Chapter 184

Chapter 184

For the next few days, I felt like I was celebrating New Year’s.

Meng Yifan had escaped danger and survived by the skin of his teeth. To me, that was the best news in the world.

Now that he was safe, I naturally relaxed too.

As it happened, the place I was renting had reached the end of its lease, so I simply moved in with Meng Yifan.

Technically, I did own a place-the apartment my dad and my grandfather had left me.

But I didn’t dare go back and live there.

Well, it wasn’t that I didn’t dare. It just hurt too much to stay there.

I had no intention of selling it, nor did I plan to rent it out. I would just leave it empty.

Meng Yifan’s place had three bedrooms and a living room. Now that he was single again, living there alone would be lonely, so he had Song Xiaotian move in too.

The three of us worked during the day, then ate, drank, and had fun at night. Life was surprisingly pleasant.

But our days were genuinely busy. Lately, Meng Yifan wasn’t interested in anything else. All he wanted was to sell Tao Xiaoyu’s villa and recover some of his losses.

At our agency, aside from the three of us, there were only four employees left.

Two of them were Xie Peng and Li Xingyang, who had joined us right after graduating.

Of the other two, one was Sun Tianyang. He was in his thirties and was the top sales agent in our branch. His performance used to be even better than mine.

The last one was a woman named Lin Qiao, twenty-seven this year, also a veteran employee.

If we wanted to sell Tao Xiaoyu’s villa and make a huge profit off it, Meng Yifan definitely couldn’t handle it personally. After all, he was too familiar with Tao Xiaoyu’s family.

So he sent Sun Tianyang and Lin Qiao to make contact with Tao Xiaoyu’s parents.

Things went quite smoothly. Both sides agreed to list the villa for sale through our branch. As for how much it would sell for, Tao Xiaoyu’s parents didn’t care, but the final amount they received had to be 1.3 million.

How much we marked it up by was our business.

If it sold for more, the extra money would be ours.

In reality, the market value of that villa was 4.6 million.

What did 4.6 million mean? Some people won a five-million-yuan lottery prize and felt like they had instantly risen from rags to riches.

Yet Xiang Kai had casually bought his mistress a 4.6-million-yuan villa.

But that 4.6 million was only its market value. Now that the villa had become a Stigmatized Property, it definitely wouldn’t be worth that much. We couldn’t even estimate how much it might sell for, since we had never sold a villa that was also a Stigmatized Property before.

In any case, the reserve price Meng Yifan negotiated with the auction house was 1.8 million, with each bid increase no less than ten thousand.

As for the final transaction price, that would depend on how the auction house promoted it and built up momentum.

Honestly, I also hoped the house would sell for more so Meng Yifan could make a bigger profit.

He had said he wanted to repay Song Xiaotian and me, and that he would split the proceeds from the sale equally between the three of us.

Previously, in order to get Brother Liu to help us, I had spent three hundred thousand. I had already given him that money, and I wanted to earn it back.

Once I got that money back, I would buy another car for transportation. In our line of work, not having a car really was inconvenient.

Besides that matter, there was one other thing I was paying attention to-or rather, one person.

That person was Du Yunting.

He had been detained by the police on the day before the bidding.

We all knew Du Yunting was Du Ruhai. In all of Lanjiang City, throughout the entire business world, no one could make Du Ruhai suffer a setback. But Pan Xiaorou had done it.

She caused a huge scene at the police station, used every connection available to Jiangling Group and her family, made hundreds of copies of that surveillance video, and publicly declared that Du Yunting was the murderer who had caused Xiang Kai’s death.
Du Yunting was taken away by the police the afternoon before the bidding-right from the entrance of Weihai Group. A lot of reporters were at the scene at the time.

And those reporters had all been arranged by Pan Xiaorou.

When Du Yunting was taken away, Song Xiaotian and I even went over to watch the show.

It was the first time I had ever seen anger and humiliation on that man’s face.

By then, all of Lanjiang City knew Du Yunting was suspected of murder. So the twenty-four-hour detention we’d anticipated turned into forty-eight hours.

Naturally, there was no way he could attend the bidding the next day.

In truth, if he couldn’t go, he could have had a senior executive from Weihai Group represent him.

But because he was suspected of murder, and because the matter had become the talk of the entire city, Weihai Group was directly disqualified from the bidding.

This major project was one of Lanjiang City’s key projects. The higher-ups were probably also taking public opinion into account, so they struck Weihai Group’s name outright. No matter how much money Weihai Group had, they were no longer allowed to participate.

In the end, Jiangling Group took the project without a fight, and Pan Xiaorou became the biggest winner.

Du Yunting must have been drowning in regret. He probably never imagined a woman could make him lose so miserably.

He had killed Xiang Kai, only to hand Xiang Kai’s wife the victory on a silver platter.

But after being detained for forty-eight hours, Du Yunting was released.

We all knew nothing would happen to him. Someone like him had connections most people could never touch in their entire lives, along with the most professional team of lawyers.

But Xiang Kai’s death had caused too much of a stir. In the end, someone had to be convicted as the killer, or public outrage would never settle.

So not long after he was released, the “killer” committed suicide out of guilt.

We had met this killer before too. He was Xiang Kai’s driver and personal assistant-the man who had been keeping watch near Pan Xiaorou’s home.

Pan Xiaorou had forced him to his death.

Although Pan Xiaorou never told us that, Song Xiaotian investigated it privately. The man had jumped from a building. After his death, his family received a sum of money-a huge sum. Two million.

The police didn’t dig any deeper. They directly identified that man as the true killer behind the murders of Xiang Kai and Tao Xiaoyu.

And since the killer was already dead, with a suicide note left behind in which he confessed to the entire process of his crimes, there was no need to investigate further. The case could be closed just like that.

Even then, the public uproar did not end. Anyone with eyes could tell the so-called killer was a scapegoat.

But public opinion couldn’t change anything. Sometimes it could frighten certain people, but it could never frighten those who truly stood high above the rest.

And so, the matter ended there.

Song Xiaotian was badly shaken. He had been frightened by Pan Xiaorou.

Especially after learning that the driver had been forced to death by Pan Xiaorou, he had nightmares every night, dreaming that Pan Xiaorou was hunting him down.

Recently, he had been hiding from her, while Pan Xiaorou had been looking for him every day. She even started calling me.

I basically had to answer one call from Pan Xiaorou every day, asking me where Song Xiaotian was. Sometimes I might get two or three calls in a single day.

But this was a private matter between Song Xiaotian and Pan Xiaorou. I didn’t know how to persuade him, so all I could do was help him lie.

That night, Song Xiaotian and I had just finished handling some work.

We were about to head home and rest when, halfway there, Seventh Master called me.

Over the phone, he told me something and asked me to come to his house.

And this matter was something only I could handle.

He had found Du Yuwei’s child…