Chapter 331 - Be A Maid

"I just don't understand why they don't want to go!" stormed Qing Lok inside his room.

Liu Meilien immediately shut the door to avoid anyone from overhearing them. "I think they just want to think this through. Just give them some time."

"Time? I've been up all night for days trying to find answers for this, Meilien! It was me who had put in all the work now they want to stall."

Liu Meilien honestly did not know what to tell Qing Lok. She wanted to make him feel better, to give him some comfort. But what should she say? It was them who could only decide what they wanted to do with the information that they just got.

She settled for, "You should try again tomorrow. Your brothers also had a long day."

"I had a long day," he insisted. "Just because that they were the ones that works doesn't mean that they were the only ones who could get tired. I'm sick of this, Meilien."

"What are you going to do?" she asked him, afraid of what he was going to say. She already knew what Qing Lok was going to answer her. 

He looked at her and she was surprised that he was not as confused and disturbed as she thought. There was clarity in his eyes. "I think I'm going to have to look for my mom alone. I think I have to do this on my own."

Hearing those words rise a panic inside Liu Meilien. "You can't possibly be thinking of going alone? It's in the middle of nowhere!"

Qing Lok stared at his feet. All this time, he had been following orders from his brothers. Everything that they wanted him to do, he did it. Now that he wanted to do something, they were not the ones following. It was just so messed up that his brothers could not just give this one thing to him.

Ever since he was younger, he felt like he had been the outcast. Parents always said that they do not play favorites, but they do. Qing Lok knew that it was common knowledge that his father's favorite son was Wuming. Mother's favorite son was Qing Chen. It was not that he had not received enough love from his parents… he did.

What he was talking about was that he had always felt like an outcast. Wuming and Qing Chen had always been tight, only a year apart in age. They were always doing the same stuff together. They only drifted apart when their mother supposedly passed away.

"I want to be able to do something," Qing Lok said quietly. He could not just be the youngest child that could not take responsibilities. He had far outgrown himself on that field. 

Liu Meilien sat down on the bed with him. "Are you ready?" she asked. "If ever that you go there and you find your mother, can you do it on your own? That if things go wrong, that there's nothing there, could you bring yourself back here?"

Qing Lok held his girlfriend's hands. "There's nowhere else I could go."

"What if it's dangerous? What if you get killed there?"

Qing Lok sighed. He didn't want to get to this part, to answer the question neither of them asked. "That's why you're not coming with me."

**

Huang Jia had been walking on the street, thinking that this day was going to be normal. She was on her way to work, walking on the road, her thin scarf around her neck. The soles of her old boots almost scr.a.p.ed to non-existence.

She was making a mental note of going to the shoemaker's before she goes home later in the night, when all of a sudden, a huge SUV stopped next to her.

Strong hands gripped her arms and her waist. One of them covered her nose with a handkerchief and before she was even inside the car, her eyes rolled back and darkness came for her.

**

Huang Jia was a twenty-seven years old. She worked as a customer service representative for a company that sold clothing. She worked long hours in the day and sometimes even during the night.

Her work hours were one of the reason why she could not spend enough time with her seven-year-old son, Junjie. She married when she was nineteen and gave birth on when she was twenty.

It was not the kind of life she had planned for herself. But she didn't see it coming either. She fell in love and that was it. She carved her fate into stone.

Huang Jia opened her eyes and found that she was face to face with someone she had been running away from since three months ago. She almost cried when she saw his huge face.

"Mr. Dong," she said, her voice shaking a little. She didn't want to seem weak but in the face of danger, her own body betrayed her. "I promise I'll pay you back. "I just don't have enough money yet."

Mr. Dong was a short man. But he was wide. His neck was not to be seen from underneath the high-collared shirt that he was wearing. He shook his head at her. "Huang Jia," he said her name like it was a foreign phrase. "You promised me that you would pay me by the end of last month…"

As he was talking, Huang Jia faced another horror. She looked around the room, trying to find the familiar round face of her son. "What did you do to my son?!" she cried, her tears spilling out of her eyes. 

"I didn't do anything, Huang Jia," answered Mr. Dong. "Yet," he finished.

"Oh, please, please," she wanted to beg on her knees but she found that she was tied to the chair, her ankles and wrists cutting off her circulation. "I will do anything. Please, do not hurt my Junjie."

Mr. Dong smiled wickedly from behind his rickety desk. "I do this business for a reason, Huang Jia. I have a lot of money. I could easily forget your husband's debt but that was not how the world works."

She nodded, wanted to just agree to everything that he was going to say just to save her son. When she said that she would do anything, she meant EVERYTHING. She was still a young woman. Her curves were still in their right places—the only reminder of the happy youth she lived as one of the most popular girls in school. But it all fell apart when she fell in love with the wrong man.

Her husband had been mixed with the wrong crowd. Fell into the traps of a huge scam promising a profitable business. When the loansharks finally came asking for their money, her husband fled like the coward that he was. He thought that the loansharks would leave his family alone if he went away—he thought that they would come running after him. But he was terribly wrong.

"There's one thing that you could do," said Mr. Dong, brandishing a gun from under his desk. "I need you to pretend to be a maid on our next targets."