When Fang Yongnian received Lu Yixin’s call, he had just sent off his older brother—his brother, a criminal police officer at Huating City’s Public Security Bureau, although not involved in his car accident project, had been helping him keep an eye on the progress of the case during this period.

The recording of that expert definitely couldn’t be used as primary evidence. The process of recording was illegal, and the expert didn’t even mention in it who that person actually was.

Those who had been arrested only admitted to the matters that were backed by ironclad proof; for everything else, they chose complete silence.

This case would still take a long time to grind through. That was the main reason his brother had made a special trip to Hecheng—probably afraid that, in a fit of anger, he would once again do something that skirted the line. Every word his brother spoke carried hidden barbs and warnings.

Fang Yongnian could only give a bitter smile.

He honestly no longer knew what he could still do. After sending off his much larger-framed brother, he hadn’t even had time to return to the ward before receiving Lu Yixin’s call.

Lu Yixin’s voice on the other end sounded anxious. The moment the call connected, she fired off without any greeting: “Is my dad in the ward?”

“He’s not.” Fang Yongnian frowned. She was getting more and more unruly.

“Do you know Wu Tao?” she continued in the same tone. “He blocked me at the mall and said my dad and Grandpa Wu had gone to the hospital to see you. He said he’d pick me up to go to the hospital and have dinner together tonight.”

“Wait a minute…” Fang Yongnian was confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a man about one meter eighty, twice my size, about your age, and Ranran and I definitely can’t beat him. He’s now blocking the door of the fitting room, trying to take me away!” When Lu Yixin got anxious, her ability to summarize suddenly improved dramatically.

“There are a lot of people in the mall, but those two bodyguard uncles aren’t with me, and I can’t reach my dad’s phone!” By the end, her voice was trembling as if she were about to cry.

“You’re in the mall’s fitting room right now?” Fang Yongnian stopped walking. “Alone?”

Lu Yixin sniffled. “Ranran’s with me.”

“That person said his name is Wu Tao?” Fang Yongnian knocked on the ward door, signaling to Zheng Fei inside to stand up. “Professor Wu’s son, Wu Tao?”

“It should be him.” The calm tone of Fang Yongnian’s voice made the already panicking Lu Yixin calm down a little, and her words became more coherent. “I saw him when my dad and I went to pay New Year’s greetings to Grandpa Wu. My dad mentioned him, said he runs an investment company.”

“Where is he now? How many people are there?” Zheng Fei was already at Fang Yongnian’s side. Fang Yongnian pressed the speakerphone button.

“He’s at the fitting room door. When I came in just now, he tried to pull me.” Thinking of the scene just now, Lu Yixin’s voice began to tremble again. “It should be just him.”

Then another girl’s voice came through the phone.

Lu Yixin paused and corrected herself: “Ranran says probably not, she says bad people always come out in groups.”

If it weren’t such a tense situation, Fang Yongnian would have almost laughed at that sentence.

“Send me your current location on WeChat,” Fang Yongnian coughed lightly. “You and your classmate stay inside the fitting room and don’t go out. We’ll come right away.”

“Remember to lock the door from the inside,” he added.

Zheng Fei gave him a look.

“What about my dad?” Lu Yixin’s voice sounded timid.

“Your dad went to Huating this morning, he took the high-speed train. He’s at the Huating City Public Security Bureau giving a statement about our previous project, that’s why he couldn’t answer your call.” Fang Yongnian’s reply was unusually patient.

Lu Yixin sniffled again.

Zheng Fei gave him another look.

Fang Yongnian ignored him. Holding one phone, he took Zheng Fei’s other phone with his free hand, quickly typed a few lines, and tossed it back to him.

Zheng Fei took the phone and immediately started making calls to find people. They moved fast, calling while already heading out the door.

As for Fang Yongnian, whether putting on his coat or taking the elevator, he never once hung up on Lu Yixin’s call.

Lu Yixin was clearly no longer as frightened as she had been at the beginning. Once she calmed down, her imagination began running wild like an untamed horse.

“The fitting room door can’t be locked from the inside,” she said on the other end, stamping her foot. “The shop assistant probably has the fitting room keys.”

“What if Wu Tao asks the shop assistant for the key and opens the door?” She managed to scare herself. “I can’t beat him. What if he says I’m a runaway kid from his family and drags me out by force? That’s how it always goes in the news!”

Another girl’s voice came through the phone, and Fang Yongnian heard Lu Yixin reply, “Even if I add you, we still can’t beat him. If he really opens the door later, I’ll hold him off. Run as fast as you can.”

Fang Yongnian pressed a hand to his forehead.

This girl, terrified yet still joking to relieve her own stress.

Her mental resilience was, in a way, quite strong.

“I’ve already called the police,” he said as he entered the elevator—for the first time in three weeks, stepping out of the inpatient building. “The police will arrive soon. Don’t be afraid.”

“You went out too?” Lu Yixin heard the sound of the elevator on his end. “You’re coming here too?”

“Yes.” The elevator doors closed. Fang Yongnian fastened the buttons on his coat with one hand. “I’m coming to bring you back.”

Beside him, Zheng Fei lifted his head amid the flurry of activity.

On the other end of the call, Lu Yixin froze.

If it weren’t for the urgent situation and the fact that Wu Tao was still outside the fitting room, she would definitely have screamed in joy right then, begged Fang Yongnian to repeat what he just said, and recorded it for keeps.

Whatever that sentence was supposed to mean, she decided she would interpret it exactly the way she wanted.

“Can you not hang up the phone?” Her fear lessened, and her courage grew.

“I won’t.” Fang Yongnian agreed without hesitation.

At that, Lu Yixin couldn’t help it. She covered her phone and hopped in place twice.

“He’s just trying to distract you,” Zheng Ranran said calmly, pouring cold water over her excitement. “He’s worried you’ll get too scared, so he’s trying to shift your attention.”

Fang Yongnian really was a smart person. In this situation, the best way to help Lu Yixin stay calm was exactly this kind of approach.

Zheng Ranran couldn’t help feeling a touch of admiration.

Lu Yixin: “Hehehe.”

Didn’t hear, not listening.

Zheng Ranran: “……”

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧ 

The police and Fang Yongnian both arrived very quickly.

Almost at the same time—by the time they knocked on the fitting room door where Lu Yixin and her friend were hiding, her phone battery hadn’t even dropped below twenty percent.

As for Wu Tao, he had run.

According to the shop assistant’s recollection, Wu Tao had lingered by the fitting room door for a few minutes before receiving a call and leaving.

“When he left, his expression didn’t look very good. He even bumped into one of our customers and didn’t apologize.” The shop assistant was very cooperative.

“He must’ve gotten word right after you left the hospital,” Zheng Fei calculated the timing and said regretfully, “You shouldn’t have come out.”

There was no way to catch such a thing in the act. Without that, it was as good as having no evidence.

“At least we know who it is now,” Fang Yongnian didn’t deny it.

He truly shouldn’t have come out, but at the time, he hadn’t thought that far.

Lu Boyuan wasn’t in Hecheng, and Liu Miqing was still at the Meteorological Bureau. If something really had happened to Lu Yixin, she wouldn’t have had a single family member by her side.

He really hadn’t been calm enough.

“But it’s not a total loss,” Zheng Fei tried to console him. “They caught two of the guys who distracted the bodyguards.”

Even if the main culprit escaped, there were always accomplices.

“No need to make it that troublesome,” Fang Yongnian said with a faint smile.

Now that they knew who it was, everything that came next would be much easier to handle.

“I’ll take Lu Yixin back first.” He straightened up, seeing Lu Yixin poking her head curiously among the police officers.

Zheng Fei stopped him.

“I know that call you made earlier was to help the girl calm down,” Zheng Fei said seriously. 

“But are you sure that when you were acting, there wasn’t a bit of real feeling in it?”

Fang Yongnian looked at him.

“I saw that girl chatting with you in the corridor in the middle of the night,” Zheng Fei continued, frowning. “And I saw your face after she stuffed candy into your mouth in the middle of the night. If you keep going like this, you’re going to cause trouble.”

“You really want to be Lu Boyuan’s son-in-law?” He asked even more bluntly. “You really want to call him ‘Dad’?”

Fang Yongnian’s face had been expressionless at first, he was actually a bit absent-minded. The one who’d been frightened earlier wasn’t just Lu Yixin. When he’d heard that she was cornered by Wu Tao outside the fitting room, he really had panicked for a moment.

He couldn’t understand why his reaction had been so intense. Was it really just because he saw Lu Yixin as a niece?

After her confession had been so clear?

So when he heard Zheng Fei say something so outrageous, he froze for half a second.

Then his entire face darkened.

“Do you have shit in your head?” he snapped before he could stop himself.

That ridiculous image wasn’t something he wanted to imagine for even a second. What the hell did “being Lu Boyuan’s son-in-law” mean?!

“I’m just reminding you,” Zheng Fei said, shaking his shoulders as if to shudder off the thought himself. “You know there’s a whole generation gap between the two of you.”

“Can you stop thinking about this nonsense all day long?” Fang Yongnian didn’t want to argue anymore. He walked straight toward Lu Yixin and took the backpack from her hands.

“Going back?” he asked.

He wanted to leave quickly. Now that Wu Tao had appeared, a lot of things suddenly became clear.

He wanted to leave quickly—because Zheng Fei’s words just now had left a heavy wound in his heart, one that made him need somewhere to breathe.

But the girl looked like she had cried.

He could still remember that moment when the fitting room door opened, her face full of panic.

Just eighteen.

The baby fat on her face hadn’t even disappeared yet. When she smiled, she still looked exactly the same as she had at eight years old.

If it hadn’t been for her quick thinking, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he hadn’t actually been in a car accident, she might really have been deceived and taken away by Wu Tao today.

He didn’t know what Wu Tao had wanted to do to her.

Just the thought of that possibility made his whole body feel uncomfortable.

This girl had been pampered since childhood. Lu Boyuan’s temper might be like a firecracker’s, but he’d never once laid a hand on her, not even raised his voice. As for Liu Miqing, she couldn’t even bring herself to speak harshly.

And then there was him. He’d once given her all his spare time outside of work. Everything he thought was delicious, she had tasted.

If something had really happened to such a girl, what then?

He adjusted her crooked baseball cap for her and helped her put on her coat properly.

“Let’s go.” After greeting the police officers, he led the way out to press the elevator button.

Behind him, Zheng Ranran and Zheng Fei exchanged looks.

In Zheng Ranran’s eyes there was understanding, and a hint of joy.

As for Zheng Fei, all that was left was a single thought: what the hell.