When Hu Lei got back to her apartment, she was emotional and unseeing. If she had been in her right mind, she might have noticed the different breath which had been in her s.p.a.ce. But she had been shaken to her core by wrath.Contrary to her expectations, she had not been moved to tears due to the beautiful last words from her father. No, she was angry. She slammed her door shut. She had known that her father had often lied to her, but she did not know the real depth of his deceit.
Some phrases jumped out to the forefront of her mind.
[You have a brother…
You might wonder why I did not claim him even as he was called another man"s. But there was no need. I had achieved perfection with you.]
The darkness that always hid in the edges of her mind took advantage of her anger. She tried to keep her grasp on clarity, but she could not. How could a father that she had always thought was compa.s.sionate deep within be so cold? Did she only think of her as a tool?
Another portion of the letter came to her mind.
[You have always asked me if you had other family…
I know that I always told you that we were all alone, but that is not true. I have always believed that greatness comes from standing apart from the crowd.
However, I will not stop you from searching for them. After all, I am dead.]
She had not expected a lot of kind words from him. But she had always thought that they were partners. Even when he went off into his crazy place, she had always supported him because they were a team. Now, she realised nothing was ever as it seemed.
Hu Lei felt her bottled up feelings surge within her chest, and she swept everything from her kitchen countertop with a m.u.f.fled and pained scream. She felt that it was not enough and knocked down the pots, pans and plates from the rest of the kitchen. She pushed the microwave to the floor and still, it did not seem like it was enough.
The darkness hungered for more. It cried for blood that it could not have.
Hu Lei no longer remembered herself as she let out her frustration and disappointment on the house, killing her television and appliances along with her furniture. Then, she fell on the thick carpet and cried. She cried for the father that she wanted to believe loved her. She cried for her lost childhood spent training how to fight and kill. And she cried for the brother who did not have a chance to meet his father, even though the man did not deserve such a sweet child.
When her mind cleared up, she found herself in the middle of an indescribable mess. There were broken and tipped over things everywhere. It was like a hurricane had pa.s.sed through the house. Before she could think of her next step, there was a soft knock on the door.
Chen Li…
She remembered that he was supposed to bring her father"s ashes. She weighed her options and decided to leave things as they were. She did not know people in the city, and she needed to have her apartment fixed.
She rushed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face to clean off the tears and give herself a clearer mind before going back to open the door. She did not attempt to hide the mess that the room had become as she took the urn in a box.
To Chen Li"s credit, he did not show a change in expression as his eyes swept over the room. "Would you like me to send a clean-up crew?" He asked.
"Thank you. That would be really help. I have been meaning to renovate the place. I just got ahead of myself." Hu Lei kept a straight face as she spoke the words.
Hearing the words, even the great a.s.sistant felt like he would lose his composure in spite of learning his skills from the master, his cold-faced boss. "I will get right to it. Meanwhile, you can move to the penthouse." With that, he walked away quickly, afraid that his mask would break down.
Hu Lei thought of calling out to him and asking him not to tell Zhong Feng about the incident. But she did not. She simply closed the door and took out the urn from the white box. The urn looked simple, but she had seen enough valuables to know that it was of significant value. She looked at it for a while.
"Oh Hu Ming, I have the mind to flush your ashes down the toilet right now." She threatened with an intense gaze in her eyes.
Though she was no longer blinded by anger and the darkness had receded, she still felt disappointment and hate towards her father. His letter had revealed a lot of things about her father. But what bothered her more are the things that he might have left unsaid.
In the end, she did not flush the ashes, but she placed them in a dark corner of her closet before she left the house with her laptop in a bag. It was fortunate that she had left it in her bedroom, or it might have also been a broken mess.
In another part of Supreme city, a woman looked at her sleek tablet and smiled. She replayed the footage from the small cameras she had had planted only a few hours earlier. Collecting some useful materials on the first day was truly unexpected.
It seemed that she had not wasted her money.