The Drowing Summer

"People died in the Gulf Project demolition." Xia Xiaoman spoke first, noticing the man's pupils constricting violently again. "It wasn't an accident, was it?"

Li Moting suddenly yanked her to her feet, his drenched shirt clinging to the tense ridges of his muscles. As he tore off his tie to bind her wrists, Xia Xiaoman spotted fresh blood still seeping from the needle marks on his inner forearm.

"Listen, little liar," he murmured in her ear, his breath laced with the bitter tang of medication. "Tomorrow at nine sharp, I want to see you in my office with a real treatment plan."

"Or what?" Xia Xiaoman tilted her chin up defiantly, raindrops from her lashes splashing onto the back of his hand.

Li Moting abruptly bit his own index finger and smeared the bead of blood into the hollow of her collarbone. "Or this bloodstained handprint will be on your apartment wall."

The security guard on patrol that night later recalled seeing the CEO carrying a drenched woman through the rain, her wrists bound in a bloodied tie. And the notoriously touch-averse President Li—unthinkably—allowed her to press her face against the crook of his neck, breathing him in.