Clara led Ouyang Hui and Kang Zhijun upstairs to her room at Hargrove's Table.Ouyang Hui walked in and looked around.The room was not the room of a woman who sold steam buns from a cart in the Bronx. The furnishings communicated their quality without announcing it, the kind of room that had been put together by someone who knew what they were doing and had been given adequate resources to do it. Everything in it was better than anything in Ouyang Hui's home in Wufeng County.The jealousy that moved through her was not subtle and she could not fully contain it, though she tried. For as long as she had been an adult, the hierarchy between the two sisters had been clear: Ouyang Hui had the government job, the county connections, the established household, the rising trajectory. Clara had the steam bun cart and the struggle and the adopted son she could barely afford.That order of things had reversed, and the reversal was sitting in front of her in the form of a well-appointed room in

Gu Qingcheng raised her wine glass."Mr. Vale," she said, with the careful formality of someone who has decided that a reset is appropriate and is executing it with full sincerity. "I owe you a genuine apology for today. I misread everything. And you saved Qiaoqiao. Thank you."The coldness that usually organized her expression was not entirely absent, but something in it had shifted, the specific shift of a person who has been definitively proven wrong and has the character to acknowledge it without qualification.Qiaoqiao raised her glass alongside."Thank you, Big Brother Ethan!"Ethan clinked glasses with both of them and drank.He set the glass down.His phone rang.Unknown number. He answered."Ethan Vale." The voice on the other end was cold with the specific satisfaction of someone who believes they have finally found the correct leverage. "Your mother is in my hands."He recognized Xuanying immediately, the voice, the quality of it, the residue of the evening still in it.His

Ethan looked at Gu Qingcheng.Her face was covered in his blood. Her eyes, which had spent the entire evening operating in the register of cold authority, were doing something completely different, the specific something that happens when a person's control system has been overwhelmed by an event that bypassed the control system entirely.He thought about the ice queen who had blocked his exit and attacked him four times in the villa upstairs, and found the comparison with the woman currently holding him with genuine desperation genuinely funny.He made his face into the expression of someone delivering serious news."Since you're asking me to tell the truth," he said, "I'll be honest with you. The internal injuries are severe. I don't think I have much time.""Ethan, don't, please don't"Gu Qingcheng had not processed that this might be a joke. The explosion had been real. The blood on her face was real. He had run toward her instead of away from the blast and had put his body betwee

They came back to Hargrove's Table.Ethan and Samantha went up together to the room on the upper floor, Clara's room, the room that had been Ouyang Hui's room for the past several hours.The smell of blood reached them before the door was fully open.Kang Zhijun was on the floor in the specific stillness of someone who had not chosen to be still. His eyes were open. He had died with the expression of a person who was about to become very wealthy and had encountered an interruption he did not see coming.Ethan looked at him for a moment.He shook his head.The mother and son had done what they had done and it had produced what it had produced. He did not need to perform grief he did not have, and he did not need to perform satisfaction he did not have either. He left it at that.He stepped back and let Samantha and her officers take the scene. They moved through it with professional efficiency, photographing and documenting and making the calls that needed to be made.He went downstair

The sales associate was already composing her commission calculation mentally when Gu Qingcheng produced a card from her bag.Not a regular card. Gold, with the specific weight and finish of something issued to customers whose relationship with the brand justifies a different tier of material.She set it on the counter."Hold their order for a moment. Check whether my custom order has come in."Xiaoli turned immediately."Why should they wait? We're buying the most expensive phone in the store. Nobody waits for us."The associate looked at the gold card.Her expression underwent a visible reorganization, the professional warmth she maintained for all customers sharpening into something more specific and considerably more attentive."Miss Gu, one moment please. You are a super platinum member, account volume exceeding three million dollars. This is above my authorization level. I'll get the manager immediately."She disappeared into the back office with the card.Xiaoli stared at the s