The Debt We Needed to Collect

"A-Qiang, tell me about that job you introduced me to. Wh-why was the commission so high?"

Li Mao had a mouthful of hotpot lamb, his eyes watering from the heat as he sucked in breaths and looked at A-Qiang beside him.

A-Qiang was so stunned by the look that he forgot to eat the brain slices he had picked up.

Staring at Li Mao's face, prettier than every male model at Golden Rose Bar, he suddenly chuckled and teased, "Bunny, don't tell me you really went and became some rich lady's bedmate lately? Why do you smell so damn married? Like you're fully ripened. Look at those eyes—you're gazing at me like you're full of affection. Like you're sexually frustrated."

"B-bullshit!"

Li Mao shot back with shifty eyes, "Stop insulting my noble character!"

A-Qiang grinned even wider at that.

"Come on, Bunny. I might believe it if someone else said that, but you? Do you even have such a thing as character? Stop tarnishing the word."

"Remember that summer camp Xiao Che's school held? You were afraid he wouldn't go and would get looked down on by his classmates, so without telling any of us, you took a job to slip laxatives into someone's cattle feed."

"But the moment you climbed into the cowshed, you scared their pregnant cow into going into labor early. You were afraid the calf would suffocate from a difficult birth, so you spent the entire night delivering that cow's baby in the shed."

"The cow and calf both ended up safe, but the farmer beat you out of the cowshed while you were covered in amniotic fluid and cow shit. When you called me to pick you up, why didn't you talk about your noble character then?"

Li Mao: ...

He had no way to refute that.

Because it had indeed happened.

Though Li Mao was a top-tier enforcer in the business with a 99.999 percent approval rating, his career did have a few embarrassing little stains he would rather not revisit.

Nobody was perfect, after all...

"Anyway, I believe it when other people talk about noble character being inviolable. But coming from you, Bunny, I don't believe a word. Knowing you, I'm sure you'd take a job like keeping a rich lady company and listening to her troubles. You really would do anything as long as the money was there."

"Y-you shut up! Isn't all this food enough to plug your mouth? Why do you t-talk so much?"

Mortified beyond measure, with a rich lady's contact information still stamped on his ass, Li Mao could not bear to listen anymore. He glared at A-Qiang, mercilessly whipping certain people with his eyes—people who ought to know better after eating his food.

Unfortunately, birds of a feather flocked together. Anyone who got along with a shameless rogue like Li Mao had roughly the same rotten character.

A-Qiang grinned without the slightest shame and pointed his chopsticks at Li Mao from across the table.

"Bunny, don't get worked up. It was just a joke, but look at you getting all anxious. The more anxious you get, the more I'm gonna believe it. Later, I'll find someone who can smell pheromones and have them check whether you're carrying someone else's scent."

"You d-dead Beta! You can't smell pheromones, y-yet you keep spouting nonsense!"

After cursing through gritted teeth, Li Mao took advantage of the fact that A-Qiang was a Beta who could not smell pheromones and pulled open his collar, shoving it toward A-Qiang's nose.

"Come on, come on! Sm-smell me! See if I've got anyone else's pheromones on me! If you can't smell anything, then sh-shut your mouth!"

Li Mao was ultimately still guilty. After showing off for a moment, he hugged his coat tight and pulled back.

Then A-Qiang said mysteriously, "If I shut my mouth, how am I supposed to tell you about that job I introduced you to and why the commission is so high?"

He set his chopsticks across his bowl, pulled several photographs from his pocket, and laid them in front of Li Mao.

A-Qiang lifted his chin, signaling for Li Mao to look at them.

"Did you read the information I sent you on WeChat about the guy who owes the money?" A-Qiang asked.

Li Mao was studying the photographs closely without even lifting his eyelids as he answered with perfect confidence, "N-no."

When would he have had time to read it? The whole way here, he had been busy battling wits and courage with that idiot Wan Fuqi.

He had typed so much his fingers were practically going to spark.

That tiny phone keyboard had carried all the rage he had accumulated over the past half month.

"You little bastard! If you weren't going to read it, why the fuck did you have me send it to you!? Is this your work attitude now? Bunny, don't scare me. Have you really been kept by someone? Seeing you take a shortcut that saves ten years of struggle would hurt worse than death."

"Get lost, get lost, get lost..."

Li Mao cursed "get lost" several times in a row.

If Wan Fuqi ever really became a sugar daddy and started keeping young Alphas, Li Mao would not only refrain from looking down on that "junior" Alpha for submitting to someone else.

He would instead raise his precious thumb in admiration.

A hero!

A true tough guy!

Being Wan Fuqi's bedmate would not be selling one's body for money. That would be money earned by selling one's life!

Anyone who could last until the end would absolutely be the pinnacle of Alphas, the king in Li Mao's heart!

No!

The king of kings!

After looking through the photos, Li Mao tossed them back onto the table and impatiently urged A-Qiang, who was trying to look down on him from the side.

"H-hurry up and tell me! Your work attitude isn't much better, dragging this out like that! And you, look in the mirror more often. With a face like yours, even if you really d-died, you couldn't take that shortcut. M-might as well explain this debt collection job properly. If I p-pull it off, I'll treat you to hotpot again."

A-Qiang's eyes shifted, and he decisively gave in.

"Fine! It's a deal, though. We're eating at this place again. Don't secretly downgrade the spending."

"Ah! Stop dragging it out! H-hurry!"

A-Qiang arranged the photographs on the table in order. The first showed a middle-aged man in a suit entering and leaving an office building.

The second showed a heavily pregnant woman standing outside Willow City Women and Children's Hospital.

The last was a photograph of the two getting out of the same car at the entrance to an upscale residential complex.

Judging by their clothes, the last photograph should have been taken recently.

The woman's belly was already flat in that photo, while the earlier one had likely been taken during a prenatal checkup.

Pointing at the man in the first photo, A-Qiang said, "His name is Xu Zhihua. He's an accountant at Golden Orchid International. Last month, he took advantage of his position to embezzle more than a million from the company accounts."

"After the company found out, he threatened them with internal information concerning the company's taxes, preventing the executives from reporting it to the police."

"In the end, Jinlan agreed to give him one week to make up the shortfall."

"Unexpectedly, before the week was even up, he abandoned his wife, who had just given birth, and his daughter, who wasn't even a month old, and fled abroad."

"Since Xu Zhihua had previously signed a loan agreement with Jinlan, this counted as a debt dispute."

"He ran, but his family couldn't. His father, mother, wife, and child—the company was determined to squeeze that money out of the Xu family."

"The company's books couldn't stand scrutiny, so they came to people like us who were good at collecting debts."

A-Qiang patted Li Mao on the shoulder.

"You get it. A company that big doesn't care about a little over a million. They put in this much effort and offered this high a price for no reason other than wanting us to make the Xu family suffer."