The Devil - Paperback - Book 5

Camilla receives a surprise package containing her father’s handwritten story about his seven years as Wu Mong Hung’s number one enforcer, bodyguard, and right-hand man.
Next in line to become Dragon Master of the infamous Seven Dragons Triad, his story reads like a jailhouse confession. It finishes with a plea for his daughter’s forgiveness.
Will she give it? Would you? Read her father’s story in The Devil and decide for yourself. This often spicey, action thriller is a wild ride, full of twists and surprises, as one might expect from the man widely considered Hong Kong’s most notorious felon during the turn of the century.

To my newborn daughter, Camilla.
The notebook you hold in your hand contains the story of my former life. A life that can only be described as utterly reprehensible. I hope you will never need to read what follows. With luck, when you come of age, I shall tell you about my dark past face to face. However, should I die before you turn twenty-one, which is likely, I have instructed your uncle, Benjamin Chan, to keep this notebook secure and pass it to you on your twenty-first. Not a day earlier.
The men hunting me will stop at nothing to bring me down. In all honesty, I doubt I will survive the coming year, let alone twenty more. And since you are reading this, my fears have proven true. My karma has caught up with me as surely it must.
So… it is with a heavy heart that I put pen to paper and confess my crimes. Please read what follows with an open mind, and if you can, reserve your judgment until the end.
Right now, your mother and I are holed up in Bright, a small town in country Victoria, Australia. We plan to stay here for six months. In effect; hiding from those who hunt us. I have little to do other than exercise, so it is at your mother’s insistence that I put my free time to use detailing the events which led up to our current predicament.
Let me start with a confession, which may surprise you. For several years, before I met your mother, there was a time when all of Hong Kong feared me. They called me the Devil. Indeed, infamous for my vicious crimes and heartless demeanour, I warranted the name. As an enforcer for the Seven Dragons triad, my job entailed hurting people and doing things which, I confess, were pure evil. As you read on, I expect the depth of my depravity will shock and dismay you. What follows is the unvarnished truth behind my flawed reasoning and the string of terrible decisions that turned me into a veritable devil. You will see how my terrible crimes compounded irrevocably as the weight of my sins drew me deeper and deeper down the slippery path to hell.
My greatest fear is that when you reach the end of my tale, you will despise me. And justifiably so. Indeed, I was once a monster of the very worst kind. Your mother, who knows my story, thinks otherwise. Trusting she knows best, and only after much trepidation and prompting, have I agreed to bare my soul and put pen to paper.
Your mother believes I behaved reasonably, considering the tough choices I faced. I disagree. Truly, I could have, nay, should have, made more courageous choices.
In hindsight, I believe my inexcusable lack of moral fortitude was nothing but pure cowardice. When pressed to do what I knew was wrong, I chose the path of least resistance and obeyed. Rather than refuse my father, Dragon Master Wu, head of the most powerful triad in Hong Kong, I wimped out and did his bidding without protest. Worse, when he praised and rewarded me for carrying out his vile orders, some sick and twisted part of me felt pride in a crime well done. What I should have felt, if I had even a smidgen of decency, was remorse and regret. Indeed, my sick and compulsive need for my father’s high opinion ensured my loyalty. And with it, a willingness to continue down the path to purgatory. Rather than refuse to do evil, I chose to wear blinkers and damn the consequences. Unquestionably, I sold my soul to the very devil I later became.
Alas, my past cannot be undone. I promise every word you read is, to the best of my recollection, accurate. Naturally, I cannot remember conversations word for word, but I will do my best to convey the gist.
Before I begin, I must tell you more about my father, your grandfather, Dragon Master Wu Mong Hung. The man is evil incarnate. A virile megalomaniac who, over forty years, sired countless bastard sons and daughters from hundreds of women, including his many daughters and granddaughters. I was one of his more notable bastards, both literally and metaphorically.
Wu saw himself as a god. He never married. No woman could be his equal. He was a misogynist of the worst kind. Incredulously, my father believed he could extend his life by bedding a virgin a day. Of course, no girl ever offered her maidenhead willingly, so Wu engaged men like me to source and abduct a steady stream of suitable girls. I found many among the homeless urchins and runaways fighting to survive in the grubby streets lining Hong Kong’s harsh underbelly. Some I sourced from trafficked Vietnamese and Cambodian girls shipped in to work the triad’s many brothels. And when the opportunity arose, I took a man’s daughter as recompense for his delinquent gambling debts. Wu did not care where the girls came from, or how young they were, so long as they met his need.
As fate would have it, I became his right-hand man, his enforcer, and, most shamefully, his foremost supplier of young maidens. Such was my proficiency, he declared me his favourite son. He even hinted that one day, should I stay the course, I would succeed him as Dragon Master of the mighty Seven Dragons triad.
What follows is the story of my rise to power. I pray it does not come across as some vainglorious ‘look at me, look at me’ posturing. I detest such self-trumpeting. Nor is it an attempt to justify my monstrous deeds.
Okay. With that preamble out of the way, let’s wind back the clock to my earliest memories, then continue in chronological order.

Hold on to your bootstraps.

My dead mother, Chunhua Wen… is but a vague memory. I was just six when Wu stole me from her. I cannot recall her face, but I very much remember the loud sobs of a beautiful young woman in utter misery. No doubt, the very intensity of her sobs is what fixed this event in my mind. How I wish I could remember more, but all I have is this one shard of memory. I recall her heartbreaking distress as she took my hand and led me to Shifu Tao, the master who was there to take me to an exclusive Shaolin Kung Fu school in Guangdong. It would become my home and prison for the next ten years.
Shifu Tao’s wizened face seemed to mirror the crumpled beauty of my mother’s. I was never to see mother again and, looking back, I realise, she knew I was lost to her. How cruel of Wu to take me from her! To break her as he broke every woman and girl he touched.
That day, he stood behind her, smiling at me, like a proud father. I remember pulling back my shoulders and standing tall and straight as my mother said I must. She told me to show my gratitude and thank my father. Said she was proud that, from his many bastard sons, he chose me to attend this most prestigious school.
I remember a baby crying. Not a howl of hunger, but an empathetic response to my mother’s sobs. The wails came from my newborn baby sister, Ai Wen, also fathered by Wu. Little did I know then what a pivotal role Ai Wen would play in my betrayal of the Dragons some seventeen years later. In the years before my sister and I became reacquainted; I retained only the faintest recollection of having a sibling. If asked, I would state I was an only child, then add, as far as I knew. The memory of my sister faded along with that of my mother, so I was never sure if either of them was real or imagined.
Little did I know, as Shifu Tao led me away by my six-year-old hand, that my life had taken a fortuitous new direction. This was not yet the devil’s path. That would come much later.