Chas Cretan might not care about their opinion, but he was not going to stand by and let them falsely accuse him, so he retorted coldly, “Don’t you know what Charles is capable of? He has offended plenty of people while he was alive. You should know we are mafia, so we have a lot of enemies. We get assassinated all the time. If I were the one who wound up dead today, would that mean Charles did it?”
“You…” Chas Cretan’s parents wanted to explode, but they had to admit that Chas Cretan was right and he might not be the murderer.
In the end, Chas Cretan’s grandfather stepped forward, so they stopped arguing for the time being.
…
An hour after Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting left City Wei, they removed their disguises and went to the biggest mall in town. The two of them acted as though they were tourists and shopped happily.
Leng Shaoting called Xu Jinchen earlier to tell him that Charles Cretan was taken care of and that they would be taking the 6:10 pm flight back to the capital.
They were going back to the capital, and not City J since there was only one day left for the National Day holiday.
Gu Ning was not worried about school. Even if she were, it was too late. The flight was at 6:00 pm on the 6th, which meant it was 12:00 pm on the 7th back home. After flying for 17 hours, they would arrive at the capital on the 8th around 4:00 to 5:00 pm, and most of her school day would be over.
She could just apply for leave and miss school for a day. Gu Ning simply wanted to make it back home before the 10th, so that she was in time for the auction.
If she went right home now, she had a day left before the auction. However, if she went to Country J, she would be too late for the auction.
Leng Shaoting had already told Xu Jinchen to go back home on his own.
As for the reason he contacted Xu Jinchen and not Zi Shaomin directly… If the Cretan family investigated the Zi family for Charles Cretan’s death, and they discovered records of calls from City Wei in Country Y to Zi Shaomin, it would attract suspicion and unnecessary trouble for the Zi family.
The Zi family was delighted to hear this. Although they had incurred a lot of loss from Charles Cretan’s ambushes and paying Gu Ning for killing him, they were happy that he was dead. They did not even care about the deals they had lost thanks to Charles Cretan.
The Zi family seemed accustomed to having fights in the underworld over territory. There was always competition and losses in the trade. Hence, even though they paid a high price for Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting to take out Charles Cretan, they were deeply grateful for Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting’s help.
Their family would have made even more losses if not for Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting.
In the family, only Zi Shaomin, Zi Beiying, and their father knew about this matter. They would not let a fourth person know about it out of fear that someone might leak the news about their involvement with Charles Cretan’s death.
Since Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting were going back home, Xu Jinchen did not linger. Unless he was on a mission, he could not stay. Unforeseen missions might happen anytime, so it was inappropriate for him to stay abroad for long periods of time.
However, Xu Jinchen was reluctant to leave since he did not know when he would get to see Zi Beiying again.
Although they were not officially dating, they knew of each others’ interest. However, no one spoke of it openly since no such opportunity arose.
Just as Xu Jinchen was about to book his tickets, Zi Shaomin suddenly told Xu Jinchen to take Zi Beiying over with him so that she could help thank Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting personally on the family’s behalf. Also, Zi Beiying could pass the reward to Gu Ning while she was there.
Although the reason came off unconvincing, Zi Beiying was keen on going. Also, Xu Jinchen wanted Zi Beiying to go as well. Hence, she pounced on the opportunity and flew over.
Nevertheless, everyone knew that Zi Shaomin was simply giving them an excuse to spend more time together.
…
Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting’s flights were at 6:10 am. So they arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm since they needed time to get through customs checks. Otherwise, it would take too much time to get past customs checks because of the huge crowd at the airport.
The Cretan family had already swiftly sent men to the airport with photographs of Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting in disguise to monitor the crowd and see if they made an attempt to flee the country by air.
Many men were sent to a lot of places in search of them, especially hotels and restaurants.
They had retrieved photographs of them from the surveillance footage last night. Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting had dumped the car at the racetrack parking lot after they left. So they learned that the killer had driven to the circuit in the car and located their hotel and obtained photos of Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting through the hotel surveillance.
Since Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting looked completely different from their disguises, they managed to walk right past them undetected. Even though they saw Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting in the crowd, they could not link them to the photos.
Hence, Gu Ning and Leng Shaoting got past the customs check without getting stopped while the Cretan family continued hunting for the murderer.
Despite their anxiety, they knew it was hard to find people in a large city like City Wei.
Before they investigated the murderer, they started by checking the people whom Charles Cretan had offended recently.
Naturally, they were unable to uncover everything since Charles Cretan often kept his tracks covered like he did when he ambushed the Zi family.
The Cretan family found out about the Zi family suffering from ambushes, losing a lot of arms deals, and Charles Cretan visiting the Zi family, but they did not realize Charles Cretan was behind the ambushes.
Even the Zi family was unable to provide hard proof of Charles Cretan’s participation since all evidence pointed to some other important family.
The Cretan family simply assumed Charles Cretan was acquainted with the Zi clan and was asked to help when their trades in Country Y got into trouble. Hence, the Zi family was eliminated from their list of suspects.
Could the other family be behind it? However, they did not find any evidence of Charles Cretan helping out the Zi family, so they decided it was unlikely that the family behind the ambushes had attacked Charles Cretan in retaliation.
