Late at night, Shen Junyan stood before the floor-to-ceiling window in his office, holding the silver earring in his hand.
The light from above shone down on the earring, causing the grain-sized pearl to emit a soft, warm glow. He pinched the metal backing of the earring between his thumb and forefinger, turning it over and over several times.
The craftsmanship was exquisite. The logo on the back was etched, with no rough edges—clearly not a cheap trinket from a street stall.
“July,” he murmured the brand name softly, as if speaking to himself.
Lu Heng stood by the desk, holding a freshly compiled report.
“Mr. Shen, the hotel’s surveillance footage has been confirmed as deliberately deleted. The technical department attempted recovery, but the other party was thorough—even the backups were wiped clean.”
Shen Junyan didn’t turn around. He placed the earring on the windowsill, producing a faint, almost imperceptible sound.
“Intentional,” he said. It wasn’t a question but a statement.
“It appears so,” Lu Heng adjusted his glasses.
“The deletion was initiated from an external IP address using three layers of proxies, making it impossible to trace the exact location. But the method was professional—the other party was very familiar with the hotel’s video surveillance system and knew the precise time window for data synchronization.”
Shen Junyan turned around, leaning against the windowsill with his hands in his pockets.
The morning light streamed in from behind him, outlining his silhouette with a faint golden glow, but his expression remained hidden in shadow, unclear.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Lu Heng thought for a moment. “It means the other party doesn’t want you to find her.”
“Right.” Shen Junyan’s lips twitched slightly—not a smile, but an indescribable micro-expression. “She doesn’t want me to find her.”
He paused.
“Which means she knows me.”
Lu Heng was momentarily taken aback before understanding his meaning. If it were just a passerby who accidentally entered his room and accidentally had relations with him, they would likely have fled in panic afterward, not gone to such lengths to delete surveillance footage.
The act of deleting the footage itself was an exposure—it revealed that she knew him and that she was afraid of being recognized by him.
“Keep investigating.” Shen Junyan walked back to his desk and sat down, picking up the guest list. “Six female guests. Check them one by one.”
“We’re already on it,” Lu Heng opened the folder in his hand.
“Four of them have been ruled out—two are tourists from out of town visiting Shanghai, one is accompanying her husband on a business trip, and one is a room registered under a hotel employee. The remaining two don’t match the information.”
“Go on.”
“The third one, Room 1806, registered under the name Wang Meihua, fifty-three years old. But the front desk recalls that the person who checked in appeared to be under thirty. It’s likely she used someone else’s ID.”
Shen Junyan tapped his finger on the desk.
“And the other one?”
“The fifth one, Room 1808, opposite Room 1809. Registered under the name Li Xue, twenty-eight years old. But this person checked out at 10 p.m. on the day of check-in, so the timing doesn’t match.”
Shen Junyan’s gaze fell on the number “1806.”
Diagonally opposite.
He recalled the blurry scene from last night—the door not fully closed, a hand reaching out and grabbing someone passing by.
If that person came from Room 1806, why would they pass by his door?
Something wasn’t right.
“Check the hotel’s events from last night,” he said. “See if there were any cocktail parties, forums, or banquets, and look for any overlap in the attendee lists with these six people.”
Lu Heng’s eyes lit up.
This line of thinking was right—if that woman had come to attend a hotel event, her name would likely appear on the event sign-in sheet, and the information on sign-in sheets was usually more reliable than hotel registration records.
“I’ll check right away,” Lu Heng turned to leave.
“Wait,” Shen Junyan called him back.
He picked up the earring from the windowsill, placed it in a small transparent sealed bag, and handed it to Lu Heng.
“Take this to the boutique at Plaza 66 and ask the staff if they recognize this style. If it’s a limited edition, there should be sales records.”
Lu Heng took the sealed bag, glanced at the earring inside, and nodded.
1 a.m.
Gu Ziyao lay in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
The curtains weren’t fully drawn, and a sliver of moonlight squeezed through the gap, landing on the ceiling like a silver-white crack.
She stared at that crack for a long time, her eyes dry and swollen, but not the slightest bit ready to close.
Her mind was a mess, as if someone had thrown it into a blender—fragments of various scenes swirling together: the hand that grabbed hers in the hotel corridor, Shen Junyan’s sleeping face in the morning light, Zhou Guoping’s sharp, gleaming eyes in the meeting room, Gu Zeming’s pale face at the dining table.
And that earring.
She turned over, facing the wall.
There was nothing on the wall, just bare white paint, not even a crack.
Her gaze fell on it, but her pupils didn’t focus. Her vision pierced through the wall, through time, landing on three years ago.
Three years ago.
Back then, Grandpa was still alive.
Gu Ziyao closed her eyes. The scenes from three years ago played in her mind like an old film reel, frame by frame.
The news of Grandpa’s critical condition came from Second Brother over the phone. At the time, she had just graduated and was handling the final procedures at school. When the phone rang, she didn’t answer, having set it to silent.
By the time she saw the missed call and called back, Second Brother’s voice was calm—unnaturally calm.
“Yaoyao, Grandpa is in the hospital. Come over.”
She didn’t ask how serious it was. Second Brother’s tone had already given her the answer.
That day, rushing from school to the hospital, her memories of the journey were hazy—the smell of leather in the backseat of the taxi, the gray sky outside the window, the scent of disinfectant in the hospital corridor, a woman in the elevator holding a crying baby, the wails sharp and piercing.
When she pushed open the door to the hospital room, she saw Grandpa lying in bed, several tubes attached to him, his arms covered in needle marks, his skin so thin it looked like translucent paper, the veins beneath clearly visible.
She stood at the doorway, unable to take a single step forward.
Grandpa wasn’t like this before.
Grandpa was the tallest mountain in the Gu family, the pillar that held up the entire clan. When she was little, she used to ride on Grandpa’s shoulders through Yu Garden. His back was broad and straight, his steps full of vigor, his laughter so loud it could startle the birds from the trees.
But now, that mountain had collapsed.
“Ziyao is here?” Grandpa opened his eyes, his voice so hoarse it was almost inaudible, but he still managed to lift the corners of his mouth into a smile.
That smile made Gu Ziyao’s tears well up instantly.
She walked over and took her grandfather’s hand. That hand was so thin it was almost nothing but bone, the nails gray, the rough calluses on the palm still there—marks left by decades of hard work.
“Grandpa.” Her voice trembled.
“Why cry?” Grandpa’s fingers tightened slightly, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “Everyone has to go through this when they get old. I’ve lived over seventy years—that’s more than enough.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Alright, alright, I won’t.” Grandpa sighed, his gaze shifting from her face to the ceiling, lingering there for a moment.