Ruan Suyin sat at her vanity for a long time after everyone had gone to their room.
Looking at her own face in the mirror.
Still beautiful. Still composed. Still every inch the Yun family Madam that she had spent seventeen years building herself into.
She'd started from nothing, actually.
People forgot that. Or didn't know it. She'd been twenty-three and clever and pretty and completely ruthless about what she wanted, and what she'd wanted was this — the house, the name, the position. She'd gotten all of it.
She wasn't about to lose it now.
She picked up her phone, Called Liang Boshen's personal secretary.
" What's The situation," she said when he answered.
A pause. The careful voice of a man delivering bad news to someone he was afraid of. "Mr. Liang's assets have been frozen pending investigation. He's currently— the situation is very fluid, Madam Yun. He's asked me to convey that all existing arrangements are suspended indefinitely."
Suspended indefinitely.
"I see," she said pleasantly. "Thank you."
She hung up.
Looked at her reflection.
Suspended indefinitely.
Two years of planning. The search for the biological daughter. The paperwork. The careful maneuvering of her husband toward a decision she'd made seem like his own idea.
All of it.
Suspended indefinitely.
She set the phone down very carefully on the vanity.
Then she thought about a girl sitting in a formal sitting room with her hands folded in her lap looking soft and overwhelmed.
Who had slipped out so quietly during the commotion that nobody noticed until the chair was already empty.
Ruan Suyin looked at herself in the mirror for a long moment.
She'd been wrong about something.
She'd looked at Yun Jiao and seen an orphanage girl.
She needed to look again.
—— YUNJINNA —
Her mother came to her room at nine PM.
Knocked once. Came in without waiting for an answer, which she always did, which Yunjinna had stopped pointing out years ago because it never changed anything.
She looked at her mother's face and knew immediately.
"The meeting," she said.
"Fell through." Ruan Suyin sat on the edge of the bed. Straight back. Composed. Like she was delivering a quarterly report. "Liang Boshen's assets have been frozen. There's an investigation."
Yunjinna stared at her.
"So she's staying," she said.
"Hm...For now."
"For NOW?" She stood up. "Mother it's been THREE DAYS and she's already—"
"Lower your voice."
"She's already dismantled every single thing we've tried—"
"Yunjinna."
"The necklace! The camera! The men on the east road! And now Liang Boshen of all people suddenly has an investigation dropped on him the same day he comes here—" She laughed. High, cracked and somewhat crazy. "You still think that's a coincidence?"
Ruan Suyin looked at her daughter.
Said nothing.
Which was, somehow, worse than saying something.
"You knew," Yunjinna said slowly. "You knew already that she did something—"
"I don't know anything." Her mother's voice was even. "And neither do you. And that's the problem."
Yunjinna looked at her."Then what do we do?"
"We watch," Ruan Suyin said simply. "We stop moving and we watch. We've been playing this wrong — reacting to her instead of getting ahead of her."
"Getting AHEAD of her?" Yunjinna's voice went up. "Mother she's been here THREE DAYS—"
"And in three days she has done more damage than most people manage in a year." Ruan Suyin stood. Smoothed her qipao. "Which tells us something important."
"What."
"That we need to stop treating her like an orphanage girl."
She walked to the door.
Yunjinna watched her go."So that's it?" she said to her mother's back. "We just — watch? After everything she's done to me—"
Ruan Suyin paused at the door.
Didn't turn around.
"The thugs were your idea," she said quietly. "I want you to remember that."
She left.
The door clicked shut.
Yunjinna stood in the middle of her room.
Alone.
She looked at the wall between her room and the east wing.
That girl was on the other side of it right now. Probably sleeping peacefully. Probably completely unbothered. Probably—She picked up her pillow and pressed it against her face and screamed into it for three full seconds.Then she put it back.
Fixed her hair.
Sat down.
Picked up her phone and called Chu Jintan.
He answered on the second ring. "Hey—"
"She's staying," Yunjinna said flatly.
Huh....
"The Liang Boshen thing fell through?"
"Yes."
"Okay. So we figure something else out."
"Like what, Jintan? Everything we try she just—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "She has cameras. She has that device. She has—" She shook her head. "I don't know what she has but she has something and I can't find it and I can't prove it and I can't—"
"Jinna." His voice was steady. "Stop spiraling. She's a seventeen year old girl."
Yunjinna closed her eyes.
She wanted to say: you didn't see her face in that sitting room.
She wanted to say: seventeen year old girls don't set up security systems on their first day in a new house.
She wanted to say: there is something wrong with this picture and I don't know what it is but I can feel it and nobody believes me.
Instead she said: "You're right."
And looked at the wall.
——
In Yunting's room,
His visitor arrived at eight thirty.
A man from Liang Boshen's circle — not inner circle, outer. The kind of man sent to deliver messages and gauge reactions and report back.Yunting received him in his study.
Listened for six minutes.The substance of it: investigation, frozen assets, suspended arrangements, sincere apologies, hope to reschedule when things are resolved.
He nodded.
Showed the man out.
Sat back down at his desk.
Looked at the numbers on his screen.The Liang Boshen deal had been one solution. Not the only one. There were other men with money, reach and appetite. The market was not short of people who had things he needed and wanted things he could provide.
He'd just find another arrangement.
He always did.
His eyes moved to the window briefly.
The east wing was dark. She'd gone to bed early.
He looked back at his screen.
She was a variable he hadn't fully calculated yet, he needed to rethink how he should treat her.
That footage yesterday. The camera. The way she'd sat in the formal sitting room today and said exactly the right amount of nothing.
He tapped his pen against the desk once.
Then he went back to his numbers.
He'd think about that later.