Dark Purple Rose [YiZhan FF]

Chapter 29

It was a warm evening in late summer when Zhan, together with his new bodyguard, the police chief, and his neighbor, Wen Rouhan, sat on the porch of his parents' country house, watching the crackling campfire in front of the house and watching Zhan's parents sizzle a few slices of meat and sausages in that fire. It was the last evening before Zhan and Wen Rouhan headed back to the city.

Zhan had been with his parents for the eighth day and had used these past few days to recover a little from all the terror and horror. And although he wasn't really allowed to, he had told them everything that had happened to him since his last visit, down to the smallest detail. His parents were shocked and very worried about their son. His mother even cried because she couldn't believe what her pretty son had been through.

Of course, Zhan had also told them that they hadn't inherited the house from a distant uncle, but that it was a gift from Isla Isari for them instead. But his parents hadn't said much about that. They simply didn't know what to say. But they were happy for Zhan that he at least knew who his biological parents were. And, of course, they were also sad because they were both dead. When Zhan's dad cried, he explained that he was very sad because they never had the chance to see their wonderful son grow up and see what a great young man he had become. Afterwards, they all cried and held each other in their arms.

They also talked about Yibo. After Zhan had told them what had happened and how he had felt ignored by Yibo, how he felt about it and what thoughts had gone through his head and how much he hated Yibo and never wanted to forgive him, his mother had asked him a question that really left Zhan speechless. Because it didn't even occur to him to ask this himself. "How was Wang Yibo supposed to know what his supervisor, this Agent Lee, was really up to with you?"

This one question made Zhan look at his mom speechlessly, while his brain started to rattle and Zhan had to ask himself how Yibo could have known what Agent Lee was up to? No one suspected Agent Lee of anything. And then the realization that Wang Yibo was fucking innocent hit him like a hammer blow! Suddenly Zhan remembered all the harsh words he'd thrown at Yibo on the phone and how hard he'd tried to hate Yibo. And that made Zhan feel the worst guilty conscience in the world that he could possibly imagine. He would have liked to apologize to Yibo. But how? He still didn't have a new cell phone and he still didn't know Yibo's number by heart! Then it just had to wait until he was back in the city!

That last evening, as he sat on the veranda with Wen Rouhan, Wen Rouhan was finally ready to tell Zhan how it came about that he kept appearing in the stories Zhan was told. "It all started when I had just been transferred to another police station. My partner and I were on patrol duty when we were told by headquarters that a fire had broken out in a birth house and that we should go there. When we got there, the fire department was already there fighting the fire. Flames were coming out of the windows and the roof of the birth house. A couple of firemen took it in turns to run into the building in pairs to look for survivors. But, well, they only found bodies. At first, everyone assumed that the fire might have been caused by a technical fault. The house was old and so was the electrics. But when two firefighters came out of the burning house after another tour and said that they had found lots of bodies, but no babies, it was clear that the fire must have been set."

"Yes, that's understandable." Zhan replied.

"Well, while the bodies were taken away one by one and the fire department finally managed to put out the fire, we started our work. For some reason the homicide department, it was clear it was murder because the fire didn't start on its own and the babies were missing, pulled me into their investigation. And so I worked with them and two other departments. One department was responsible for the abducted babies. And that was my wife's department. At the time, she and the other investigators suspected that the perpetrator or perpetrators were only after the babies. I disagreed after I found out who the dead were. But nobody listened to me. I was just a simple police officer who normally drove a patrol car and had to solve disputes or investigate thefts. I had worked for the drug squad for almost six years. But after everything I experienced there, I wanted to do something else. Something simpler and joined the police patrol service."