[Conference Room A, Lin Group HQ — September 17, 4:45 PM]
The bronze light through the glass walls had gone deep enough to cast the conference room in amber shadow. Half the city skyline beyond had already disappeared into early evening.
Lin Qingwan let the silence stretch after her announcement. Her smile stayed, but the quality had changed — the entertained warmth cooling into something calculated and precise.
She turned to Xiao Yue.
"Miss Xiao." Her voice was conversational, almost academic — the way someone might ask about treaty clauses over afternoon tea. "How familiar are you with imperial marriage provisions for families of our tier?"
The question landed softly. Too softly.
Xiao Yue's expression didn't change, but something behind her dark eyes went very still.
"I will not agree to any polygamous arrangement."
Lin Qingwan's mouth twitched — amusement surfacing and submerging in the same breath.
"I asked about marriage law, Miss Xiao. I haven't proposed anything." A pause, perfectly timed. "I haven't suggested anything nor have I even finished my thought."
She gestured with one hand, open and patient.
"So — how familiar are you?"
Xiao Yue held her gaze for a long moment, and then Lin Qingwan nodded.
After that, she turned and looked at Lin Weiwei.
The look was brief and loaded. Lin Weiwei caught it and held it, her crossed arms tightening against her chest. For one single heartbeat the rivalry between them vanished.
The climate control hummed overhead. Outside the glass walls, the last direct sunlight slid off the nearest office tower and plunged its eastern face into shadow.
Lin Qingwan watched the exchange with bright eyes, then pivoted without breaking stride.
"Weiwei." She said in a warm and familial tone. "You've been part of this family for thirteen years. Tell me — what do you know about Father's marriages?"
Lin Weiwei's jaw clenched so hard the muscles in her neck stood out.
"Elder Sister." Her voice came out low and tight, nothing like the confident woman who'd presented a platform ecosystem only minutes ago. "I will not — I do not agree to any such arrangement."
"Whatever were the arrangements between Madam Ye Wanqing and Madam Ye Wanrou or my mother, Jiang Mei, that is not applicable to our case here."
Lin Qingwan pressed her lips together. Her shoulders gave one small tremor, then another, and her fingers curled against her chin as the amusement built visibly behind her eyes. She looked at both women, then at Lin Feng in his corner chair.
In his corner, Lin Feng sat very still, his hands resting on the armrests with deliberate calm.
Is she… Is she referring to that ridiculous law?
Lin Feng kept his face neutral, but something flickered behind his eyes that Lin Qingwan, watching from the head of the table, definitely caught.
She turned back to face both women.
"Well then. Since neither of you will answer my questions — I'll answer them myself."
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Lin Qingwan's posture shifted — shoulders squaring, chin lifting a fraction. The playful warmth dropped away entirely.
"According to the law, Tier 3 families are allowed to have no more than 3 spouses." She held up three fingers. "No more than 3."
She let the law settle.
"This is legal. And it has been true for centuries."
Neither woman moved. Xiao Yue's folded hands pressed harder against the table surface, and Lin Weiwei's arms stayed locked across her chest.
"Our father, Lin Zhentian, exercised this provision twenty-three years ago." Lin Qingwan continued as if she were presenting quarterly results. "He married twin sisters in a single ceremony. Ye Wanqing and Ye Wanrou — daughters of the Ye family."
The room changed.
Lin Weiwei's arms unlocked. Not deliberately — they just fell, her hands landing flat on the table as if she'd forgotten how to hold them up.
Is Big Sister… Is she…
Xiao Yue's composure held, but her lips parted slightly before pressing shut again.
In his corner, Lin Feng's careful neutrality cracked. Just a fraction — a widening of the eyes that he caught and corrected half a second too late.
I knew it. It's this damn law again.
The one that the fucking author hand-waved into existence just so that Long Tian can marry as many times as he wants.
Lin Qingwan didn't slow down, nor did she soften.
She looked at Lin Weiwei. The warmth was still there, but layered over something harder.
"My mother, Ye Wanqing, gave birth to me twenty-three years ago."
Her rhythm didn't change. But something happened in the space before her next words — a pause so brief it might have been a breath. Might have been nothing.
"She died in childbirth."
The pause had not been nothing.
She moved on without acknowledging it.
"Ye Wanrou — Lin Feng's mother — was the second wife. She and Father divorced several years later. But the arrangement lasted over a decade."
Lin Weiwei stared at her elder sister. Her knuckles began to turn white as she gripped the table hard.
Meanwhile, Xiao Yue sat very still, processing at speed.
Lin Qingwan let the precedent sit, then tilted her head. Her expression shifted to something mild, almost innocent.
"Now. I want to be clear about something. Did I, at any point, tell either of you to embrace a polygamous relationship?"
Neither answered.
"Because from where I'm sitting, I shared some family history. And both of you — without any prompting — jumped straight to polygamy and refused it before I could even finish a sentence."
Her eyes caught the fading light through the glass walls.
"One might even think you were a little too excited about the idea."
Both women went rigid.
Lin Weiwei's nails bit into the table surface.
Damn her. She's using the Ye twins and their marriage with Lin Zhentian as leverage.
Xiao Yue's jaw tightened by a fraction — the only crack in her composure, and more damning than any outburst.
This is bad. She is actually using legality and family history as justification.
Neither could argue back. The trap had no exit that didn't make it worse.
Lin Qingwan let the silence finish the work, then straightened in her chair.
"Now then. Let's talk about business."
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"All six proposals are exceptional. I want that on the record."
Lin Qingwan didn't raise her voice, but the conference room sharpened around her words the way it always did when she spoke as president rather than sister.
"But I run a company, not a salon for interesting ideas. Every proposal you presented today is untested technology — brilliant on paper, unproven in practice. No responsible executive greenlights a complete corporate transformation based on a conference room pitch."
She let her gaze settle on Xiao Yue.
"So why don't you prove yourselves first?"
The words landed, and Xiao Yue's fingers stilled against the table.
Prove your worth.
Her own words. An hour ago, in this same room. She'd set the rules, chosen the battlefield, and presented proposals that would chain her to the Lin Group for years. And Lin Qingwan had just pointed at the door of the cage and held it open.
Oh shit… did I just fall into her trap?
Across the table, Lin Weiwei's breath caught. She'd matched Xiao Yue proposal for proposal entirely by choice, and her platform ecosystem was a three-to-five-year commitment at minimum.
Damn it. I walked right into this.
Lin Qingwan watched both women arrive at the realization, and the satisfaction stayed behind her eyes where it belonged.
Then she turned to Lin Feng.
"And you, dear brother." Her voice warmed by exactly one degree. "You've shown some slight competence today. You asked real questions, engaged with the material."
She paused long enough for the words to do their work.
"So..."
Lin Feng's hands tightened on the armrests.
The amber light through the glass walls had deepened another shade toward evening. Lin Qingwan straightened in her chair, and neither the marriage law nor the twin wives precedent came up again.
She hadn't dismissed them. Hadn't resolved them. They simply remained — unaddressed and impossible to ignore.
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Before Lin Qingwan could finish the thought, both women moved.
Not toward each other and not toward Lin Feng but toward the head of the table, and for the first time since this meeting began, they moved together.
"President Lin." Xiao Yue's voice cut through the fading light first, formal and sharp. "With all due respect — the marriage provision and the family precedent have no bearing on the professional arrangement you just outlined."
"Elder Sister." Lin Weiwei was half a beat behind, her tone harder. "Whatever the previous generation chose to do is their business. It does not set terms for ours."
Both women rose and stood shoulder to shoulder in unified opposition.
Lin Qingwan looked at them both for a long moment, then tilted her head.
"Are you directing these protests at me?"
The question hung unanswered.
"Because I want to be absolutely clear about something." She leaned back in her chair. "I am Lin Feng's older sister. I am not the person either of you intends to be with."
She let a deliberate pause do the work.
"By the way, I'm straight."
The sentence landed so absurdly, so precisely timed, that neither woman could maintain her momentum. Xiao Yue's mouth opened and closed once. Lin Weiwei's entire protest stalled mid-breath.
Lin Qingwan didn't give them room to regroup.
"As his big sister, I have no intention of controlling or deciding who Lin Feng wants to be with. That is his decision." Her voice stayed light, but the edges were steel. "Not mine. Not yours. But Lin Feng's."
She looked from Xiao Yue to Lin Weiwei and back.
"I shared some family history. I cited a legal provision. At no point did I instruct anyone to do anything."
She let that settle, then her expression shifted — warmer, but no less pointed.
"You are two extraordinary women who just delivered world-class business proposals to the president of a regional corporation. You are not teenage girls fighting over a boy in a cafeteria."
"Please respect yourselves."
Lin Weiwei's nostrils flared. Xiao Yue's shoulders pulled back by a fraction.
Neither spoke — not because the argument was over, but because continuing it now would prove Lin Qingwan's point.
The unified front collapsed not from defeat, but from dignity.
Both women returned to where they'd been standing — Xiao Yue on one side of the table, Lin Weiwei on the other.
Lin Qingwan turned her gaze to the corner chair.
"So, dear brother. Since neither of these women should be directing their personal decisions at me — and since you are, in fact, the person they both want to be with —"
She spread her hands.
"What do you actually want to do?"
Every eye in the conference room locked onto Lin Feng.
Both women turned where they stood.
Lin Qingwan watched from the head of the table with calm, unreadable eyes. Beyond the glass walls, the last of the afternoon light caught the silhouettes of executive assistants who had stopped pretending to work.
Lin Feng sat in his corner chair, perfectly still.
Finally, my time has come.
Thank you Big Sister… you are the best wingman out there.
Now then…
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Lin Feng stood.
The chair rolled back behind him, and the sound of it crossing the floor was the loudest thing in the conference room. Both women tracked the movement. Lin Qingwan's eyes narrowed by a fraction.
And he walked.
The corner chair had been deliberately far from the table, and now he crossed that distance with unhurried steps. The conference room was not small, and the walk felt longer than it was.
He stopped beside Xiao Yue first.
She watched him approach with guarded stillness. When he reached down and took her hand, she pulled back — but the resistance was measured, controlled, more reflex than refusal.
Her fingers tensed against his grip without breaking it. She could have pulled free if she truly wanted to, and they both knew it.
He held on, then walked her around the table to Lin Weiwei.
Taking her hand was different. Lin Weiwei's resistance was immediate and physical — she twisted her wrist, her breath coming sharp through her teeth, and for a moment it looked like she might actually wrench free.
But her fingers ended up curling around his forearm instead of pulling away, gripping hard enough to leave marks. Possessive even in protest.
Lin Feng drew both women to his sides and wrapped his arms around their waists.
Both stiffened against him, but neither pulled away.
"My answer has always been the same since yesterday." His voice was steady and low, pitched for the three of them and not for the executive floor beyond. "I'm not going to stand here and claim some grand passion that I haven't earned the right to claim."
He tightened his hold by a fraction.
"But something real is here — something from the bottom of my heart — for both of you. And I won't lie about that to make this situation more comfortable."
"I want both of you. That is not open to any compromise."
The conference room held its breath. The evening light through the windows painted three figures in the center of the room — two women held close, one man between them, and an empty corner chair behind him.
The silence stretched, and every eye in the room drifted to the head of the table, where Lin Qingwan sat watching her brother with an expression that no one in the room could read.
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For the first time since these meetings began, Lin Qingwan had no words.
She stared at her baby brother standing in the center of the conference room with two women held by the waist, in full view of the entire executive floor, after she had just spent the better part of an hour constructing the most elegant strategic maneuver of her career.
And he had resolved it by grabbing both of them.
One beat of silence. Two.
Then Lin Qingwan broke.
Not the unreadable professional smile from the first meeting. Not the hand-over-mouth, shoulders-shaking suppression from Xiao Yue's hardware proposals. Not the composure fractures from Lin Weiwei's counter-presentation. All of that had been controlled, managed, held behind professional barriers that bent but never gave way.
This was none of those things.
The laughter erupted out of her like something that had been locked in a basement for three days and finally kicked the door down. Her head tipped back, her hand slammed flat on the table, and the sound that came out of Lin Qingwan was loud enough that hints of laughter could be heard outside the soundproof conference room.
Tears appeared in her eyes within seconds. Her breathing dissolved into something between wheezing and gasping, each attempt to compose herself collapsing into another wave that left her shaking in her chair. She pressed both hands against her face and it did absolutely nothing.
A full minute passed. Yet, it felt longer to everyone else.
Lin Feng stood with both women at his sides, waiting for his sister to stop dying. Xiao Yue and Lin Weiwei exchanged a glance over his chest — the kind of glance that two people share when a third person has lost their mind entirely.
Lin Qingwan finally surfaced. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, drew two shuddering breaths, and straightened in her chair. The president climbed back through the wreckage of the delighted big sister and reassembled herself with visible effort.
"Brother! Oh dear brother!" Her voice was still unsteady. "Haah! I must tell you this though… Handling... both of them together will not be easy."
Her eyes drifted to Xiao Yue on those words — her gaze lingered there a beat longer than necessary.
"These are not ordinary women. Can you handle both of them?"
"Yes."
Lin Feng said it the way someone might agree to pick up dinner on the way home.
Both women turned and looked at him with identical expressions of undisguised contempt.
Lin Qingwan's mouth twitched, but she chose to suppress a new round of laughter from deep within her.
"You have nerve, little brother." She stood from her chair. "Big balls move! Very well. You have my blessing."
She began walking — not toward the door, but around the perimeter of the conference room.
Her fingers reached behind a potted plant near the window and detached something small.
Then behind the presentation screen.
Then from underneath the edge of the table itself.
Hidden cameras. Three of them. The room had been wired the entire time.
"I recorded everything," she said, as casually as someone mentioning the weather. "The proposals, the arguments, the preemptive refusals, the waist-grabbing — all of it."
She held up a small device and smiled.
"I'm bringing these to Aunt Wanrou back in the capital. She's going to love the part where her son declared he wants two wives in a corporate conference room."
All three of them went red at the same time.
For one brief moment — embarrassment replacing every other emotion in the room — they were on the same side.
Lin Feng released both women's waists as he tried to reach for the device while Xiao Yue and Lin Weiwei both stepped toward Lin Qingwan with matching expressions of alarm.
Lin Qingwan ignored all of them and calmly walked toward the door.
"As for the business side." She paused by the door, her tone shifting to something offhand. "Submit something by… hmmm… next week? next month? Well, whatever. I don't particularly care about the specifics anyway — let it develop naturally."
She reached into her jacket pocket and produced a heavy brass seal — the Lin Group's official stamp. The kind of object that could authorize contracts, expenditures, and acquisitions with a single press.
She tossed it to Lin Feng.
He caught it — barely, fumbling it once before his fingers closed around it — and stared at it.
"Starting from today, anything you say in this company carries equal weight to my own words." Her voice was still casual, still light — as though she were telling him where she'd parked.
"In my capacity as President and majority shareholder of the Lin Group. Also, take good care of my people."
She opened the conference room door while waving one hand.
"Spend the company's finances wisely."
Then she glanced back one last time, her smile warm and sharp and deeply satisfied.
"I have a flight to catch. I don't want to make your mother wait."
The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.
Three people remained. Lin Feng stood in the center of the room with the brass seal in one hand and two women standing on either side of him, close enough that he could feel the tension radiating off both of them.
The late afternoon light had gone deep gold through the windows, and the authority figure who had orchestrated everything was gone.
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[5:11 PM]
The echo of the door hadn't faded before they turned on him.
Then, two sets of fingers found the soft flesh above his hips and pinched so hard that Lin Feng's teeth clenched and his molars ached but no sound escaped him.
The pain was sharp and immediate and absolutely deliberate — retribution for the declaration, the waist-grabbing, the casual "yes," and everything else he'd done in the last ten minutes.
They had held it together while the president was watching. The moment the door closed, the ceasefire ended.
Xiao Yue stepped back first, smoothing her sleeve with the composure of someone who hadn't just committed assault.
Lin Weiwei followed a beat later, straightening her collar without looking at him. The distance reasserted itself like a line redrawn in the sand.
The conference room felt twice as large without Lin Qingwan in it, and twice as quiet.
Lin Feng looked at the brass seal in his hand, then at the clock on the far wall. Emotion filed itself away. Logistics surfaced.
"It's already five." He tucked the seal into his jacket pocket. "We should go pick up Zhang Tingting before it gets too late."
The temperature in the room, which had been slowly recovering since Lin Qingwan's exit, plummeted back to freezing.
He realized his mistake approximately one second after the words left his mouth.
He had just declared in front of the entire executive floor that he wanted both of them, that it was not open to any compromise — and his very first thought once the dust settled was to go collect another woman who had been living in his apartment.
Xiao Yue's heel connected with his shin before he could take a breath.
Lin Weiwei's shoe found the other shin half a second later.
He absorbed both impacts without flinching, though the brass seal nearly slipped from his fingers.
They walked toward the conference room door without another word. Their strides fell into sync without either of them planning it — the same pace, the same posture, the same rigid fury radiating off their shoulders.
They reached the threshold and stopped, then turned back.
Two faces looked at him from the doorway, and not a single thing that had happened in the last hour had been forgiven.
"Are you coming or not?"
They said it together, and neither seemed surprised that they had.
Lin Feng looked at the room around him — the table where six proposals had been presented and a family's future had been rewritten, the glass walls that had hidden nothing, the fading gold light pooling on empty chairs.
"We're only going," Lin Weiwei said through her teeth, "so you won't go looking for some other bitches out there."
"Agreed," Xiao Yue said, with the clipped precision of someone signing a contract.
"So are you coming or not?"
"Coming!"
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[End of Chapter]