“They aren’t even close; last time, he practically threw her out on the street,” Lu Zhiling thought, her mind racing.
Ding Yujun only smiled, a playful yet sharp glint in her eyes. “Don’t you have his number? Try calling him now.”
Lu Zhiling hesitated. Was this a test? Was the matriarch checking to see if Zhiling was secretly “hooking up” with the Bo family’s eldest son behind her back, or perhaps harboring designs on the family estate? To prove her innocence, Zhiling took out her phone. She found the name “Bo Wang” in her contacts, tapped the screen to activate the speakerphone, and placed it on the polished wood of the table.
Let her hear it, Zhiling thought. He’ll likely hang up or snap at me, proving we are strangers.
One ring. Two. Ding Yujun’s smile was warm, almost expectant. Lu Zhiling’s smile was a mask of calm. Three rings. Four. The call was seconds away from the hollow tone of a disconnect.
Just as Zhiling reached to end the call, a deep, raspy voice vibrated through the speaker. “What?”
It was low, saturated with a lazy impatience that didn’t quite sound like true anger. Lu Zhiling’s breath hitched. Did he answer because he didn’t recognize the number?
She forced her voice into a soft, melodic tone. “It’s Lu Zhiling. Your father returns tomorrow. Grandma has asked me to invite you back to Shenshan [The God Mountain—the ancestral Bo estate] for the family dinner.”
Silence stretched over the line, followed by the metallic flick-clack of a Zippo lighter. Then, Bo Wang’s voice drifted through, heavy with a dark nonchalance. “We’ll talk about tomorrow, tomorrow. Bring me today’s food first.”
Click. He hung up.
Lu Zhiling stared at the dead phone, then at Ding Yujun. She wanted to protest—to swear she hadn’t been playing the doting wife delivering meals—but Ding Yujun’s eyes had already crinkled into delighted crescents.
“Well, well,” the old lady laughed, patting Zhiling’s hand. “Go find him for dinner. I’ll be going back now. Remember—come home together tomorrow night. I’ll be waiting.”
“Grandma, it’s not—”
“Go, go!” Ding Yujun was out the door with a speed that defied her age, leaving Zhiling standing in the silence of the teahouse.
In the small kitchen, Jiang Fusheng was a whirlwind of motion, the blue flames of the wok licking the air. Lu Zhiling leaned against the counter, a strawberry lollipop in her mouth, lost in thought.
The “blindness” was becoming a heavy cloak. She had donned it to see the world clearly without being watched back, but with the Bo family closing in, the lie was getting harder to maintain. I need to find a way to ‘recover’ my sight soon, she mused. Between the teahouse, the stolen Lu family artifacts, and this man… it’s all becoming too much.
She snapped back to reality as she heard Fusheng let out a high-pitched, infatuated giggle.
“Why so happy today?” Zhiling asked.
Fusheng’s eyes sparkled as she turned off the stove. “I met my high school crush today! Li Minghuai. He’s the captain of that security company you hired. He’s even more handsome than I remembered.”
Zhiling recalled the man—efficient, cold, professional. “He seemed… focused.”
“He was so aloof in school, but he talked to me for ages today! He even asked if I was married because of the ring I wear, and why my husband wasn’t helping out,” Fusheng sighed, then bit her lip. “But… I think he was actually asking about you.”
Zhiling frowned. “Me? We’ve barely spoken.”
“He was probing! Asking if you had male friends, what you do at the teahouse, what we talk about. So,” Fusheng puffed out her chest, “I shut him down. I told him you are deeply in love with your husband—that you’ve loved him since you were little . I said you work so hard just to buy him gifts and that you can’t even stand to look at other men because your heart is so full of him.”
Lu Zhiling nearly choked on her lollipop. “You… you said what?”
“I fixed it for you! Now he knows you’re off-limits,” Fusheng said proudly.
Zhiling sighed. She didn’t have the heart to tell her friend that Li Minghuai wasn’t a suitor—he was a bloodhound. “Hurry with the food. I have to get to Dijiangting.”
Across the city, the sun dappled through a riverside forest, but the scene was far from peaceful.
A man, his face a mask of blood and terror, limped through the brush. Behind him, an orange sports car sat like a predatory insect. Bo Wang leaned against a tree, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his pale face marked by a fresh scar on his forehead.
A scream tore through the woods. Li Minghuai emerged, dragging the man like a sack of refuse. He tossed him at Bo Wang’s feet. “Still want to run?”
The man kowtowed, his voice a hoarse sob. “I’ll confess! I’ll tell you who sent me to spy on you! Just let me live!”
Bo Wang took a slow drag of his cigarette, looking down at the man with a chilling, half-smile. “Do you think I care about your confession?”
Spying was common. He didn’t want answers; he wanted a release for the boredom of his recovery.
“Brother Wang,” Li Minghuai said, handing over a thick folder. “The investigation into your… ‘wife’ is complete.”
Bo Wang flipped through the documents. Li Minghuai reported his findings: “Lu Zhiling is clean. She spent five years in the Feng house, a total recluse. No interpersonal ties. No powerful backers. She had a falling out with his stepmother the day after the wedding. She’s not anyone’s plant.”
Bo Wang’s eyes stopped on a transcript of Li Minghuai’s “chat” with Jiang Fusheng.
[Jiang Fusheng: Zhiling loves her husband so much… she only earns money to buy him gifts… she’s totally love-struck.]
Bo Wang stared at the words, his thumb tracing the Buddhist prayer beads on his wrist. He looked at her financial records. She hadn’t bought clothes or jewelry for herself. Her only luxury was a 1-million-yuan agarwood bracelet—a gift clearly meant for someone else.
“Continue the surveillance,” Bo Wang said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Still?” Li Minghuai was baffled. “On what?”
“On the moment she finally betrays me,” Bo Wang sneered. He didn’t believe in “love-struck” girls. He believed in the inevitable rot of human nature.
As he got into his car, he glanced at the unconscious man on the ground. “You went too far,” he said with a strange, mocking benevolence. “Take him to the hospital. It’s a sin to let a life go to waste.”
Li Minghuai stood frozen. The hospital? Or the river? Before he could ask, the orange engine roared to life and Bo Wang vanished.
Lu Zhiling stood outside Bo Wang’s building, her mood sour. She had brought the food, but the penthouse was empty. He wasn’t answering her calls. Was he playing games? Was this punishment for the ‘no eating in bed’ rule?
She began to walk away, tapping her cane along the tactile paving. Suddenly, the roar of a car signaled his arrival. The orange convertible screeched to a halt nearby.
Bo Wang sat at the driving seat , biting the arm of his sunglasses, his shirt fluttering in the breeze. He watched her. His gaze was a physical weight, piercing and predatory.
Lu Zhiling kept her eyes vacant, her cane tapping rhythmically as she passed him. She caught the scent of his woody cologne—and something else. The sharp, metallic tang of fresh blood.
Just as she moved past him, a hand clamped onto her shoulder, spinning her around. She stumbled, falling straight into his hard chest. His arms wrapped around her from behind, pulling her back against his heat.
“Bo Wang?” she whispered, her heart thundering.
“How did you know?” he murmured into her ear, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of her lobe.
“I smelled you,” she said, trying to steady her breath. “And the blood. Are you hurt again?”
“Someone else’s,” he said shortly. He didn’t loosen his grip. His magnetic voice dropped lower. “Impatient? Wanted to leave?”
“I didn’t want to intrude if you weren’t home,” she replied softly, playing the submissive wife. “I’ll just leave the lunchbox on the counter.”
“So obedient?” Bo Wang’s lips curled. He didn’t let go. Instead, he steered her back toward the elevator, his body pressed firmly against hers.
Back in the penthouse, he sat at the island counter. He ate with a cold, quiet elegance, one hand on his phone, the other handling his chopsticks with surgical precision. Lu Zhiling stood by, silent and watchful, as a guest in the lion’s den.