Nan Xiang had never imagined she would find herself trapped in a nightmare like this. She had taken this job strictly to keep wealthy clients company while they drank—she absolutely refused to act as a cheap prostitute!
While the moralizing, judgmental public might arrogantly assume there was no difference between a club hostess and a common whore, to the girls working the underground, there was a massive, fundamental boundary. A premium hostess only had to endure a few wandering hands and off-color jokes. But a prostitute had to completely surrender her body to strangers.
"Let me go, you bastard!"
Feeling the ruthless stranger violently pulling down her lace panties, Nan Xiang shrieked in genuine terror. She struggled fiercely, kicking her two long, beautiful legs frantically to shove his heavy body off her.
"Quite the temper, huh?" Adrian chuckled disdainfully, completely unfazed by her resistance as he effortlessly trapped both of her slender wrists in one hand. "Getting so wildly worked up over playing the role of a whore?"
"Damn you! I am not a whore! I am absolutely not a whore!" Nan Xiang screamed hysterically.
She had sacrificed her dignity, her art degree, and her pride just to survive the crushing poverty her mother and boyfriend had dragged her into. But that absolutely did not mean she would ever sell her body. She had numbed herself to the indignities of the VIP rooms, but at her absolute core, she believed she was still physically and morally clean.
Crash!
"You fucking bastard, let her go!"
The heavy, soundproof door to the VIP room was suddenly kicked wide open. A tall, aggressive figure rushed in from the neon-lit hallway, launching himself toward the leather sofa to knock the predator off the trembling woman.
"Xi Cheng! Xi Cheng!"
Seeing her boyfriend miraculously arrive at the absolute final second, Nan Xiang was so overwhelmed with relief that heavy tears immediately welled up in her eyes. She frantically scrambled out from beneath Adrian, grabbing her torn, ruined dress to cover her exposed chest, and hid desperately behind her savior's back.
"You sick, arrogant bastard! Do you have any idea that she is my girlfriend?!" Xi Cheng roared, glaring at Adrian with pure, manufactured hatred. He cracked his knuckles loudly, clenching his fists in a display of aggressive masculinity.
"Oh?" Adrian stood up leisurely, adjusting the lapels of his tailored suit. He looked at the two 'lovebirds' standing before him and felt a dark, cynical laugh bubble up in his throat. "You actually bring your own wife to a nightclub to sell her body to strangers?"
"If I don't fucking kill you tonight, my name isn't Xi Cheng!"
Hearing the arrogant billionaire dare to mock his pride, Xi Cheng's face flushed with violent anger. He puffed his chest out, immediately going into his aggressive, intimidating 'Hulk' mode.
Because Nan Xiang was so stunningly beautiful, it was practically guaranteed that she would constantly encounter aggressive, handsy clients while entertaining in these dark rooms. Whenever that happened, Xi Cheng would dramatically kick the door down and rush in to play the protective hero.
It was an extortion racket. Xi Cheng was 1.8 meters tall and possessed the scarred, roguish look of a hardened street thug. He had been a violent, manipulative parasite his entire life. Most wealthy, white-collar clients would instantly sober up and panic the moment a massive thug threatened to beat them to death. To avoid a public scandal or a physical beating, the terrified clients would always opt to settle the matter privately, allowing Xi Cheng to aggressively extort them for massive 'compensation' payouts!
That was the exact, calculated reason Xi Cheng hadn't rushed the door the very second he received Nan Xiang's frantic SOS text. Instead, he had gone for a leisurely stroll outside the club, smoking a cigarette before finally heading back in.
After all, if the client hadn't actually crossed the line or committed a crime yet, Xi Cheng wouldn't have the leverage to demand an exorbitant payout, right?
But he had severely miscalculated tonight. He never expected this particular client to be an absolute, ruthless predator. His girlfriend's dress was already shredded, and she was practically naked. This was a massive, unexpected psychological loss for him!
"Young man, there is absolutely no need for this primitive anger," Adrian smiled disdainfully, seeing Xi Cheng posturing and preparing to swing. He didn't even bother to raise his fists. Instead, he simply reached down and clicked open the sleek, expensive briefcase resting on the glass table.
"Here is two hundred thousand yuan in cold, untraceable cash. Let us both simply pretend this unfortunate misunderstanding never occurred. What do you say?"
The blinding sight of thick, tightly banded stacks of bright red RMB banknotes instantly paralyzed Xi Cheng. The violent tension in his shoulders evaporated, and his tightly clenched fists fell limp at his sides.
Two hundred thousand in cash?!
This was an astronomical, life-changing sum for a street rat like him. Nan Xiang endured the humiliating groping of strange men every single night, and she barely scraped together twenty or thirty thousand yuan a month!
"Xi Cheng...?" Nan Xiang called out pitifully, clutching her torn clothes to her chest as she stared at her boyfriend's back.
"Deal!"
Xi Cheng first shot a brief, callous glance back at his beautiful girlfriend—who was literally sobbing her eyes out and shaking with trauma—before his greedy eyes snapped back to the mountain of cash. He gritted his teeth and nodded vigorously.
"Xi Cheng! I... he..." Nan Xiang gasped in absolute horror, pointing a trembling finger at Adrian. Just minutes ago, this monster had violently stripped her naked and touched her most intimate areas, yet her supposed protector wouldn't even throw a single punch to defend her honor.
"Walk!" Xi Cheng ignored her completely. He eagerly snatched the heavy briefcase off the table, grabbed Nan Xiang roughly by the wrist, and dragged her out of the VIP room.
"Xi Cheng, why the hell didn't you beat him up in there?!"
The two of them practically sprinted out of the nightclub and into the cool night air. Once they were a block away, Nan Xiang violently wrenched her wrist free, wiping away her tears as she screamed at her boyfriend in utter disbelief.
"Oh, relax. It's really no big deal. You aren't missing a piece of flesh, are you?" Xi Cheng scoffed, entirely dismissive of her trauma. He unzipped the briefcase, his eyes shining with manic joy as he pulled out a thick bundle of RMB, feeling the weight of the paper. "With this kind of massive capital, I can finally pay off all those heavy gambling debts from last month!"
"I..." Nan Xiang was completely speechless, her heart turning to ash.
But tragically, she was used to this soul-crushing betrayal. She knew deep down that money and his own pathetic ego were the absolute most important things in Xi Cheng's life; her safety and dignity ranked a distant second at best. Feeling utterly broken, she just angrily tied the shredded straps of her bra back together.
"Come on! Let's hit a different bar for a couple of celebratory drinks, and then hit the underground tables for a few rounds! I swear, my luck is finally going to turn around tonight with this kind of stake!" Xi Cheng laughed loudly, patting the leather briefcase with greedy affection.
"Xi Cheng, shouldn't we just—" Nan Xiang desperately wanted to persuade him to just pay off the violent loan sharks and find a legitimate, honest job, but she swallowed the words before they left her throat.
Xi Cheng won't ever listen to me. If he were actually willing to live a decent, respectable life, he wouldn't have turned me into a club hostess in the first place.
"Stop right there! Put your hands up!"
Just as Xi Cheng was aggressively pulling Nan Xiang toward the red-light district to gamble away her trauma, several heavily armed, tactical police officers suddenly flooded out of the alleyways, completely surrounding them from both the front and the rear.
"Officers! Officers, wait, we are good, law-abiding citizens!"
Seeing four black muzzles pointed directly at his chest, Xi Cheng's fake bravado instantly shattered. He was so terrified he nearly wet his pants. He immediately dropped to his knees, throwing his hands high in the air with a pathetic, mournful wail.
Even though he frequently got into bloody street brawls and proudly lived off the money his girlfriend made from being groped, he was just a parasitic coward. He was a petty thug; he would never dare commit a major, capital felony like murder or arson. The absolute bravest, most criminal act he had ever accomplished in his miserable life was secretly slipping a date-rape drug into Gu Li's drink to extort her for cash.
"Shut your damn mouth and put your faces against the brick wall!" a tactical officer barked.
Two officers kept their weapons trained steadily on Nan Xiang and Xi Cheng, forcing them to press their cheeks against the cold brick with their hands locked behind their heads. A third officer moved in and snatched the heavy leather briefcase off the pavement.
Click. Splash!
The officer aggressively upended the briefcase onto the hood of a patrol car. Alongside the massive stacks of 200,000 yuan in cash... two massive, tightly sealed plastic bricks of strange white powder tumbled out, hitting the metal with a heavy thud!
"What absolute audacity! To dare traffic this massive volume of narcotics right in the heart of downtown Shanghai... it is completely outrageous!" the commanding officer growled, picking up the heavy bricks of powder with gloved hands.
How dare they move weight like this in the city center? This couple must be completely insane. Were they trying to be the modern, drug-running equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde?
"No! No, wait! That stuff absolutely does not belong to us!"
Upon twisting his head and seeing the two massive bricks of narcotics sitting next to his cash, all the blood completely drained from Xi Cheng's face. He turned pale as a ghost.
As the old saying goes: It isn't the violent hooligans you need to fear; it is the educated, calculating ones.
Xi Cheng knew the brutal, uncompromising reality of the legal system. Getting caught trafficking that sheer volume of pure narcotics was enough to guarantee him a bullet in the back of the head by a firing squad eighteen times over!
"Cuff the bastards and throw them in the van!" the commander ordered sharply.
It was blatantly clear the officers had absolutely zero interest in listening to the frantic, sobbing explanations of a caught trafficker. After all, what kind of hardened criminal ever obediently confessed the moment they were caught holding the bag?
.....
.....
.....
Support me and read advance chapters on patreon.com/ImmortalDaoWriter