"To be fair," Ting Fei said with a slight smile, "you created the distraction. The board eting, the comprehensive blackmail, his father’s public humiliation of him, all of that put him in the perfect vulnerable state. I just took advantage of the opportunity you created."
"We make a good team," Shuyin observed, her laughter fading into sothing more serious, more calculated. "This changes everything, you know. These shares give legitimate standing. I’m not just an executive advisor who can be fired, I’m a shareholder with voting rights and profit participation. They literally cannot remove without my consent now, because I own part of what they’re trying to protect."
She stood, moving to the windows to look out over the city, the signed docunts still in her hand.
"When will he realize?" she asked quietly. "When will it occur to him that he signed away fifteen percent of his wealth?"
Ting Fei considered this. "Hard to say. It could be days, or it could be weeks. The forms will be filed with the corporate registry tomorrow, and he’ll receive official notification within 48 hours according to standard procedures. But whether he’ll actually pay attention to that notification, whether he’ll rember signing anything that might have authorized it..."
He shrugged. "He signs dozens of docunts every day. Unless he keeps ticulous personal records of every signature, he’ll have trouble proving he didn’t knowingly authorize the transfer. And even if he does figure it out, challenging it legally would require him to admit that he signs important corporate docunts without reading them, which would destroy his credibility and potentially expose him to shareholder lawsuits for negligence."
"So he’s trapped," Shuyin concluded. "Even if he realizes what happened, he can’t challenge it without making himself look incompetent or admitting to poor corporate governance. The humiliation of the truth would be worse than just accepting the loss."
"Exactly," Ting Fei agreed. "It’s a perfect trap. The more he struggles, the worse he looks."
Yuyan had been listening to this entire exchange with wide eyes, her twelve-year-old mind clearly working through the implications.
"Mother," she said slowly, "you just stole eighty million yuan from soone without them knowing. That’s... that’s incredible. And slightly terrifying."
"I didn’t steal," Shuyin corrected with a slight smile. "I acquired it through legitimate legal processes. There’s a difference."
"Is there though?" Yuyan asked, echoing Blade’s earlier question about the difference between blackmail and transparency agreents.
"Legally, yes," Shuyin replied. "Morally... well, let’s just say that Lu Zeyan owes far more than eighty million yuan in compensation for their sches and I am getting imprisonnt, loss of reputation, psychological trauma, and attempted destruction of my life. I’m taking what I’m owed, just through creative thods."
Chen Xiao looked confused by the whole conversation, but he understood the essential truth: Mother had won again. The bad man who’d tried to hurt her had lost sothing important. That made the five-year-old happy even if he didn’t understand the details.
Tank, Blade, and Razor were openly grinning now, their approval evident.
"Boss," Tank said with genuine respect, "you are absolutely terrifying in the best possible way. Remind never to be on your bad side."
"You’re on my good side," Shuyin assured him. "Which ans you’re protected. But yes, anyone who crosses should probably be terrified. I’ve learned that in this world, the only way to stay safe is to be more dangerous than the people who might hurt you."
She returned to her desk, pulling out her phone to take photos of the signed docunts from multiple angles, insurance, in case anything happened to the originals before they could be filed.
"Ting Fei, I want these filed first thing tomorrow morning," she instructed. "Personal delivery to the corporate registry, with receipt confirmation. I want them official and irreversible before Lu Zeyan has any chance of stopping the process."
"Already planned," Ting Fei confird. "I’ll be at the registry when they open at 8 AM. By noon tomorrow, these shares will be officially, legally, irreversibly yours."
"Perfect." Shuyin organized the docunts into a secure folder, locking them in her new desk’s top drawer. "Now, I believe we have shopping to do. The children need proper wardrobes, and I could use so items that actually fit correctly."
" Yes!" Ting Fei politely responded as they watched her clear her table.
THE CORRIDOR - A GLIMPSE OF SILVER
Lu Cheng moved through the executive corridors with the purposeful stride of a man who owned everything his gaze touched. His mind was still processing the disaster of the board eting, cataloging failures, calculating responses, and planning the investigation into Lin Shuyin that would need to begin imdiately.
His son had created a catastrophic ss.
His board had been comprehensively compromised.
And sowhere in this building, that dangerous woman was settling into an office she had no right to occupy, wielding power she’d stolen through blackmail and manipulation.
He needed to think. Needed to strategize. Needed to figure out how to neutralize this threat without triggering the mutually assured destruction she’d so eloquently threatened.
But as he passed the corner office, the one that had belonged to Vice President Lin Wei before retirent, the one that should have remained vacant until a proper candidate was vetted and approved, movent caught his eye through the glass walls.
Lu Cheng slowed, his attention snagged by sothing that didn’t quite fit the pattern he expected.
The office was occupied, which he’d known intellectually but hadn’t fully processed emotionally. Lin Shuyin had claid it as her territory. That was galling enough.
But it wasn’t Shuyin who caught his attention now.
It was the children.
Two of them, seated near the windows where the afternoon sun stread through floor-to-ceiling glass. A small boy, perhaps five years old, with dark hair and serious features, was coloring carefully in what looked like a children’s book. And beside him, helping him, guiding his hand, speaking to him with patient gentleness.....
A girl.
Maybe twelve or thirteen years old.
With silver-white hair that caught the sunlight and threw it back in brilliant, unmistakable waves.
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