“It wasn’t supposed to be like that. The drug was just supposed to make her vomit for a while and have really bad stomach cramps. It makes you feel like you’re dying, when you’re not actually. The plan was to send Rachel the flowers along with the note right when she arrived at the hospital in Hangzhou. But before we could get the lilies to her, she had been checked out of the hospital and evacuated to Hong Kong. How the hell was I supposed to know that was going to happen?”

“So why did you wait so long after she was admitted to Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong before you sent the note?”

“I had no idea where they took her. She just disappeared! We were frantically searching for her everywhere—I had people in Shanghai, Beijing, all the top regional hospitals looking for her. But we had to wait till her admission record popped up somewhere. It was never the intention to let things get as bad as they did. I just wanted to scare her and make her leave the country. The plan went terribly wrong.”

“But why would you want to try to scare Rachel Chu in the first place?”

“I told you this already. Colette was extremely distraught that Carlton Bao might lose part of his inheritance to Rachel.”

Gaoliang’s jaw dropped when he heard this, while Rachel and Nick looked at each other in confusion.

“Why would this happen?” Inspector Zhang continued.

“Bao Gaoliang and his wife were furious after finding out all the reckless things their son did in Paris.”

“Reckless things that were discussed during the dinner at Imperial Treasure?”

“Yes, the Baos got into a fight about Carlton, and Bao Gaoliang threatened to disinherit him.”

“This fight occurred in the presence of Colette Bing and yourself?”

“No, the fight happened after we left the room. I had intentionally left Colette’s iPhone in the room with the record mode on, and I went back to collect it later.”

Gaoliang put his hands to his forehead, shaking his head in disgust.

“And that’s when you discovered the Baos talking about disinheriting Carlton?”

“Yes. It was a tremendous shock for Colette. She thought she was helping to smooth things out between Carlton and his parents, but instead it made things far worse. See, I told her, no good deed goes unpunished!”

“Why would Colette Bing care if Carlton Bao gets disinherited?”

“Isn’t it obvious? She’s pathetically in love with the loser.”

“So Colette Bing ordered all this to happen?”

“No, she didn’t! I keep telling you she didn’t. Colette was just very upset after realizing that she had put Carlton in jeopardy. She couldn’t stop crying, and she couldn’t stop cursing Rachel Chu, so I told her I would fix things.”

“Then she did know of your plan to poison Rachel.”

“No! Colette never knew what I was going to do. I just told her I would handle it.”

“This was such an important mission, and Colette had nothing to do with it?”