Wenhao was about to leave for university when a servant stopped him at the door.
"Young master, Mr. Liang is asking for you in his study."
Wenhao smiled. "Okay. I'll be right there."
He walked upstairs, his heart light. He was still floating from last night. The kiss. The fireworks. The way Zhenlong had looked at him.
He pushed open the door to his father's study. Mr. Liang was standing near the window, his back turned, looking out at the garden.
Wenhao smiled. "You called me?"
Mr. Liang turned around. His face was hard. His eyes were cold. There was something in his hand that he was gripping tightly.
"Who have you been meeting recently?" Mr. Liang asked.
Wenhao's smile faltered. His heart stopped beating for a second. "No one, Dad. Just my usual university friends."
"Now you've started lying to me too."
Wenhao's palms started sweating. "What are you saying, Father? I'm—"
Mr. Liang grabbed a handful of photos from the table and threw them at Wenhao.
They scattered across the floor. Wenhao looked down and his breath caught in his throat.
There were more than ten photos. Him and Zhenlong at the café. Him and Zhenlong at the park. Him and Zhenlong holding hands. Him and Zhenlong hugging.
And the last one. The one from last night. The kiss under the fireworks.
Wenhao couldn't breathe.
"Answer me now!" Mr. Liang's voice thundered through the room. "No wonder that motherfucker gave everything back. He just wanted to take my son. Do you know what this means to me? Are you in your right senses or not?"
Wenhao opened his mouth but no words came out.
"I'm not against you falling in love with a man," Mr. Liang continued, his voice shaking with rage. "But this man? Do you even know how dangerous he is? And on top of that, he's the same age as your uncle. Are you crazy?"
Wenhao stood there with blurry vision, trying not to cry. His hands were shaking. His whole body was shaking.
Mr. Liang took a breath and his voice went cold. "Pack your things. I can't let you stay here anymore. Everyone was right. I'm the one who spoiled you. I should have sent you away with your other brothers. I should have been strict with you like them."
Tears spilled down Wenhao's cheeks. "No. Please, Dad. Please don't send me away. I'll do anything. Please."
Mr. Liang called for the bodyguard.
Wenhao fell to his knees. He grabbed his father's legs and held on tightly.
"Please, Dad. Please. I'm begging you. Don't do this. I'll stop seeing him. I'll do whatever you say. Just please don't send me away."
Mr. Liang looked away. He couldn't look at his son's face. If he did, he would soften. And he couldn't soften. Not this time.
"Take him to his room," Mr. Liang said. "Lock the door."
The bodyguard pulled Wenhao away. Wenhao cried and screamed and begged but nothing worked.
They locked him in his own room.
Wenhao threw himself on the bed and sobbed. He reached for his phone to call Zhenlong but before he could dial, a servant came in and took everything. His phone. His laptop. His tablet.
"Please," Wenhao begged. "Please don't take them. I need to call someone."
The servant shook her head. "I have no choice, young master."
She left and locked the door behind her.
Wenhao was alone.
He cried until his eyes were swollen and his throat was raw and there was nothing left in him.
Later, Xinyi came home from work. A servant told her what had happened.
Her face went pale. She ran up the stairs and into Wenhao's room.
Wenhao was lying on the bed, his face buried in the pillow. His body was shaking with silent sobs.
Xinyi sat down beside him. "Wenhao. What happened?"
Wenhao sat up and threw his arms around her. "Please don't let Dad send me away. Please, Xinyi. I'll do anything. Please."
Xinyi pulled back and shook him gently. "First tell me what happened."
Wenhao told her everything. The photos. The confrontation. The kiss.
Xinyi froze.
"You..." She stared at him. "You like Zhenlong? That motherfucker?"
Wenhao's tears started again. "He's not a bad person. We love each other. Please, sister. Please."
Xinyi's face went hard. "You really have lost your mind, Wenhao. I'm sorry. But I can't help you with this one. Dad is doing the right thing."
She stood up and walked out.
Wenhao collapsed back onto the bed and cried.
Meanwhile
At their usual meeting spot, Zhenlong waited.
He checked his phone. No messages. No calls.
He called Wenhao. Straight to voicemail.
He texted. No response.
His heart started to pound. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
He waited for hours. Until the sun went down and the stars came out.
But Wenhao never came.
Zhenlong went back to his mansion, his jaw tight and his eyes dark.
Later
That night, Wenhao tried to escape.
He pushed open his window and looked down. There were no guards. No one watching. He could make it.
He swung his leg over the windowsill.
And then the door opened.
Mr. Liang stood there with two bodyguards behind him. His face was hard.
"Let's go," he said.
Wenhao climbed back inside. He walked to his father and fell to his knees again.
"Please, Dad. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't do this."
Mr. Liang said nothing. He grabbed Wenhao's arm and dragged him out of the room.
Wenhao stumbled and cried and begged but his father didn't listen.
Ruifen and Xinyi stood at the top of the stairs, watching. Xinyi's face was cold. Ruifen's was full of tears.
The guards took Wenhao away.
And the front door closed behind him.
Time passed like sand slipping through fingers too weak to hold it.
Days blurred into weeks. Weeks bled into months. And months dissolved into a silence that Zhenlong could not penetrate.
At first, he told himself Wenhao was busy. University. Family obligations. The natural chaos of a young life finding its rhythm. He did not push. He did not demand. He waited, because waiting was what you did for someone you loved.
But the silence stretched thin. Calls went unanswered. Messages remained unread. The small green dots that once signaled Wenhao's presence on his phone flickered and died, leaving only the cold gray of absence.
Zhenlong sent his men to the Liang mansion. They disguised themselves as servants, gardeners, delivery workers. They watched. They listened. They reported back with empty hands and puzzled faces.
There was no trace of Wenhao anywhere.
His room was empty. His university had not seen him in weeks. His friends claimed they had not heard from him since his birthday. The servants at the mansion spoke in whispers, their lips sealed by the weight of their master's orders.
Zhenlong began searching.
He combed the city like a man possessed. Every street. Every alley. Every corner where Wenhao might have hidden. He checked the parks where they had walked. The cafés where they had laughed. The abandoned park where they had shared their first kiss under the fireworks.
Nothing.
He checked the airports. The train stations. The bus terminals. He bribed officials and threatened others. He called in favors and burned bridges.
Nothing.
Wenhao had vanished. Not like smoke. Not like a ghost. Like a wound that had been ripped open and then carefully sewn shut, leaving no trace of what had been taken.
Zhenlong stopped eating.
He stopped sleeping.
His meetings became a blur of words he did not hear. His decisions became hollow gestures, made without conviction. The empire he had built with blood and cunning began to crack at the edges because the man who built it had stopped caring.
Hua Cheng watched it all with growing alarm.
"Eat something," he pleaded, pushing a plate toward Zhenlong. "Just one bite. For me. For yourself."
Zhenlong did not look at him. His eyes were fixed on the window, on the city beyond, on the endless search that consumed him.
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten in three days."
"Then I will eat tomorrow."
"You said that yesterday."
Zhenlong said nothing.
Hua Cheng tried everything. He brought Zhenlong's favorite meals. He hired chefs from across the country. He sat beside him and ate in silence, hoping the sight of food might spark something. Nothing worked.
Zhenlong's body grew thin. His face grew hollow. His eyes, once sharp and dangerous, became distant and unfocused. He moved through the halls like a shadow, a ghost haunting the mansion he had built.
He started drinking.
Not casually. Not socially. He drank like a man trying to drown something. Whiskey in the morning. Wine in the afternoon. Whatever was strongest at night. He would sit alone in his study, a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and stare at the wall as if it held answers to questions he could not speak.
Hua Cheng took him to a motel once. A desperate attempt to break the cycle. To remind Zhenlong that he was alive, that there were other pleasures in the world.
Zhenlong sat in the corner of the room with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. The prostitute approached him, all silk and perfume and practiced smiles.
He opened his eyes and looked at her.
She stepped back.
There was something in his gaze that made her skin crawl. Not anger. Not desire. Something colder. Something emptier. A void that had no room for her.
She left without a word.
Hua Cheng never tried again.
The days became weeks. The weeks became months. And eventually, the months became years.
Four years passed like that.
Like a slow death. Like a fading photograph. Like a song that no one remembered the words to.
Zhenlong still looked for Wenhao. Not obsessively. Not with the frantic energy of the first year. But quietly. Persistently. He kept a network of informants scattered across the country. He paid them well and asked them to watch. To listen. To report anything, no matter how small.
None of them ever found anything.
He still carried Wenhao's keychain in his pocket.
He still visited the abandoned park sometimes. He would sit on the grass and look up at the sky and remember.
The fireworks.
The kiss.
The way Wenhao had said I love you and then run away before he could hear the answer.
Zhenlong had never said it back.
He had wanted to. He had opened his mouth to say it, but Wenhao had already disappeared into the night. And now the words sat heavy in his chest, trapped and unsaid, a burden he carried with him every single day.
Hua Cheng watched him waste away and felt something break inside himself.
"He's not coming back," Hua Cheng said one night. They were in Zhenlong's study. The room was dark except for the glow of a single lamp. Zhenlong was staring at nothing. "You know that, right? He's gone. You need to move on."
Zhenlong did not look at him.
"I can't move on."
"You can't keep living like this."
"Then I'll stop living."
Hua Cheng's jaw tightened. "That's not funny."
"It wasn't meant to be."
Four years.
Four years of silence. Four years of searching. Four years of hoping that each day might bring news, might bring Wenhao back, might bring an end to this endless, aching loneliness.
Four years of loving someone who had vanished without a trace.
And still, Zhenlong held on.
Because letting go felt like dying.
And he was not ready to die.