Xingyu wasn’t going to bother saying that he really had no moral qualms against the practices of the List, just that he hated his father and wanted to destroy everything Liu Baiyan stood for. If there was no one to stop him, he would certainly use List resources to protect his didi without any kind of pang on his conscience whatsoever. Killing his father wasn’t an issue, and killing his mother had become a new dream of his—where in this sort of person could anyone find the effort to care about corruption or bribery? “So?” he said. “What were you thinking, then?”

“If he’s transparent with the public—”

“No,” Xingyu interrupted sharply. “Absolutely not.”

“I’m not saying that he should talk about what Sun Yue and the members of the List did to him,” Weiran snapped. “I’m saying he should just…make public appearances and make it clear that he’s not hiding, that he’s cooperating with the police.”

“And who’s to say they’re not going to just say I’m protecting him?”

Weiran lifted the phone in his hand. “Xiaokai got an email inviting the two of you to an interview.”

This apparent change of topic caught Xingyu off guard and after a moment he just said, “Huh?”

“Xiaokai got an—”

“How do you know what emails he’s getting?”

“He gave me access to it a bit ago so I could see if there was any information I could get from it. I’ve been checking up on it every now and then to see whether people contacted him for help getting out of this mess…”

“It’s probably a trap to publicly humiliate him,” Xingyu said. He could already see it—the host asking sudden and uncomfortable questions, Xiaokai’s smile faltering, the crowds watching with rapt attention already spinning stories in their heads. He wanted to kill the host, wanted to set fire to the crowds, wanted to destroy them all for even thinking about his brother.

“The reputation seems somewhere between a gossip magazine and a reputable news source. They want both of you. The list of questions they sent seem to mostly be about his reputation as most eligible bachelor, about your time abroad, about your relationship with your parents, about the funeral…nothing that seems too incriminatory, though I can’t promise they won’t make anything up on the spot to catch you by surprise.”