Chapter One: Seventy Million That Wasn't Mine

At 2:17 a.m., Lin Mo scraped away the last curl of silver coating just as the convenience store's ceiling lights flickered three times. He flattened the lottery ticket against the glass counter and compared it with the numbers on his phone: 03, 07, 12, 19, 26, 31. Bonus number 09. Every number matched. Seventy million yuan. The freezer compressor rumbled like a huge animal waking in the dark. Lin counted a fourth time. His fingers remained steady, but his heart struck painfully against his ribs. He had worked nights for six years and paid off the debts his father had left behind. His bank balance had never reached six figures. He already knew what he would do: replace his mother's leaking apartment, then buy the debt company whose collectors had