Or maybe he could? Xu Runshen had convinced himself he was in love with Xiaokai, and Xiaokai could sleep with him just fine. But the thought of Weiran turning into someone akin to Xu Runshen—

No. Xiaokai shook his head. He pulled out his medicine bottle from its cabinet, poured three pills into his hand, and tossed them into the toilet.

Weiran wouldn’t treat him like that. Hopefully. Hell, he’d had all the opportunity to treat him like that the night he confessed to him, but instead he just held him in his arms for a few minutes, kissed him for a few more minutes, and then he was done. Xu Runshen would have never held back that much.

Weiran still had time to derail, though.

Xiaokai put his medicine bottle back into the cabinet.

ZHANG WEIRAN WAS not always called Zhang Weiran. Of course he wasn’t. It would have been foolish of him to come back into the city with a name the members of the List would immediately recognize. No, his original honorable surname had been Zhu many years ago, and though he’d kept that in his memory and in his heart, he’d relinquished its use as soon as he promised to get revenge for his parents.

It was not a name that he heard often, nor a name he really thought about often. Liu Xingyu had politely refrained from saying it even while Weiran had explained his family’s history, like he didn’t want to taint their memories by putting it in his mouth. Liu Xiaokai, of course, had brought it up as soon as he’d figured out who Weiran was, which took maybe two days after Weiran had given the minimal information that his parents had been killed by the List. They’d been in the middle of giving him the names on the List, he’d just turned to Weiran and said simply:

“Zhu Chuanbo and Gao Han.”

Weiran had insisted he stop, keep those names out of his mouth—but Xiaokai just continued. Zhu Chuanbo was the president of High Waters, a company mainly known for its advertisements that had done so well companies within the List—companies like Liu Incorporated—started to use their services.

Enough, Weiran had said—enough.

And then those connections made Zhu Chuanbo and Gao Han open their eyes to the darker side of the city, Xiaokai continued breezily, like Weiran hadn’t said anything at all. Once they knew about the List, they couldn’t close their eyes again. So of course when Sun Yue offered to bring them into the List, they accepted because they knew it would give them access to bring the List down, and of course Sun Yue had their File already. When they were caught, there was nothing they could do.

“They left behind a son,” Xiaokai said. “Zhu Weiran.”