"ENOUGH!" Wang Jing barked from the wings, but her voice disappeared instantly beneath the roar of questions and accusations that filled the space with hostile energy.
Security guards rushed onto the stage, pushing through the forest of caras and microphones and furious bodies pressing forward.
Several journalists tripped over cables in their desperation to get closer, equipnt clattering to the floor. The massive screen behind them flickered again, and Lu Zeyan’s stomach dropped as another image began loading.
A video this ti. A dimly lit apartnt hallway appeared on screen, the footage grainy but clear enough to make out two figures. Lin Yueling laughed at sothing, her face visible for just a mont before soone, unmistakably male, shielded her from the cara with an arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close.
The angle was poor, the quality degraded by distance and low light. But the silhouette was recognizable. The height matched. The build matched.
The watch glinting on the man’s wrist as he pulled her into the apartnt matched the one currently on Lu Zeyan’s wrist.
Lu Zeyan felt the world tilt sideways, his sense of balance deserting him completely. It was him. The video was a month old, fild without consent, and probably leaked with deliberate malicious intent. Context was missing; the full situation was far more complicated than a ten-second clip could ever convey.
None of that mattered.
The visual was damning. The timing was damning. The pregnancy was damning. And in this press room transford into an arena of moral outrage, facts had ceased to matter entirely.
Only the image mattered.
Only the betrayal mattered.
Only the narrative mattered.
Shuyin finally inhaled, one slow breath that seed to fill her entire body before releasing. She stepped back from him, just a single step, but the stage lights made the distance feel vast and unbridgeable.
Lu Zeyan turned toward her instinctively, his hand reaching out. "Shuyin...."
She didn’t look at him.
Not even for a second.
Not even as chaos erupted around them in waves of shouted questions and cara flashes.
Instead, she lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, and addressed the crowd with a voice that no longer trembled or showed vulnerability.
"I was not aware of this," she said quietly, but her words cut through the noise with unexpected clarity. "But I am now." Since it had gotten to this stage, it was better to give her a point as an innocent victim.
The entire room hushed for her, because even in that mont of public disaster, she commanded every cara and every human eye with the force of her presence. Shuyin turned to face the sea of reporters directly.
"Please give us a mont."
It wasn’t a request. It was a statent of what would happen, delivered with enough quiet authority that security imdiately surrounded her, guiding her toward the side exit.
But she paused halfway across the stage, her profile illuminated by the blinding lights, and turned her head just enough for her voice to reach only him.
"Don’t follow ."
She didn’t shout. She didn’t accuse. She didn’t cry. Just four soft words that landed harder than any public condemnation could have managed.
The reporters realized what had happened and surged forward with renewed aggression. "Miss Shuyin! Are you ending the engagent?"
"Mr. Lu, did you cheat during your relationship?"
"Will there be charges?"
"Is the baby yours?"
"Was this entire conference a cover-up?"
Wang Jing grabbed his arm with enough force to leave bruises, physically pulling him backward. "We’re evacuating. Now. NOW, Zeyan!"
He allowed himself to be pulled, his feet moving without conscious direction as more security joined them, forming a human barrier between him and the advancing crowd.
Reporters broke past the initial barriers, nearly climbing onto the stage, microphones thrust forward at dangerous angles.
Lu Zeyan took one last look at the exit Shuyin had disappeared through. Just a sliver of the doorfra is visible beyond the security personnel.
Just the faint echo of footsteps retreating down so hallway he couldn’t see.
And for the first ti all day, not as CEO, not as strategist, not as the carefully polished public figure he’d spent hours preparing to present, but as a man stripped of every defense and pretense, he whispered four words back to no one who could hear.
"Shuyin... please wait."
But she was already gone.
Across the city, Lu Yuze set down his tablet with deliberate care, his expression unreadable.
"Daddy, is Zeyan in trouble?" Yuyan asked, not taking her eyes off the TV screen where colorful characters were engaged in so ridiculous adventure she’d probably outgrown but still found comforting.
"Yes," Lu Yuze said simply, his arm draped along the back of the couch behind her. "Very serious trouble."
"Because of the pregnant lady?"
"Among other things."
Yuyan was quiet for a mont, processing this in the way twelve-year-olds do when they sense adult matters are more complicated than they appear, old enough to understand context, young enough to still ask direct questions. "Is Mommy going to be okay?"
The word still caught Lu Yuze off guard, even though Yuyan had started using it imdiately after marrying her. She’d called Shuyin "Mommy" without hesitation, without needing to be prompted or encouraged, with the eagerness of a child who’d been waiting her whole life to have soone to call that.
Twelve years without a mother, twelve years of watching other children with their mothers at school events and birthday parties, twelve years of that particular emptiness that nothing else could fill.
And then Shuyin had entered their lives, and Yuyan had latched onto her with the wholehearted trust and desperate hope of a child who’d finally found what she’d been missing.
"Your mommy is very strong," Lu Yuze said quietly, the possessive pronoun feeling both strange and right on his tongue. "She’ll be fine."
"She looked sad though. When she saw the picture."
"She was surprised. There’s a difference."
’sad?’ he won’t allow it... These were the sa people who had frad her and tossed her into that prison, so, how could he allow it? He was her rightful man...
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