Chapter 332 - Inside Man

Huang Jia did not know what she was supposed to do. "What do you mean pretend to be a maid?" was this some kind of a sick fetish?! Had they finally resulted in the most inhumane way of getting their money back?

Reading the expression on her eyes, Mr. Dong shook his head. "Nothing of that sort. You're really going to be doing cleaning, folding clothes—that sort of mundane job."

She knew she shouldn't be asking more—her and her son's life were being spared and she was not being sold as a s.e.x slave. But she could not help but ask. "A maid for who?"

"Not who," he answered, leaning back against his chair, showing off his huge belly. She reminded him so much of a pig--glutton and greed. Take, take, take. That was probably what was going in his head. "You are going to serve as a maid to the Qings. This is a favor for an old friend. You're going to be their inside man."

Me? Inside man? She asked herself. When had I qualified for something like that?

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Other than cleaning toilets, you are going to gather information. I don't know what they are after. I'll hand you over to them in a short while. You're going to know more about—"

"What of my debt? My husband's debt?"

Mr. Dong scratched the back of his neck with meaty fingers. "I will cut it in half."

That was worth five years of her salary.

"But if you do a good job and managed to stay alive through it," Mr. Dong said, "I'm more than willing to wipe out every single penny that your husband owes me."

Huang Jia nodded vigorously. The idea of being debt free, of finally owning her own money, of finally being able to buy something new for her son, for herself… it was a few seconds later that she processed what he said. 

What did he mean that if she managed to stay alive?

**

In the other room of Mr. Dong's little property, one of the Qing's people was taken captive.

"I am the cook!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "I know nothing. I don't know what you're talking about!" she said, trying to shake her head. They had been purging her with water, trying to drown her while she was strapped to a table.

The cook knew she was not supposed to be angry at her captors. But she could not handle their stupidity. "You've got the wrong person! I stay in the kitchen of the Qing's property! I don't go in any other part of the house. That was a strict rule!"

She could not even believe what was happening to her. The Qings had always been kind to her although she wouldn't be able to hold up all her fingers to count the times that she saw them. They paid well and gave them every other benefit that they could give her.

That was why she was wondering why they took her. She had been in the middle of her weekly shopping when men came and dragged her to the area where they cut up whole animals into parts. She thought that she finally met her doom but they made her get in the car. The Qings had provided her her own driver during her grocery trips. She worried what they had done to him.

"Is there anything that you can tell us?" the man asked and she shook her head. She was with another girl. She was entitled one maid to help her shop. She didn't know where the other woman was. She hoped that she was fine.

"I don't know anything," she said, heaving for another breath. She knew that she shouldn't have worked for the Qings. She knew that one day she would be in this position.

She could only shake her head at her own foolishness. 

She knew that she was going to die.

**

The other maid the cook had been talking about was also under tremendous torture. But unlike the cook, she knew that she was not going to die as long as she would be able to give information. She had the nerve to want to make a deal with them—anything that would get her out of this hellhole.

"I don't know what they had been up to lately, they always dismiss us at night." She coughed up more water from her throat. "They're very secretive. They have a small team—"

"What team?"

"A team of people that was helping them with their current problem."

"Where do we find these people?"

The maid wanted to laugh. She had never thought that the Qing boys were that smart. But now that she couldn't say anything to these people with her life on the line, she suddenly appreciated the level of caution they took. 

"They don't go anywhere. They don't leave that house. They don't leave until the problem is solved. They live there."

"So they are all in the house?"

"Yes," answered the maid, nodding. "Everything that they would need had to be fetched for them. No one leaves the mansion. There's no one else that could get you information other than me."

One of the men in front of her shook his head. "We can't return you to them. But in exchange for your life, you have to give us everything that you know about the property."

She was alarmed. No, what if they would kill her if she gave the information? "I want to go back to the house!"

"You can't go back to the house. It'll look suspicious if you'd return alone. We didn't touch the driver. He would only think that the two of you left without another word—we'll figure that out later. But for now, you have to tell us what you know."

She asked herself whether she should gamble or not. She found that she didn't really have that much choice.