Zhou Yanli turned his phone back on the next day.
There were more than ten missed calls, all from the police station’s landline.
“May I speak with Mr. Zhou?”
The voice on the other end was rather grave. Zhou Yanli replied coolly, “What is it?”
“Early this morning, we found a woman’s body on Huaihai Road. Her ID number is—”
The officer recited a string of numbers. With every one he heard, Zhou Yanli’s heart sank a little further.
“The deceased is Lin Shu. We found her frozen body inside a Ferrari. Before her death, she was sexually assaulted and disfigured. Mr. Zhou, please prepare yourself. We’d also like to ask you to come to the station and confirm her identity.”
By the time the officer finished, Zhou Yanli felt as if all the blood in his body had nearly frozen.
A Ferrari. An ID number. Lin Shu.
“No. Impossible.”
He rejected it at once. Lin Shu wouldn’t be foolish enough to drive out in such heavy snow. Even though the officer had given him her ID number and name, and the car model was right, he refused to believe it.
He didn’t answer the officer immediately. After hanging up, he called Lin Shu.
Last night, Lin Shu had called him more than ten times, but he’d switched off his phone.
Could she have been trying to call him for help?
Blood rushed to Zhou Yanli’s head. His vision turned white as snow, and he couldn’t see a thing. Then his ears began ringing. Wen Xin’s voice was right beside him, yet he couldn’t even tell where it was coming from.
He stood rooted to the spot, ice-cold all over.
“Yanli?”
Wen Xin had slept peacefully through the night.
“Is it Lin Shu? I’m fine. Go back and check on her.”
The night before, she had quietly whispered to Zhou Shuang, asking her to pour some water mixed with brown sugar syrup and keep it in her mouth until no one was paying attention. Then she spat it out in front of the caregiver.
After that, Zhou Shuang called Zhou Yanli. Wen Xin knew Lin Shu would make a fuss, but she had Zhou Shuang on her side.
Zhou Yanli held his phone for a long time, unable to recover. His return call wouldn’t go through; Lin Shu had already blocked him.
Lin Shu couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t believe it—
Just last night, they’d been arguing about Wen Xin. How could a living person simply be gone?
“I’m going to the police station.”
Zhou Yanli managed to regain a little of his composure.
Wen Xin didn’t understand.
Zhou Yanli’s voice trembled. His hand shook slightly as he picked up his car keys.
“They said they found a woman’s body. It might be Lin Shu…”
…
Kyoto International Airport
As soon as Lin Shu stepped off the plane, a Hongqi Guoli pulled up smoothly in front of her.
The man in the back seat was strikingly handsome. His dark blue executive jacket lent him an air of mystery, and his imposing presence commanded respect without a word.
When his gaze fell on Lin Shu, the hard lines of his face softened.
He got out himself to welcome her. When Lin Shu saw him, her eyes unexpectedly grew misty.
“Older Cousin—”
“You said you’d come the day after tomorrow. When you suddenly told me you’d arrived, you gave me quite a scare.”
Sheng Zhaoting had the driver put Lin Shu’s luggage in the trunk, then sat with her in the back seat.
“Is this Auntie’s last piece in the collection?”
Sheng Zhaoting held out the antique painting, which was about to be put up for public auction. Lin Shu looked at the landscape painting in the catalogue, and tears welled up at once.
In the lower-right corner of the painting was a seal engraved with her mother’s name: Yuerong.
Lin Shu gently stroked the catalogue, as if speaking to her mother across the distance.
Seeing how overcome with grief she was, Sheng Zhaoting reached out and gently rubbed her back to comfort her. “The dead are gone. Don’t grieve too much. This is all I can do for you.”
In her lifetime, Lin Yuerong had been devoted to painting. After she died, Lin Shu’s father, Jiang Yang, had sent every one of his beloved wife’s favorite possessions to auction, scattering them across the country.
Lin Shu had never returned to her father’s home since. She had even changed her surname to her mother’s, and she and Jiang Yang were practically one newspaper announcement away from formally severing their father-daughter relationship.
Relying on her memories, Lin Shu searched everywhere for her mother’s paintings. Whenever she came across one, she paid a high price to buy it back.
Sheng Zhaoting had been helping her all these years, always telling Lin Shu as soon as he heard of a lead.
“No. There should still be more. We just haven’t found them yet.”
Lin Shu spoke quietly. “Older Cousin, thank you—”
When she returned to the home in Kyoto with Sheng Zhaoting, he led her into the inner hall and brought her before the memorial tablet of his late wife. He handed her three sticks of incense.
“Offer your sister-in-law some incense.”
Lin Shu took the incense, lit it, and solemnly kowtowed three times.
When she stood, she looked at Sheng Zhaoting.
“Older Cousin, are you really not planning to marry again?”
“Sheng Ye is still young. If a new mother joined the family, she’d surely want another child. I don’t want him to lose his father’s love after already losing his mother’s.”
Sheng Zhaoting’s expression showed no grief, but his voice was heavy.
Lin Shu felt a pang of emotion. Her cousin was a truly responsible and dependable man.
His wife had died in childbirth. Any man with even a little financial means would have remarried by now. But for his son, and out of love for his wife, her cousin had remained single for seven whole years.
“About the land you mentioned last time—I’ve already got the approval for it. That piece of land will belong to Zhou Group from now on.”
Sheng Zhaoting changed the subject and looked at Lin Shu, his tone full of a big brother’s care and protection for his younger sister.
“Do you really want to work for the Zhou family all your life?”
Even from Kyoto, he had heard the rumors about Zhou Yanli. The people of Haicheng didn’t know that Zhou Yanli was married.
There were even rumors that he had a childhood sweetheart he’d been in love with for years.
Because their families disapproved, they had kept their relationship secret. They’d even had a daughter, and that daughter called his lover Auntie Wen.
It was ridiculous. The child was clearly Zhou Yanli and Lin Shu’s, yet the rumors made it sound as if Lin Shu had nothing to do with her.
Lin Shu’s family knew she had married Zhou Yanli, but they had never held a wedding. The Zhou family didn’t even know all of Lin Shu’s relatives, let alone her cousin, who lived in Kyoto.
A glint of intelligence flashed in Lin Shu’s dark eyes. “I’m Zhou Group’s largest shareholder now. I’m not their fall guy anymore.”
Doubt and disbelief crossed Sheng Zhaoting’s eyes. “The Zhou family agreed? Has Zhou Yanli had a change of heart?”
It was hard to believe that Zhou Yanli—a man who had built his success on the strength of his secretly married wife and treated her like a bridge he could dismantle at will—would generously give Lin Shu so many shares.
Lin Shu’s lips curved faintly. Hearing Zhou Yanli’s name from Sheng Zhaoting stirred nothing in her.
Once, even the smallest detail connected to Zhou Yanli had been enough to make her heart race for several minutes.
“Why would Zhou Yanli agree? But do they get to decide?”
She knew perfectly well why Old Master had so readily agreed to give her fifty percent of the shares. He might be old, but he was as cunning as ever.
Before handing over the shares, he had made her sign an agreement—and its terms could bind her for the rest of her life.
Lin Shu had to admit that the old were craftier. She hadn’t wanted to sign, but in the end she had.
After all, she knew which mattered more: fifty percent of the Zhou family’s shares, or the terms of the agreement.
The irony was, now that she’d signed it, Zhou Yanli—who was probably already wrapped up with his old flame—wouldn’t want it either.
“The land doesn’t need to go to Zhou Group. Once I become the legal representative, it should bear the Lin name.”