Chapter Text
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
"The Emperor is dead."
The announcement rang in the empty room, echoing in the gilded pillars and hand-painted ceiling. V, whose real name was lost in deleted files and false identities, walked down exactly seventy feet of maroon carpet until he reached a raised platform in the center. In the living room that more so resemble a designer showroom, V's loose jeans and stained shirt looked like an insult.
You'd want to forget you saw him as soon as you saw him. That was the whole point.
On the raised platform was an elaborately designed armchair with two rearing dragons and two incense burners. A man sat on it, a lord in the vacant room. Despite just playing a most critical card, his eyes were nonchalant as he turned his gaze from V to examine the ruby eyes of a snake signet ring on his thumb. "How did it go?"
"The Emperor was in a heated argument with The Chieftain when the poison seized his life," replied V.
"Perfect." To kill the single most powerful man in China under the watchful eyes of the second was a feat that deserved to be studied. The seated man dismissed the deed: "All ten million of your payment is ready."
"Thank you."
V turned around, mind already on his next target when there was a silenced gunshot and a fierce pain burning in his chest. V looked down, his own mortality a fascination after all the lives he took. Every beat of his heart forced out more blood and air stopped circulating in his lung. With his last bit of strength, V turned to the man sitting on the makeshift throne.
The man hadn't lifted a finger, didn't even seem to notice.
The best assassin in the world was just an insignificant pawn in the grand scheme of things.
Monaco, France
Walls of glass surrounded the tallest penthouse suite in Monaco.
"Le roi est mort," said Xiao Jingyan. The city laid at his feet, glass and metal reflecting the setting sun. The ground began to light up as the sky darkened, millions of colorful light from the neon signs of casinos and red taillight of the world's most expensive sport cars. At this height, all Jingyan could see was little flares of illumination. Blandly, he added, "Vive le roi."
"Oiu," said the man behind him.
"My father is dead," said Jingyan, this time in his native Chinese. In Hong Kong, it would be nighttime already. Jingyan's breath ghosted over the window, any trace of vapor instantly gone as the glass automatically kept itself free of blemishes. As a good son, Jingyan should feel more sorrow, feel more anger. Yet, too much had happen between him and the triad boss known as "The Emperor" in China.
Jingyan remembered the Lin family, the screams of everyone trapped in the chemical fire that almost claimed his life twelve years ago. Backstabbing his best friend, Secretary for Security Lin Xie, was an addition to the countless corpses his father created in his reign. It was only an accident that the rest of the Lin family died and half a city was burned down.
The gears of The Emperor's empire was lubricated by all the blood he spilled, starting with the blood of his own father and flavored with the blood of his oldest son. After learning about the true nature of his father's dealings, the fear of losing his father transformed into some kind of apathetic expectancy. Jingyan said, "Regardless, he was my father."
Zhanying did not speak, his eyes indecipherable.
"I've sworn before," said Jingyan. Back when Jingyan called him Daddy while all his brothers called him Father, when dishes of pastries were always prepared for him after school and when he still demanded piggyback rides. "That if anyone kills him, I will avenge his death."
"The Emperor was poisoned in a meeting with Mei Changsu," said Zhanying, as if Jingyan hadn't already read every memorandum delivered to him in the last two hours. Mei Changsu wanted The Emperor to withdraw from the highly profitable drug business, in exchange for a large number of legitimate businesses.
From the information Jingyan had, the discussion went from downhill to pit bottom.
"Mei Changsu," repeated Jingyan. Even from across the world, he'd heard of the name that made people's blood freeze in their vein. It'd gotten to a point where some people didn't even dare speak it, instead referring to the enigmatic man as "The Chieftain." Jingyan raised an eyebrow, "He killed my father?"
"That is the general consensus," said Zhanying.
"If that is true, then I need to re-evaluate my opinion of his intelligence," said Jingyan. Really, his opinion was -had been?- quite high. Mei Changsu rose to prominence by helping his brother, Xiao Jinghuan, secure over two hundred docks and four hundred casinos from rivals. Also to his achievement was half a billion USD in stock market profits that he'd credited to Jinghuan over the course of six months.
Then, in one sweeping move, Mei Changsu claimed everything he'd ever helped Jinghuan collected, betraying and bankrupting Jinghuan in a way that was most deserving but devastating. Mei Changsu was a long-term thinker, someone who played with chess pieces from the future and thought seven steps ahead when most people wondered what happened in his last move.
Jingyan said, "Maybe it's Mei Changsu, maybe it's not. The whole thing stinks of conspiracy."
Jingyan raised his hand and a dragon signet ring resting on his ring finger reflected off the glass of the penthouse. In the last rays of the setting sun, the diamond eyes of the dragon gleam crimson.
It was time to go home.
Nanjing, China
In a peaceful tea house, one completely booked by a single patron, Mei Changsu sat with Lin Chen to talk business over two matcha lava cakes and a kettle of Da Hong Pao. The hushed discussion started with information about stocks Mei Changsu invested in, then changed to people Mei Changsu wanted to keep an eye on and then updates on various trades Mei Changsu was attempting to monopolize.
At long last, after almost three million USD's worth of information was exchanged, the topic changed to the Xiao family.
More specifically, the seventh son who was returning from France to attend his father's funeral.
Lin Chen handed Mei Changsu something, three pictures of the same twenty-eight years old man entering the Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azure. A red dress shirt and black jeans fitted the elegant contours of his body, making him look like a disguised movie star behind his sunglasses. Although the pictures were taken with the highest quality cameras that even money couldn't buy, everything except the man was blurry to Mei Changsu.
Mei Changsu lifted a finger to stroke the Polaroid cheeks, "He is as beautiful as ever."
"I prefer 'em female," Lin Chen replied, as if Mei Changsu hadn't heard the same line too many times already. He muttered under his breath and Mei Changsu didn't bother to correct him, "And you've only been pining for him for the last twelve years."
"Who is his bodyguard?" asked Mei Changsu. Jingyan travelled with someone else, a man who stood next to him in all three pictures. They pose like two friends, but Mei Changsu could read the protective lines of the man's body. In all three pictures, the man trailed a step behind, like a subordinate.
"Bodyguard?" Lin Chen's express carried a bit of hesitation before he corrected, "Boyfriend."
The world stilled for a moment.
"Boyfriend," Mei Changsu repeated. The smooth tea suddenly tasted bitter and he wondered why it wasn't sour. He looked at the pictures again and saw what he missed before. In the second picture, Jingyan'd leaned a little too close and in the third, the curve of his smile was a little too sweet. He remembered that Jingyan didn't like airplane rides - was he being held in a first-class seat or having his discomfort kissed away right now?
A hideous emotion reared, constricting his throat and he felt himself getting tongue-tied as he stared down at the plain features of Jingyan's boyfriend. Even if Jingyan didn't resemble a model on a bad day, he could certainly do better than that. He wondered if Jingyan still smiled that shy smile, the one where he averted his eyes and hunched his shoulders a little.
He wondered if that smile was now directed at his boyfriend.
"At least he swings your way," said Lin Chen. He tried to inject a bit of optimism into the stormy look that was contaminating the entire tea house. There was how nothing ever piss Mei Changsu off and then there was this brand of pissed-off. "He might be overjoyed to know that his best friend is still alive."
That snapped Mei Changsu back to reality. The man released the sleeve clenched in his fingers, almost startled at his own response. Thinking back to the tears streaming down Jingyan's cheeks as Lin Shu rained angry words at his kneeling form, Mei Changsu shook his head, "I think Lin Shu hurt him beyond what he can forgive."
Even now, Mei Changsu didn't dare to remember the worst of what Lin Shu said to Jingyan or how he'd, in the end, struck Jingyan.
Multiple times.
"Yeah, that's what you always say. When you're not gratified about how that saved his life," said Lin Chen. He'd long recognized the faraway look of grief whenever Mei Changsu's mind strayed to Jingyan. It'd almost became Mei Changsu's default expression. But it wasn't Lin Chen's business that Mei Changsu sometimes dialed Jingyan's private line just to hear the man's puzzled "Allô, qui est à l'appareil?"
Lin Chen lifted his hand, "Hey, if you're not going to eat it, you can't let that go to waste."
Mei Changsu's eyes followed where his finger pointed, at his untouched lava cake. When he and Jingyan were young, Jingyan'd always came up with one excuse or another to not eat his desserts so Lin Shu could have it. Jingyan was never fond of sweet, and he liked to give. Lin Shu liked to take - but only from him.
That'd been the fine balance of their relationship, the dynamics between Lin Shu and his Jingyan.
He could still remember the delicate angle Jingyan like to tilt his head when he was particularly puzzled. His eyes would widen fractionally and his mouth would pull down in the beginning of a repressed pout. Then, there was that fire, the intense focus as Jingyan dedicated everything, soul, body, mind and heart, to something.
Mei Changsu allowed a smile to slide across his lips as he turned his eyes away. "No."
Mei Changsu wrapped himself under a thick winter coat, oblivious to how it was already spring. Or maybe he was cold despite the chemical fire that once burned on his entire body. On the other side of the low table, Lin Chen wasn't sure if Mei Changsu was really talking about the cake he didn't spare another look at when he added, "Mine."
Lin Chen took the cake anyway.
Shanghai, China
Within a mansion where the richest of the rich lived, an elder man watched a younger one untangle himself from a knot of six scantily clad girls. Sprawled around the entire oversized garden were busty women who didn't seem to mind the still chilly temperature as they splashed around in heated water or skinny dipped in a pool of champagne on the side.
Models, models-wannabes - each girl was more beautiful than the last, drop dead gorgeous in different ways. Some girls nuzzled each other, putting a show for the only man in the garden, an over-weighed one who walked around like he owned the world.
Sole heir of the now deceased Emperor, Xiao Jingxuan came pretty close.
"Why is he coming back now, of all times?" growled Jingxuan. He knotted the two halves of a thick bathrobe together, finding the temperature chilly now that he was removed from the heat of the flushed women's bodies. Everything was such a waste of time when people would do anything to throw money at him and the top models from three different countries were frolicking around in his champagne pool right now.
Naked.
The other man, the bearer of news who also doubled as Jingxuan's most trusted adviser, took a lazy drag of his tobacco pipe, eyes sharp over the hazy fumes. Xie Yu said, "The Dragon has return to claim the throne."
Jingxuan thrust his hand out, displaying the tiger signet ring on his middle finger. Each of The Emperor's adult sons was given one, carved with an animal from the zodiac and all of them, even Jingyan, wore it like a badge of honor. "The tiger is the real king of the jungle and I am the true lord of this concrete jungle."
Xie Yu didn't bother to answer the declaration. Technically, Jingxuan's name was the only name written on the will, but the loyalty of The Emperor's one hundred thousand men and the international network of influence weren't things that could be given through a will. Jingxuan was the only son of The Emperor who only possessed the inheritance he was given.
Most of The Emperor's son started their own businesses. Even without the help and deception of The Chieftain, Jinghuan once flourished. Sadly, he was as ambitious as he was shortsighted. At one point, when he won the support of the now defunct Hua Triad, his wealth rivaled his father's and at another point, he was bankrupted beyond what his father was willing to bail him out of.
And then there was The Dragon.
Jingyan was neither a fool like Jingxuan nor a madman like Jinghuan. Xie Yu was aware of the seventh son's developments in France, how the sixteen year old boy carved out his own, legitimate, empire in the flourishing oil business, the casinos and reviving stock markets. The man didn't claim to be ambitious, but he was frighteningly steady in the way that felt like a blade wrapped in silk.
Sharp as a blade and smooth as silk, too.
"Well, what the fuck are we gunna do?" demanded Jingxuan. Because Hell, he didn't think Swan, winner of Miss Universe two years ago, could wait another second for him. Besides, it was too cold to be standing so damn far away from the heat of his pool in just a bathrobe. If Xie Yu hadn't think the idea was outrageous, Jingxuan would have long installed an outdoor heating system for the five acres of land.
The decision was simple enough.
Xie Yu said, "Kill him."
"Okay, deal with it," said Jingxuan. He waddled back to his pool, shivering. He sighed in relief as the heat washed over him again, sending the chills away. He ruled the world. Forget Jinghuan, forget Jingyan, forget the other fools. Even The Chieftain, whose real name Jingxuan wasn't exactly brave enough to say, betrayed Jinghuan to get on his good side.
Life was perfect.