He didn’t move. Pausing for a moment, he tried to pry her hands away.
“We’re brother and sister.”
Her fingers tightened. “You know very well…”
Cheng Keqi suddenly raised his voice, “Don’t say it!” He said it twice, her voice muffled against his back as if buried inside his flesh. As long as he couldn’t clearly hear what she was saying, he could pretend she had never said it at all.
When she finally calmed down, he once again grasped her hands, peeled them off, and turned around to face her.
She looked up at him, her eyes bright, the corners of her eyes shining as though she had been crying. But someone like her would never admit to crying, just as she could never guess the thoughts hidden beneath his indifferent, detached face. His heart was like a deep pool or a vast ocean; whether you dropped tears into it or threw smiles, they were instantly swallowed and swept away without leaving a single bone behind.
Yes, how could he ever give her any reaction?
“I’ve been acting for too long, I’m so tired…” She slumped limply onto the sofa. Who knew how long she had been drinking that bottle of wine by her feet. She had probably sat right here the entire night.
“You’re drunk. I’ll send you back.”
He bent down to support her. The moment his hand brushed hers, she softened against him, exerting force with her hands to pull him close as her face lunged toward his. He instantly averted his face. Her lips missed their target, grazing only his jawline. He had shaved there just that morning, and up close, a faint bluish shadow lingered. Her lips landed right upon that shadow.
That mouth now slowly parted like a scar, trembling slightly as it let out a laugh wrapped in a sob. “You’ve been using me all along!” she giggled, the upper and lower halves of that red scar trembling. “You want to use me, yet you refuse to have anything to do with me. You’re afraid I’ll ruin your big plans!”
“You really are drunk.”
“I’m not.” She grabbed the lapels of his jacket. “Brother-in-law found out, too.”
He had originally been tugging at her wrist with one hand to pull her up, but at that moment, he suddenly released his strength. She slumped back down.
“Found out what?”
She stroked the ends of her own hair. “My hair is different from all of yours.”
He understood immediately and retorted on the spot, “We inherited the Cheng family traits. You take after Mom.”
“Didn’t Mom start perming her hair back then precisely to hide my identity?” As if all the bones had been drained from her body, she slowly slid down the sofa, tilting her head to look at him with a faint smile. Sitting sideways, she gradually slipped right off the sofa onto the floor.
He caught her shoulders and pressed her back onto the sofa to sit properly. Whether she was genuinely drunk or only half-pretending, she leaned against his arm by default. Not caring whether it was real or an act, he picked her up and carried her into the study, gently peeling her off himself, laying her down on the narrow daybed, and pulling a blanket over her.
As he leaned over to tuck her in, an old watch on his wrist was exposed. It was something his father had left him; he had worn it for nearly ten years, replacing the strap twice while the watch face remained unchanged. Though the old lady never mentioned it outwardly, inwardly she appreciated his fondness for old things—displaying the steady composure of an old-era figure in a restless, fast-paced age.
Cheng Baoxin slowly opened her eyes, her fingers brushing against the watch before sliding onto his wrist.
He looked down at her. “Ah-Xin—”
“Mm.” She was half-drunk. She must have been drunk, otherwise why would she feel his tone grow so tender?
“Go to sleep.” He shook off her hand, turned around to switch off the light, backed out of the room, and pulled the door shut.
Returning to his bedroom, Cheng Keqi locked the door from the inside. With the window wide open, he sat on the edge of the bed, bathing in the moonlight as he sat motionless in the dark for a long while. Since childhood, he had cultivated the habit of sitting in the dark without turning on the lights because it made pondering things easier, but while his mother was alive, she always scolded him for it, saying it made a person look gloomy. Thus, in front of people, he had dropped the habit, just as he had discarded other habits detrimental to his future.
In the dark, he picked up his phone. The call connected swiftly.
“It’s me.” He recounted the matter concerning the brother-in-law.
“…”
“Right.”
“…”
“I think so too.”
“…”
“Of course we can’t make a move ourselves.” Glancing toward the crack of the door, he slowly paced to the window. “What are your thoughts?”
“…”
“Good.”
After hanging up the call, he drew the curtains and placed his phone face down on the nightstand. Walking back to the bed, he sat down, propped his elbows on his knees, rested his chin gently against the back of his hands, and remained completely still.
In the adjacent study, whether Baoxin was having a nightmare or something else, he heard her let out a cry. The cry sounded very much like when she was a little girl. Back then, he had already faintly suspected she wasn’t his real sister, yet he still treated her as family.
But now, he told himself he couldn’t go over. He couldn’t give her any illusions.
At a little past three on a weekday afternoon, the cha chaan teng (Hong Kong-style tea restaurant) was mostly empty. Sitting under the Portuguese-style window, Tang Shen slowly talked to Cheng Baoyi about how Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou, Yuwen邕, had endured for over a decade, disguising himself as a mediocre puppet before finally eradicating the powerful officials. Today, Cheng Baoyi was uncharacteristically absent-minded.
Knowing that a student out of sorts couldn’t be forced by a teacher, Tang Shen left the topic hanging, saying they would discuss it next time, and asked about Cheng Baoyi’s recent situation—only to learn she had run into a troublesome problem.
Cheng Baoyi had discovered a purchase order at the company. Out of curiosity, she looked into it and found that poria mushroom (yunzhi) had been imported from a trading company in Zhuhai at a purchase price fifty percent higher than the original channels, and this had been going on for over a year. Furthermore, the legal representative of this trading company was the cousin of her cousin-in-law, Huang Jiahao.
Though Tang Shen knew nothing about business, she roughly grasped Cheng Baoyi’s dilemma. Right now, both storefronts were operating well, and she kept running over to Hengqin to partner with local R&D institutions to produce a new type of traditional Chinese health supplement. All the members of the First Household were watching her closely. This was precisely the moment to lie low, endure, and play dead—yet a piece of evidence implicating the First Household had dropped right into her lap from the skies.
Shouldn’t she turn around and hand it straight to the old lady?
Tang Shen asked, “How did you manage to stumble upon it so easily?”
“The PR department was organizing an event and shipped a bunch of materials to the store. This purchase order was actually sandwiched inside. When I saw the price looked wrong, I went back and checked.”
Tang Shen stopped stirring her coffee. When it came to business matters, she was completely clueless. But how could such evidence fall out of thin air? The PR department was Cheng Baoxin’s turf; since such incriminating evidence existed, why wouldn’t Baoxin use it herself? She asked, “What do you plan to do?”
“I want to tell Grandma, but I feel like this matter isn’t that simple.” Cheng Baoyi wasn’t naive enough to let herself be used as someone else’s gun. “For one thing, the company audits its accounts every year; for another, the high markup of poria mushroom can be explained away. Most importantly, too many things have happened in the Cheng family recently, and Grandma strongly resents any one of us kicking off a power struggle.”
Tang Shen asked, then do you plan not to tell Old Mrs. Cheng?
“I’m afraid this is another trap. What if they claim I knew about it and concealed it? Several store employees saw me pull out that purchase order with their own eyes that day.”
Cheng Baoyi had changed to some extent. Having grown up in the Cheng family, while she was long accustomed to viewing problems from an angle of self-interest, she was naturally straightforward and not someone paralyzed by fear of wolves ahead and tigers behind. Perhaps in the past, with Tan Meiqi around—however unreliable she might be—she was still the roof over her head. Now, she was relying purely on her own bare hands.
Tang Shen truly understood nothing about business, finding the situation sticky. If someone like Cheng Baoyun discovered something like this, she would naturally make a huge fuss and tell the old lady. But in the old lady’s eyes, Cheng Baoyi—much like Cheng Keqi—never stirred up trouble.
People assumed the old lady’s favorite must be a backbone pillar like Cheng Kewei. But Tang Shen’s gamble was that elders naturally lean toward those who are sensible, dignified, and emotionally stable. The more interests involved, the more cautious one must be in choosing a successor. Therefore, in the persona she and Cheng Baoyi had reconstructed, the latter had tucked away her genuine emotions to play the role of a detached, well-liked granddaughter who single-mindedly wished the best for Cheng Yongtang. Sometimes Tang Shen thought: Isn’t this just another Cheng Keqi?
Resting her chin in her hand, Tang Shen remained silent.
Cheng Baoyi looked closely at her face. “Do you have any thoughts?”
“I don’t have thoughts, just one question.” Tang Shen lowered her hand. “How is the relationship between Baoxin and the eldest sister?”
“You think… Baoxin did this on purpose?” After asking, Cheng Baoyi found it laughable herself. The PR department sending over materials with an irrelevant purchase order tucked inside was a mistake even an amateur wouldn’t make. Moreover, ordinary employees couldn’t even access that purchase order. Who else could it be besides her? She added, “But Huang Jiahao is her own brother-in-law. They’re both from the First Household—why would she stab her own family in the back?”
Tang Shen stirred her coffee slowly. A sentence rested on the tip of her tongue, wanting to be spoken yet difficult to voice. Cheng Baoyi clapped her hands together in front of her, demanding to know what she was getting at.
“Pardon my presumption… Baoxin and the eldest sister might not necessarily be in the same boat. Just like you and Kejia… you’ll have your divergences sooner or later.” Seeing Cheng Baoyi’s expression darken slightly, Tang Shen continued, “As I said before, we need to divide them into different small cliques as much as possible. Maybe we don’t need to do anything at all; internal factions have already formed among them.”
Who was Cheng Baoxin trying to strike down? Could it be for the sake of her older brother, Cheng Keqi? The latter was naturally detached, neither fighting nor contending in the Cheng family. Or perhaps, did Baoxin have a personal grudge with the eldest sister?
After deliberating, the two of them felt the latter possibility was much higher. If she presented this ledger directly to the old lady, it would be an act of executing justice upon family members. The old lady might not appreciate her cleaning house, likely viewing it merely as siblings slaughtering one another. This was why she needed to hand it over to someone from the Second Household.
After sorting through the logic, the two felt they had hit the nail on the head. But how should they handle it? Tang Shen thought for a moment: “Tomorrow, in front of the other employees, you need to stage a little performance.”
What kind of performance? Play busy. Act as though you hadn’t noticed or didn’t have time to process this purchase order earlier, and now need to return it in a rush. In front of all the employees, loudly say, “How did this order end up here?” and then call the PR department on the spot. Tang Shen instructed: After the call, dispatch a staff member with a big mouth to act as an errand runner and deliver the order straight to Cheng Baoxin.
Cheng Baoyi caught on. “And the next step?”
“Wait.”
Without lifting a finger, take it step by step and respond to moves as they come. If no news leaked out, it meant Cheng Baoxin didn’t dare fall out with her older sister and brother-in-law just yet, and only wanted to use a borrowed knife to kill. If news did leak out, tracing exactly where it originated from would be a breeze.
Cheng Baoyi thought about it carefully. There was still one more thing weighing heavily on her mind: Did the brother-in-law actually do it? How much did the eldest sister know? Tang Shen guessed her worries: “Even though the document has been returned, whether this matter is true or false is something you need to keep clear in your mind.”
When it came to business matters, Tang Shen couldn’t teach her, nor did Cheng Baoyi need her to. Her only concern was what would happen if the First Household discovered she was probing the bottom of this trading company…
Tang Shen said: Last time, Uncle Zhong asked the eldest sister to arrange an internship for his son, but she brushed him off with perfunctory excuses, leaving Uncle Zhong rather disgruntled. Most of these servants in the Cheng family also followed the wind; they petitioned the Second Household while knowing the First Household held real power, yet none of them dared to beg Cheng Kewei—they all went to the eldest sister and Baoxin instead. “You can give him some pocket money and have him do a research report on the business status of small and medium-sized trading agencies acting as pharmaceutical agents in the Greater Bay Area. Include the data of this exact company inside it.”
Cheng Baoyi thought to herself that this strategy of killing with a borrowed knife was truly brilliant. For a split second, she wondered: What if Tang Shen wasn’t standing on her side, but on the opposite one? A sudden chill ran down her spine.