Lu Zhiling’s gaze was like a frozen lake—calm, flat, and chillingly deep. She didn’t flinch as she reached into her bag, withdrawing a stack of documents and a sleek digital voice recorder.
“Aunt Xia, there is no need for theatrics,” Lu Zhiling began, her voice steady. “I have the recordings right here. It’s quite clear—you pressing Jiang Fusheng for details on my private life with Bo Wang, and your explicit instructions for her to steal the script. Of course,” she added with a thin, mocking smile, “in the recording, you claim you were only acting out of ‘maternal concern,’ afraid we’d make a mess of the production.”
The blood drained from Xia Meiqing’s face. She felt a surge of murderous rage toward Jiang Fusheng. That spineless brat had dared to record her? Did the girl not realize her entire family’s livelihood was tethered to the Bo estate?
“Fusheng is a gentle soul,” Lu Zhiling continued, her smile widening just a fraction. “She’s never been one to make enemies. If anything… unfortunate… were to happen to her now, everyone would know exactly whose door to knock on.”
Xia Meiqing nearly bolted upright, her voice screeching. “Lu Zhiling, what are you implying?”
“She’s implying,” Yu Yunfei interrupted, her voice like silk as she delicately touched her manicured nails to her nose, “that she’s afraid you’ll kill the girl to silence her. Honestly, Meiqing, Bo Wang is taking over SG Entertainment, and I’ve stepped aside gracefully. Yet here you are, weaving these clumsy webs behind the scenes. Where is your dignity as an elder?”
“Yu Yunfei, shut your mouth! You’ve been pulling just as many strings as I have!” Xia Meiqing snarled.
Bo Zhengrong let out a low, guttural huff of displeasure. The sound was enough to make Xia Meiqing shrink back into the sofa cushions, her mouth snapping shut in a state of practiced fear. He turned his heavy, dark gaze toward Lu Zhiling.
“If you have more to say, finish it,” he commanded.
“I do. The records of Aunt Xia’s attempts to sabotage Gu Na are all here.” Lu Zhiling laid out a fresh set of files. These were the fruits of Gu Na’s own meticulous paranoia and Bo Wang’s ruthless efficiency. “You didn’t show your face, Aunt Xia, but your messengers were careless. They knew exactly when the household ate, exactly how the domestic staff moved. No judge would believe they weren’t your dogs.”
Xia Meiqing felt the walls closing in. She turned to Bo Zhengrong, throwing herself against his arm with a desperate, cloying softness. “Zhengrong, I only asked because I cared! I’m just clumsy, you know how I am—I act before I think, but my heart was in the right place!”
Bo Zhengrong ignored her, his brow furrowing deeper as he scanned the documents. The silence in the hall was suffocating. Yu Yunfei sat back, watching Xia Meiqing’s clumsy scramble with an amused, superior air.
“And what is it you want from this?” Bo Zhengrong asked, looking up. “You didn’t come here just to gossip.”
“Since I’ve started, I intend to finish,” Lu Zhiling said, her eyes shifting to Yu Yunfei. “That includes Aunt Yu’s involvement as well.”
Yu Yunfei’s posture turned rod-straight, her face masking a sudden spike of alarm. “And what could you possibly have on me?”
Young Bo Zhen watched the exchange, his mouth slightly agape. He had never seen Lu Zhiling like this. She was no longer the fragile, blind bird; she was a predator. She looked… terrifyingly cool.
“Father,” Lu Zhiling said, placing a stack of handwritten letters on the table. “These are confessions from several SG executives. They admit they were instructed by Aunt Yu to have Chen Xueran seduce Bo Wang. When that failed, they resorted to photoshopping bed photos to create a scandal on the night of the premiere.”
Bo Zhengrong took a long, hard look at her. She was far more dangerous than he had initially calculated.
Yu Yunfei didn’t scream like Xia Meiqing. She remained poised. “Zhiling, a few forced confessions mean nothing. I have never given such orders.”
“Perhaps,” Lu Zhiling countered, her tone dangerously polite. “But at the very least, it proves you were incredibly lax in your management and poor at vetting your inner circle, wouldn’t you agree?”
Yu Yunfei choked on her next retort, her composure finally fracturing.
“And finally,” Lu Zhiling said, her voice dropping into a cold, hollow register. “The video of Director Gu’s final moments.”
She pressed play on the tablet. The screen showed Gu Na in her bedroom, looking ethereal in a white silk dress. Opposite her sat a man with a distinct mole on his cheek—a man whose eyes were empty of everything but death.
The room watched in a haunting silence as Gu Na tried to bargain for her life with a box of cash.
“Can you spare me?” Gu Na’s voice was tinny through the speakers.
“You meddled in the affairs of a Great Family,” the assassin sneered. “Money can’t buy back a life that’s already been signed away. We’re killing you to teach people a lesson—to show them what happens when you take the wrong side.”
The video continued, showing the chillingly professional search for cameras, and finally, the moment the assassin grew overconfident.
“Who sent you?” Gu Na asked.
The man hesitated, then spat out a name: “Lin Changwu.”
“A high-ranking member of the Bo Group,” Lu Zhiling narrated over the video, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. “As for who hired Lin Changwu? The assassin claimed he didn’t know, but he hinted that Gu Na surely knew who she had offended.”
The screen showed the assassin forcing the sleeping pills on her, then the gruesome, clinical way he slashed her wrist to make it look like a Zi Sha [suicide]. He sat there afterward, calmly counting the blood-money while Gu Na’s life drained onto the sheets.
The hall was like a tomb. Xia Meiqing spun around, glaring at Yu Yunfei. “Are you insane? You actually committed murder?”
“What does this have to do with me?” Yu Yunfei shrieked, her poise shattered.
“Everyone knows Lin Changwu is your dog!” Xia Meiqing fired back. “He breathes when you tell him to! I bet you were the one who tried to drown Lu Zhiling in the river, too!”
“I didn’t!” Yu Yunfei turned to Bo Zhengrong, tears streaming down her face. “Zhengrong, it’s a frame-up! The assassin lied! I’ll go to the police right now and confront them!”
“The confrontation is over,” Lu Zhiling said, her words cutting through Yu Yunfei’s hysterics like a blade. “The moment Bo Wang’s men moved in, Lin Changwu suffered a massive stroke. He is now a vegetable, unable to speak. And the assassin? He was found dead in a rental room days ago.”
Bo Zhengrong’s face was like stone.
“Just like the incident at the river,” Lu Zhiling said. “As soon as we get close to the truth, the leads are cut. The dead cannot testify. But Father, I am asking you to uphold justice for this family.”
Yu Yunfei looked at Bo Zhengrong, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Bo Zhengrong threw the files onto the coffee table. “If the leads are cut and the police have no case, what ‘justice’ do you expect from me?”
Yu Yunfei let out a quiet, shaky breath of relief.
“Father, you are the Patriarch. Nothing happens in this house or this conglomerate without your shadow falling over it,” Lu Zhiling said, enunciating every syllable.
“Do not flatter me,” Bo Zhengrong snapped. “And do not lecture me. If Bo Wang cannot handle these petty schemes, he has no business being the heir. I am strict with my sons, not the women who decorate my home.”
To him, Gu Na was a casualty of war. In a great family, life was a currency to be spent. He looked at Lu Zhiling with burgeoning disappointment. He had thought she was exceptional; it turned out she was just sentimental.
“My grandfather used to say,” Lu Zhiling began, her voice rising with a quiet, fierce dignity, “that even a pack of wolves cannot survive if they turn on their own. When you lose your humanity to ‘competition,’ you become a malignant tumor. Eventually, the infection will devour the entire family.”
“Are you teaching me how to rule the Bo family?” Bo Zhengrong’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble. “Your grandfather? If he were so brilliant, the Lu family wouldn’t have been reduced to a single survivor.”
The insult hit Lu Zhiling like a physical blow. She stood up, her spine rigid. “I am young, and I may not know how to rule. But I know that blood demands an answer.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I will let the people of this country judge,” she said, her eyes flashing with a cold, intensity. “The public is obsessed with the scandals of the wealthy. Perhaps they would like to see the evidence of how the Bo family treats those who serve them.”
A collective gasp rippled through the servants. Bo Zhen stared at her in awe. She was threatening the Patriarch? She was going to drag the Bo family name through the mud of the internet?
Bo Zhengrong’s face contorted with a terrifying, silent rage. “Did Bo Wang send you here to threaten me?”
“This is my justice,” she said.
“You think you’re so secure in your position?” he sneered, the pressure of his presence filling the room like a physical weight. “You really think you can walk away from this?”
Lu Zhiling didn’t flinch. She stood her ground, a lone figure against a dynasty.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Bo Zhengrong hissed. “Do you truly dare?”
If she crossed this line, even the Old Lady couldn’t save her. The Bo family would erase her as easily as they had erased Gu Na.
“I dare,” she replied.
“And what exactly is it she doesn’t dare to do?” a familiar, wicked voice rang out.
Everyone spun around. Bo Wang was leaning against the doorframe, his black shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal the sharp, sensual lines of his throat. He looked disheveled, dangerous, and utterly arrogant, the golden sunset haloing him from behind.
Lu Zhiling turned, her breath catching. Why was he here so early?
Bo Wang strode into the room, his long, possessive fingers coming to rest heavily on her shoulder. He looked at his father with a mocking, grin.