Arriving at the factory, the situation turned out to be far more troublesome than imagined. Going through the rectification items point by point, arguing two rounds with the quality control staff, and making numerous calls to suppliers and acquaintances—by the time the rounds were finished, it was already past noon. A factory worker hurried over to say that Mrs. Cheng had called, and only then did he remember to check his phone. Seven missed calls, all from Shuzhen.
When many things happen, it might just be a tiny, careless action, yet it changes the course of everyone’s life. For instance, when Cheng Jiye left the apartment, he absentmindedly flipped down the main circuit breaker for the entire place. This was a habit he had picked up on the mainland. The domestic helper had warned him that the apartment was old, the wiring unstable, and that he should trip the breaker when leaving to prevent short circuits. He had performed this action so many times that it was second nature; whenever no one was at home, he would do it. Only this time, amidst his rush, he forgot that his four-month-old daughter was still inside.
The air conditioning stopped. In the sweltering heat of a bedroom with closed doors and windows, it stopped.
By the time Baoxin was rushed to the hospital, it was already too late.
Cheng Jiye knelt before his near-mentally-broken wife, begging her to play along with him, to help him conceal the truth. This was a crucial juncture in the power struggle with his younger brother; the factory had been botched, and now the child was gone too. What would his parents think of him? What would everyone else think?
“We still have Baowen, Kewei, and Keqi… I can’t afford to lose! If I lose, what kind of good life will the rest of them have?” he said. The child was only four months old; they could pretend nothing had happened, and adopt one of similar age and appearance from a mainland orphanage. Besides, a year later when they returned, the child would have grown and changed anyway.
That casual flick of the wrist downward changed the lives of Cheng Jiye and Shuzhen, and also altered the destinies of the two baby girls. The real Cheng Baoxin died, and the fake Cheng Baoxin came to life.
Attached to the investigation report were also materials such as the adoption paperwork. The old lady merely glanced at them before setting the documents down.
These were things she had already laid eyes on back then.
She had also sensed Shuzhen’s drastic change in temperament at the time, and had even hired a private investigator to look into it, quickly uncovering the exact same result, albeit with slight discrepancies in the details. She was filled with supreme heartbreak, furious at how foolish Jiye could be to keep such a massive matter hidden from them. How deeply she had loved that child, and all of her family members too! Yet after this affair came to light, whenever the old lady laid eyes on her eldest son, an insurmountable barrier formed in her heart. Perhaps Shuzhen felt the same way.
The only difference between her and Shuzhen was that Shuzhen had never accepted the fake Baoxin from start to finish, even alienating Cheng Keqi along the way. Whenever she looked at Keqi, she would be reminded of that lost daughter. As for the old lady, looking at “Baoxin” stirred an indescribable feeling within her. She watched Baoxin learn to walk, wobbling back and forth like a little duck figuring out its direction. This little duck let go of the sofa’s edge and stumbled toward her. Taking a few steps, she nearly fell, regained her balance, and revealed an expression of intense focus and dedication on her face, as if those few steps were the most important ones of her life.
Sitting on the sofa, the old lady subconsciously extended her hands to catch her.
Baoxin walked very slowly right up to her, came to a stop, unclasped her tightly clenched fist, and revealed a piece of candy. She looked down at the candy, then looked back up at the old lady, and suddenly smiled.
“Is this for me?”
Little Baoxin suddenly uncurled her palm, and the candy dropped right onto the old lady’s lap. The child giggled out loud.
The old lady looked down at her. The child was truly pretty; she didn’t know whose bloodline she carried, but her skin was fair, her eyes large, and she genuinely looked like a member of the Cheng family. She looked especially like Cheng Keqi’s sibling. Had the real Cheng Baoxin lived to this age, perhaps she would have looked just like this? This was fate, too.
At the time, “Cheng Baoxin” had no idea that those few steps were indeed the most important steps of her life. The old lady tucked that piece of candy into her jacket pocket and stored this matter deep in her heart, letting no one else know—not her husband, nor her son. Cheng Jiye had no idea that the old lady’s subsequent favoritism toward her youngest son stemmed entirely from this incident.
What she could not forgive was not the accident itself, but everything that followed: the concealment, the replacement, the pretense, the lies. These were the qualities she despised most.
Just as right now, she gazed apathetically at this blood relation report, reached over for the moxibustion lighter, ignited it, dropped it into a ceramic bowl, and watched it burn to ashes.
Much like a woman who discovers her husband’s infidelity, at this moment, what she loathed was not the truth itself, but the person who had dug deep into the truth and secretly revealed it to her.
Who could it be?
Among the servants in the house, A-Hao was difficult to buy off, Sister Huan belonged to the eldest branch’s faction, and the other driver and chef minded their own business. But Emily and Uncle Zhong were different.
The former knew she was an outsider among outsiders, so when Tang Shen arrived, she was delighted to find someone on “her side.” No one paid attention to her, nor did the masters mind her presence, arguing, crying, and discussing private matters right in front of her. And she would secretly pass these things along to Tang Shen. Thus, Tang Shen learned that during a certain dinner, the brother-in-law and Cheng Baoxin had experienced a falling out right there on the stairs during family dinner night.
“Was it an argument?” Tang Shen asked.
Emily shook her head, saying it didn’t quite look like one. At the time, both of their complexions were rather poor. The brother-in-law had hurriedly hung up the phone, and Cheng Baoxin had spoken to him with a mocking expression. Their expressions were both very strange.
“Maybe they were just talking normally. Your Chinese isn’t even that good.” Tang Shen began teasing Emily again. Emily had recently been learning Chinese from Tang Shen, and both her Mandarin and Cantonese had improved tremendously. She shook her head repeatedly—no way, even if you don’t understand the words, human emotions are universal; I can read facial expressions.
Tang Shen thought that wasn’t wrong at all. She guessed this matter might have something to do with the procurement issue. She asked Emily when it happened, but the other girl couldn’t remember clearly, only recalling that it was recent. “Speaking of which, there’s something else lately,” she said. “The Phalaenopsis orchid that the old lady loves most in her room was knocked over and broken. She’s always very particular about those flowers, and even specifically had A-Hao come and ask us who had gone into the old lady’s room that day, but everyone said no. I don’t know why, but A-Hao was acting super nervous, even staring at us one by one to see if we were lying. It’s just a pot of flowers, the old lady makes too big a deal out of it.”
Tang Shen didn’t care about such things and merely smiled.
Right now, her focus was on Uncle Zhong. Ever since Cheng Baoyi introduced Uncle Zhong’s son to an internship, Uncle Zhong’s attitude toward the second branch had improved significantly. Those who stayed long in the Cheng family were old foxes; Uncle Zhong hadn’t spread word about the brother-in-law’s affair outside, but deep down he vaguely felt that the eldest branch’s position might not be entirely secure, and the second branch might well have a fighting chance.
Acting as a strategist, Tang Shen had thought through all these matters on Cheng Baoyi’s behalf. Consequently, the latter could set her mind at ease and focus on doing real work. She frequently ran back and forth to Hengqin, visiting the traditional Chinese medicine extraction workshop, talking with their technical supervisors about extraction processes and batch stability, and discussing whether the products could meet the demands of the Macau Health Bureau. Even when she returned to Macau, her mind remained in Hengqin as she holed up in her room tapping away at reports. Behind her on the sofa, Tang Shen sat cross-legged reading a book.
Cheng Baoyi took a damp-dispelling pill, washed it down with warm water, and turned to look at her. “Why are you reading books over at my place?”
“It’s comfortable here.” Tang Shen flipped a page. “You’ve been typing away ever since you got back. What on earth are you writing?”
“My grand vision,” Baoyi said, mentioning she was preparing to submit it to the planning department. Tang Shen casually asked, “Isn’t that still under Cheng Kewei’s jurisdiction?”
Cheng Baoyi stopped typing and fell silent.
“Why not just go talk directly to Old Mrs. Cheng?” During her school days, Tang Shen had interned and worked at plenty of corporations. She knew that most things weren’t pushed forward through meetings and written reports. Getting things done usually relied on a banquet or personal accompaniment.
“Grandma doesn’t like us reporting things that way. She’s always saying that since we’re a business, we must operate according to corporate rules.”
Tang Shen found Cheng Baoyi both rigid and endearing. At the Cheng family dinner table, who among them didn’t use discussing current affairs as a way to report their “political achievements”? She smiled. “Next time we have a family dinner, observe how the others speak.”
There were still four or five days left until the family sat down for a proper meal together. But these four or five days felt longer than four or five weeks. Even an outsider like Tang Shen sensed that the atmosphere was wrong. The old lady had remained in her room for days dining by herself; A-Hao always wore a tense expression and had moved directly into the old lady’s quarters, setting up an extra cot there. Emily was on leave and had returned to her home country. The people on the second floor never casually went up to the third floor, and the people on the third floor never came down to the second. Right now, the only ones left here were Tang Shen and Wen Yizhuang.
Did Wen Yizhuang know something? He probably did. After all, he was Cheng Kewei’s right-hand man. She passed him in the corridor, and they nodded to each other. They rarely communicated nowadays, merely exchanging glances from opposite ends of the dining table on occasion. She was the opponent he had invited into the game, and now that Cheng Baoyi was growing increasingly fierce and progressive, would he feel any regret?
Unlikely.
Cheng Baoyi hadn’t even won back her own possessions yet; she was still far from being a threat. Tang Shen figured Wen Yizhuang should be satisfied, because Cheng Kewei seemed to value him even more now.
Yet Tang Shen had different thoughts. If the old lady’s health really was failing, and something happened…
It was too slow; everything was too slow. Cheng Kejia was growing up too slowly. Cheng Baoyi was too slow too, having won back nothing yet. Cheng Yongtang could have provided more funding for the Starlight Primary School, but with Baoyi currently struggling to protect herself, the official sponsorship kept getting delayed.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, she walked into the second-floor bathroom and caught sight of Wen Yizhuang through the half-open door, standing in front of the mirror inspecting his temple. A cut had opened up on his forehead, oozing blood.
Tang Shen paused, instantly snapped back to reality.
“You… what happened?”
“Bumped into something.”
Seeing that he was still bleeding, she dropped a curt “Wait here” and turned back to her room. A moment later she returned, holding a small medical kit.