Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm

I scraped my chair back against the floor and stood up. I gestured for Li Shoi Ming to head out in front of me and as he left the conference room, I followed.

I had just stepped through the door when I was backhanded across my face. My head snapped to the left and I could taste the blood in my mouth. "Well, that was stupid," I said with a smile as I stepped to the side to give the raging bull that had followed behind me access to his target.

The roar that Chen Zi Han let out was enough to cause Li Shoi Ming to turn pale as my man grabbed the shorter man by the throat and had him pinned up against the wall before I could even wipe the drop of blood from my lip.

"Does someone want to explain?" asked Wang Chao from where he stood in the doorway, my other two men on either side of him. I turned back to look into the conference room and saw that everyone was crowded in the doorway, trying to see what was going on.

I licked the blood off of my finger and then cracked my neck from side to side. "Family dispute. Don't worry about it. You guys go back in and iron out the details. We will need to get started in the next hour or so if we want to take advantage of the sunlight," I said as I looked at Wang Chao.

This wasn't the first time I had been hit and it wouldn't be the last. Chen Zi Han and I could take care of this cousin of mine and the rest needed to get to work.

Wang Chao nodded his head and everyone filed back into the room. Well, everyone except for the woman that was sitting beside Li Shoi Ming in the meeting and Liu Yu Zeng. My joker was not looking so happy right now.

I returned my attention back to Chen Zi Han and the man that he had pinned up against the wall. Immediately my mind went to him and me in that position for an entirely different reason, but now was not the time to have my mind in the gutter. I had a cousin to deal with.

I could feel my cheek radiate in pain and start to swell, but it was not so bad that I couldn't ignore it.

I was about to step forward when I saw a brief glimpse of an unknown hand reaching out to me. Luckily for me, it was stopped before it could actually touch me. "We don't touch," said Liu Yu Zeng as he gripped the woman's wrist that was about to stop me. "We don't ever touch," he repeated, this time with a smile that wasn't a smile.

She nodded her head and withdrew her hand once Liu Yu Zeng let go. Rubbing her wrist, she looked at me. The longer I stared at her, the more I realized that we really did look alike, but as I had assumed, she was not as vertically challenged as me.

"He didn't mean it," she started to say before I burst out laughing.

"He didn't mean it?" I asked once my laughter died down to only a chuckle. "Let me guess? He had a hard day at work? He was just frustrated? He will never do it again? I just need to behave better? Which one is it?" I continued as I stood in front of her, my head cocked to the side. There were a whole host of excuses that men had for hitting women and women had for when men hit them.

And I had heard them all at some point in my first life working and living in the foster system.

She looked at me and the gentle look on her face slid off as she stared at me. "He really didn't mean it," she said again as she searched my face. We could have been twins and I saw the moment she realized it too.

"Sucks to be the substitute, doesn't it?" I asked with a smile, turning my back on her. This had just entered a whole new level of creepy, especially if those two were together, together.

Li Shoi Ming's face was bright red from Chen Zi Han's hand by the time I managed to walk the few steps to the other side of the hall. I might have taken my time, but that was neither here nor there. "I think that that was a bit uncalled for, don't you?" I asked the man as more blood trickled down my chin. I must have bitten the inside of my mouth when he hit me.

My tongue gently probed my cheek until I could feel the torn flesh. Yup, there it was. I shuddered. Whenever I thought about torn flesh, my mind immediately went to the Reavers and that was not someplace I wanted to go right now.

Li Shoi Ming only glared at me, not bothering to answer my question. I didn't know if it was because he was so stubborn, or if it was because Chen Zi Han was preventing him from being able to speak. I was willing to go with the second possibility and I tapped Chen Zi Han's forearm a couple of times. Backing away, Chen Zi Han watched as Li Shoi Ming fell into a heap at our feet.

"There, now you should be able to answer, right?" I asked as I crouched down beside the man. "Don't you think that it was uncalled for? Backhanding me like that? You made me bleed." I could feel my temper rising every time my tongue touched the torn flesh of my inner cheek. As much as my brain kept telling my tongue not to touch it, it couldn't seem to help itself. Stupid tongue.

Li Shoi Ming glared at me from the ground as he rubbed his throat. "Heart or hands?" asked Liu Yu Zeng as he came up beside me. He looked down at my cousin as if he was nothing more than a hunk of beef on the butcher's block. An offering for me and me alone.

"I am thinking hands would be nice," I tilted my head to one side as I thought about it. "Most definitely his right one."

"I'll give you his eyes. I don't like how he is looking at you," growled Chen Zi Han as he adjusted the wrists of his gloves. It was a tic that all three of my syndicate boys had. I loved it.

"I think we all need to calm down," said the woman that looked like me as she came up beside Li Shoi Ming and helped him to his feet. What a touching scene.

My men just looked at her, not bothering to say anything. "I don't think that any of us particularly need to calm down," I said as I gestured to the men as I stood up and dusted off my hands.

"They are talking about body parts," she scoffed as she wrapped an arm around Li Shoi Ming's waist. I nodded my head in agreement. "See, calm. If they weren't calm, they would have already taken them." I pointed out, not understanding what she was talking about. My boys were showing tremendous control. I was quite impressed.

She sneered at me as her mask continued to drop. "They wouldn't," she said, staring us down. "Do you even know who he is?" she continued like I gave a damn.

"Nope, and that is the biggest problem," said Liu Yu Zeng as he looked my cousin up and down. "An unknown, a stranger, hit my woman. There needs to be some type of consequence for that. After all, it's not like we are living in a lawless society."

Actually, we were. But whatever.

"She is my cousin. My family graciously took her in after her parents died and raised her. She owes us," snarled Li Shoi Ming. Turning to look at me, he continued, "You will be coming home and you will remember your proper place."

"Proper place?" I asked as I tilted my head. My body was screaming, but I didn't know why. "I am well aware of my proper place, cousin. Don't you worry about that," I assured him before turning to look at my boys. "We need him for the tide, you can kill him after."

I went into the conference room as the other four people remained in the hall.

"Everything okay?" asked Wang Chao as I took my seat beside him. This time it was Liu Wei who covered me in a blanket. Mummering my thanks, I nodded to Wang Chao. "Whether he lives or dies, he will be useful," I said to Wang Chao. If he died right now, my men would calm down and be happy. If he went out to fight the zombies, hopefully, he could take out at least one of them before dying.

Either way, his death would be useful for something.

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