BLACK JADE[COMPLETED]

MINE

Dear Readers.

This chapter is the longest chapter i have written in my book. I dedicate it to BichenWangji She encouraged me to write this book over and over. Thank you. Nakupenda Sana.😘😘😘😘😘

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Jiang Cheng couldn't remember how, but eventually he ended up on the couch in front of the fireplace at a safe house near the pier. He was sure the place had a bed, but he hadn't yet bothered to use it for the last 1 year. The couch was more strategically convenient anyways—clear views up the stairs and to both the front and back doors, proximity to fireplace pokers as makeshift weapons, multiple possible escape routes...he crashed on the couch feeling like absolute and utter shit. He was done for. The commissioner would surely kill him for fucking up this badly. 

He felt a buzzing in his pocket and wiggled around until he could extricate his phone from his jeans pocket, intending to hurl it across the room, maybe shatter it against the far wall if he was lucky, but he stopped when he saw the text that had popped up on the screen.

It read: Do you think that you can run away from me Lotus Ye?

Lan Huan had actually texted him. The absurdity of it all caught up with Jiang Cheng all at once, and he barked out something between a laugh and a sob, relief and shock and an ambiguous mess of other washing over him far too quickly to process. How did he know his burner phone number?

.He needed a plan. His usual strategy of working things out on the fly was definitely not going to cut it this time; if Lan Huan was capable of playing him like he did, then Jiang Cheng would have to seriously up his game to not get duped a second time. First, he needed to figure out exactly where they stood, now that he knew Lan Huan was Black Jade.

Had Lan Huan been following him since morning. Had he discovered that he knew the truth? So why text him? Jiang Cheng stalked mindlessly around the kitchen, half-empty wine glass discarded on the counter, long since forgotten, streakily illuminated by the only light in the room, which came from the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the curtains. This was not exactly how he worked best—tipsy and panicked in the early hours before sunrise—usually preferring to work with no plan at all, but the stickiness of this situation necessitated plotting; and plotting.

He could take the offensive, go after Lan Huan bluntly and directly, and save them both from the palaver of these sorts of clandestine affairs. Truth be told, he thought, he would prefer that, if only to save his heart from further...activity....from false hope, perhaps. But what if—and now he stopped pacing, bracing his hands against the edge of the countertop, leaning his weight against it, thinking what if Lan Huan killed only bad guys?

Morning replaced the night while Jiang cheng was still pacing his kitchen. He put the kettle on for his coffee and trudged through the halls until he came to the room where he kept his belongings, the ones that hadn't just been for putting on a show of moving in, mostly items of clothing. He took a long shower and once dressed, he looked himself over in the mirror. This would do nicely. He tugged his hair back away from his face and made his way back to the kitchen, still dragging his feet, but with slightly more spring in his step now that he was dressed.