The private room at the Golden Crest Hotel cost more per hour than Chen Feng made in a month, back when he'd had a job worth mentioning. Crystal chandeliers threw soft gold light over forty guests in tailored silk, over a wall of orchids flown in from Yunnan, over a three-tier cake that nobody would eat because eating in front of the Su family was its own kind of performance.He stood near the back, by the drinks table, where he always stood."Five years," Old Master Su was saying, raising his glass toward his wife of five decades. The old man's hand trembled slightly around the stem — had for the last two months, though nobody but Chen Feng seemed to notice, or to care. "Five years since I told this woman I loved her, and forty-eight since I actually meant it."Laughter. Applause. Su Wan, three seats down, caught Chen Feng's eye across the room and gave him the smallest smile, the kind she saved for moments when no one else was watching. He returned it. It was the only real thing tha

The Su family estate sat on a hill above the city, walled in white stone and old money, the kind of house where the gardens were older than most of the people who admired them. Chen Feng had visited perhaps thirty times in three years of marriage and had never once, until this morning, been asked to come alone.Old Master Su met him at the side gate himself, which was its own small miracle — a man who hadn't personally answered a door in decades, moving slow and careful in a silk robe that couldn't quite disguise how much weight he'd lost in the last six months."You came," the old man said, and there was something almost boyish in his relief, buried deep under seventy-eight years of dignity. "Good. Quickly, before Kang's people notice the car in the drive that isn't his."*He's frightened,* Ye Chen murmured, quiet and precise, as Chen Feng followed the old man through a side corridor lined with paintings worth more than the apartment he and Su Wan actually lived in. *Not of you. List

"Do not let him touch you," Ye Chen said again, sharper this time, and Chen Feng felt something in his own chest tighten in response — not quite fear, but its older, more useful cousin: full, total attention.The man in the gray coat hadn't moved from the center of the entry hall. He stood with the loose, unhurried ease of someone who had already decided how this conversation would end and was simply enjoying the walk there. Mid-fifties, maybe older — it was hard to tell; his face had the strange smoothness of a man who'd either aged very well or hadn't aged normally at all — with gray eyes so pale they were nearly colorless, and hands folded behind his back that hadn't once reached for a phone, a weapon, or anything else since he'd walked through the door."Forgive me," the stranger said, tilting his head at Su Tianhe with exaggerated courtesy. "I haven't introduced myself. You may call me Feng Lao — an old family name, mostly retired now, though some circles still find it useful to

They reconvened that night in the old man's study, the same room where Su Wan had first found the needles that morning, though it felt to Chen Feng like it had been a week rather than a single day. Four of them now, around a table meant for two — Su Tianhe pale but upright in his chair, Su Wan with a legal pad already half-filled with careful, doctor's-handwriting notes, Su Kang standing near the window with his arms crossed, still visibly raw from the afternoon's humiliation, and Chen Feng, trying to hold the shape of a plan that Ye Chen kept quietly, insistently revising in the back of his mind."We can't simply refuse the meeting," Su Kang said, for the third time. "If I no-show or cancel outright, Feng Lao will know something's wrong immediately. He's not a man who reacts well to surprises — I got that much from the one meeting I actually had with him."*He's right,* Ye Chen said. *A predator that senses a trap closing will either flee or strike first, and we are not ready for eit

Six men. Four filling the unmarked door, two rising from the table with their jackets already loose, and one old man at the head of it all, still smiling, as though he'd only raised the price of something.Chen Feng counted them twice. The number didn't improve.*Six,* Ye Chen said, flat and fast. *You have been mine for three days, Chen Feng. You are not ready for six. What you have is precision, not power. Spend it exactly, or do not spend it.*"Kang," Chen Feng said, not taking his eyes off the door. "The elevator. Hold it open and keep your phone in your hand."Su Kang's face had gone the color of old paper, but he moved. Chen Feng had braced for an argument from the other side of him instead."Don't tell me to run," Su Wan said, very low. She hadn't looked at him. She was looking at the two men by the table, her eyes moving the way they moved over a trauma bay. "Chen Feng. The one on the left. He's been shifting his weight every ninety seconds all night, and you've been reading i