." I dragged a hand down my face. "Come back. I worked with you for three years and thought I'd learned enough. Today I realized how wrong I was. If you came back, we could solve more cases."
He shook his head. "Every case has physical evidence, suspects, victims, and a crime scene. Build enough connections between those four elements, and you'll find the truth. Any detective can do it. I can, and you can. You've got the instincts and the empathy. You'll do better than me."
"You can see through the cracks and find the truth. Me? I'm blind." I set down my glass, picked up the bottle, and poured him another drink. "If you'd been there, you'd have caught Elena's plan before it happened. She pulled out something so expensive I didn't even dare taste it..."
I stopped.
A scene flickered into my mind. The living room of Paul Ryan's apartment. The coffee table smashed to pieces. A single cup and a bottle of Maotai.
Maotai. My father drank industrial-grade swill. He couldn't afford real Maotai, let alone the premium stuff.
That bottle had been brought by someone else.
An electric charge shot through my body. Something clattered behind me.
Chief Sharp had lit a cigarette. He watched me over the flame and smiled.
"Figure something out?"