The Heiress's Driver Rules the Underworld

Chapter 1: The Driver Isn't Quite Right

On his third day back in China, Shen Kaiyue almost lost an RMB 8,000-a-month driving job with full benefits.

“Mr. Shen, there’s a nine-year blank on your résumé.”

The recruitment manager tapped the paper with his pen.

“It isn’t blank,” Shen said from the plastic chair. “I just can’t put it in writing.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“Drove.”

“For whom?”

“Whoever paid me.”

The manager stared at him for several seconds, then closed the résumé.

“We’re hiring a dedicated driver for the chairman’s office, not a rideshare driver.”

Shen nodded, stood, and pushed the chair neatly back into place.

“Understood. Can I get my parking validated?”

The manager’s mouth twitched. He probably wanted to swear, but with more than a dozen applicants waiting next door, all he could do was pull a parking voucher from his drawer and slap it onto the desk.

“Get it stamped on the first floor.”

“Thanks.”

Shen took the voucher. Before leaving, he glanced once more at the recruitment poster on the wall.

RMB 8,000 to 12,000 a month. Meals included. Public holidays observed according to company policy.

That last line had been tempting.

What a shame.

He had just reached the elevators when a commotion broke out at the other end of the corridor.

“Uncle Qian’s hands are shaking too badly. He can’t drive.”

“What about the backup driver?”

“He took the younger Miss Luan to the racetrack. He isn’t back yet.”

“The signing is at two thirty. It’s already two oh six.”

High heels struck the tile. The steps were not hurried, yet people in the corridor moved aside without being asked.

Shen looked up.

The woman was around thirty, dressed in a sharply tailored black suit with her white shirt buttoned to the throat. Her long hair was pinned at the back of her head. A phone rested in her left hand while her right accepted a file from an assistant and flipped through it without breaking stride.

She never glanced around. It was as if the corridor had been built to clear itself for her.

“Call a car,” she said.

“Ms. Luan, the app says the nearest one is eighteen minutes away.”

“Pull someone from Administration.”

The assistant lowered her voice. “Everyone willing to drive your car is out.”

The woman stopped.

Right in front of Shen.

Her gaze moved from the parking voucher in his hand to the résumé protruding from his document folder.

“You came to apply as a driver?”

“I just got rejected.”

“Why?”

“Honesty.”

The assistant could not help looking up at him.

The woman’s expression did not change. She simply held out a car key.

“East Harbor Convention Center in twenty-four minutes. Can you do it?”

Shen did not take the key.

“Who pays the traffic fines?”

“You do.”

“Damage to the car?”

“Depends who is at fault.”

“Overtime?”

For the first time, she looked at him properly.

Her eyes were beautiful and cold. Not the coldness of someone putting on airs, but of someone who spent all day cleaning up other people’s messes and had long ago stopped wasting emotion on nonsense.

“Get the car out of the garage,” she said. “Then we can discuss overtime.”

Only then did Shen accept the key.

“Fine.”

The black sedan was parked on basement level two. It was more than five meters long, freshly washed, and polished enough for the paint to hold a reflection.

The first thing Shen did after getting behind the wheel was not start the engine. He moved the seat back two notches, checked the mirrors, and glanced at the tire-pressure display.

Luan Zhaowan was already seated in the rear.

Her assistant took the passenger seat, opened a laptop, and began speaking quickly. “The Luo family dropped their bid by twelve percent at the last minute. They also contacted two minority shareholders. If we fail to sign today, the harbor-district warehousing project will be delayed by at least three months.”

“They aren’t trying to lower the price.” Luan Zhaowan opened the file. “They want to stall until the board election.”

“Then the Luo family—”

“Proceed as planned.”

Shen pressed the ignition.

The car did not move.

Luan Zhaowan raised her head. “Is there a problem?”

“Seat belts.”

The assistant fastened hers at once.

Nothing moved in the rear seat.

Shen met Luan Zhaowan’s eyes in the mirror.

“Ms. Luan, this is my first day on trial. I’d rather not have my boss fly out of the back seat and land on my neck.”

She closed the file, pulled the belt across herself, and clicked it into place.

“Can we go now?”

“Now we can.”

The sedan had barely started up the exit ramp when a white cargo van suddenly reversed out of the corner and stopped sideways across the garage entrance.

It was no accident.

The van’s rear tires straddled the center of the exit. The driver’s seat was empty. Two motorcycles without license plates stood in front of the van.

The assistant’s face changed. “I’ll call security.”

“No need.” Shen checked the rearview mirror.

A gray SUV glided in behind them and cut off their retreat.

Four men climbed out. None wore masks. None bothered to hide their faces. Their leader approached the rear window, bent down, and tapped the glass.

“Ms. Luan, Mr. Luo would like you to come back and reconsider the deal.”

Luan Zhaowan did not even lower the window.

“Call the police,” she told her assistant.

The man grinned and lifted one hand.

Two others took out short batons and came toward the driver’s side.

Shen sighed.

“That thing we discussed about damage to the car. Who pays?”

Luan Zhaowan looked up. “If it isn’t your fault, the company does.”

“That’s all I needed.”

He shifted into reverse.

The gray SUV was almost touching their rear bumper. Its driver sat behind the wheel, grinning at Shen through the windshield.

Shen smiled back.

Then the black sedan shot backward.

Bang!

The SUV lurched half a meter away.

Before its driver could react, Shen spun the wheel as far as it would go. The sedan’s rear swept past a concrete pillar, missing it by the width of a fist. At the same time, its front left tire climbed the sloped curb beside the fire lane.

He released the brake and stepped on the gas.

The two-ton sedan surged up the slope. Its right-side tires brushed the cargo van’s bumper, rocking the van and opening a narrow gap in what had been a sealed exit.

The black sedan slipped straight through.

In the passenger seat, the assistant hugged her laptop to her chest and said nothing for several seconds.

Shen glanced at her. “Laptop okay?”

“Y-yes.”

“And you?”

“I’m fine too.”

“Good. That laptop looks expensive.”

A soft laugh came from the back seat.

When Shen checked the mirror, Luan Zhaowan had already lowered her eyes and returned to the file as though the laugh had come from someone else.

They were not even two hundred meters from the garage when the two motorcycles caught up.

One rider raised a baton and swung it at the rear window.

Shen tapped the brake.

The rider misjudged the distance. His baton cut through empty air as his bike jumped ahead. Before he could steady himself, the black sedan changed lanes and nudged him—not hard, but just enough.

The motorcycle plunged into the roadside shrubs. The rider rolled twice and did not get up to follow them.

The second motorcycle kept its distance after that.

“Nineteen minutes,” Luan Zhaowan said, glancing at her watch.

“We’ll make it.”

“The expressway ahead is backed up,” the assistant said, studying the navigation app.

“I know.”

Shen turned right one intersection early, cut through two old streets, and took the service exit behind a market onto the riverside road. His speed was never terrifying, but every lane change landed exactly in an opening. There was not a single wasted motion.

Fifteen minutes later, the sedan stopped beside the East Harbor Convention Center’s side entrance.

Four minutes remained before the signing.

Luan Zhaowan put a hand on the door handle, then paused.

“You spent all nine years driving?”

“Most of the time.”

“And the rest?”

“Persuading unreasonable people to be reasonable.”

“How?”

Shen looked at the fresh scratches along the car’s right side.

“Usually more gently than today.”

Without another question, Luan Zhaowan entered the convention center with her assistant.

Shen parked and walked around the sedan.

Two scratches on the right side. A chunk of paint missing from the rear bumper. A scraped wheel rim.

He took several photos. Just as he was about to send them to the recruitment manager, a cup of hot coffee appeared beside him.

The assistant had returned without him noticing.

“Ms. Luan asked me to bring you this.”

“Did she sign the contract?”

“She did.”

The assistant handed him a thin document.

“Now sign yours.”

Shen turned to the salary page.

RMB 25,000 a month. Three-month probation. Communication and travel expenses reimbursed separately. On call twenty-four hours a day.

He held the pen without moving.

“Is there a problem?” the assistant asked.

“Being on call twenty-four hours isn’t quite the same as an eight-hour workday.”

“Ms. Luan says overtime pays double.”

“Damage to the car?”

“Covered by the company.”

“Parking?”

The assistant hesitated. “Reimbursed.”

Shen lowered his head and signed his name.

The assistant studied the three Chinese characters of his signature, then looked at his face for another two seconds.

He had just crashed his new boss’s car, yet he could sit beside a flower bed and ask about parking reimbursement with a perfectly serious expression. Even her hand slowed as she took back the contract.

She was about to leave when her phone rang.

After the call, her expression was peculiar.

“Mr. Shen, Ms. Luan has your first official assignment.”

“Go ahead.”

“Bring her younger sister back from Wangting Mountain before eleven tonight.”

She sent a photograph to his phone.

The young woman in the picture leaned against a silver-gray sports car. She wore a cropped black jacket, her long hair tied in a high ponytail, and held a helmet in one hand. Defiance filled her eyes as she looked away from the camera, strong enough to spill out of the photograph.

Shen studied it for two seconds.

“Can’t she drive herself?”

“She can,” the assistant said. “That’s why no one has managed to bring her back.”

Shen took a sip of coffee.

“I see.”

“Are you confident?”

“No.”

The assistant blinked.

Shen slipped the contract into his document folder and added at an unhurried pace, “But her sister did just promise me double overtime.”