274 Chance to prove

Drawing strength from his touch, she began telling him the story from the start and didn't stop up until she reached this morning's event.

When Wei spoke, anger was clearly audible in his voice, so much so that initially he had to clear his voice which had gone hoarse.

"Where are those pictures and that video now?" he asked sharply.

"On my father's phone and with Zhu Cheng, I guess," she replied in a small voice.

She was acutely conscious of the intimate position that they were in now and a part of her was cautioning her to move away. But the bewildered hurt girl inside, still clamoured for the continued warmth.

"Give me your phone," he said to her in a commanding voice.

Sam turned her head upwards to look at him. But handed it over without asking him any questions. There was something instinctively trustworthy about him or maybe it was the thought in her head telling her that nothing more could go wrong from here, so it didn't really matter.

Wei was so furious that he could almost hit someone physically at the moment. Samantha's quiet sobs were still ringing in his chest and the wetness on his shirt was the proof of the unfair treatment meted out to her by an insensitive father and that conniving bas****.

He sent a message on her behalf, to her father, asking for a chance to prove her innocence and demanded that he send her the incriminating video and pictures to examine them independently.

Within a few minutes, Li Yichen replied back with the attachments and a message, "knock yourself out. But you have only till the evening. Don't expect any extension of the deadline."

"What an asshole," Wei thought to himself and clicked open the attachments.

Trying to stay unbiased, he looked and looked again at the pictures at hand.

Samantha had gone to repair her hair and face which resembled a swollen turnip or so she had said. which was good because despite trying to stay neutral, his heart was in his mouth looking at the explicit pictures. Whoever had taken these didn't give a shit about Sam's propriety. He was worried that these images needed to be destroyed else they may find their way into the murky online world. If it was her brother in-law behind this, then they could expect him to be ruthless about it.

Thinking hard for a minute, he sent the video to someone with a specific instruction attached.

"Any bright ideas yet?" Sam came back and slipped into the seat opposite him.

Taking a sip of the coffee which had now turned cold, she looked at him with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. Standing in the washroom, she had splashed cold water on her face and told herself that she would face it and fight it, no matter how dismal it looked currently.

"I want you to look at these pictures carefully. What I mean is look at everything except yourself in it. Look at the surroundings or whatever little is around your body. Does anything stand out, look familiar? If we can figure out where these pictures have been taken, we can do something about them," he told her in a calm voice.

Sam cringed when she looked at the nudes but slowly, she started to focus on the things around. There wasn't much which was in the shot frame and the bedcover was a plain white one, which didn't give away much. After the third or fourth photo, suddenly, Sam got animated. Without realising it, Wei had been looking at her face intently all this while, worried that she may not be able to handle looking at the stuff again and again.

The minute there was a change in her expressions, he asked her, "what is it? You recognise something?"

"I… I am not sure but this corner looks like my bedside table. I have moved into this place recently so there is not much that I know about it but one edge of the table is chipped and looks exactly like this," she said hesitatingly.

Wei took out his wallet and threw some money at the table.

He got up immediately and said, "let's go."

She looked at him with enquiring eyes.

"We are going to your house," he said and pulled her up by her hand.

Sam's flat was located on the first floor in an old building. Taking two steps at a time, they reached her flat. She opened the door and let him in. Wei had transferred the photos to his laptop in the meanwhile and was now looking at them, comparing them to the room.

"I want you to go and lie down on the bed in the same position as you are in this picture," he instructed, gesturing to the picture which had the partial chipped table visible.