Chapter 146
The club’s low lights flickered against the polished mahogany table as Zhen Weng cracked the folder open with a careful hand. His sharp eyes scanned the yellowed documents, each page releasing the faint scent of age and dust, like forgotten tombstones finally unearthed.
Han watched him with amusement, nursing his drink, saying nothing. There was more power in silence than in a thousand words, and Han enjoyed watching powerful men squirm.
The first page was a shipping manifest, the ink faded but legible, Port of Shanghai. Cargo: 1. Discretionary. Unregistered passenger.
Zhen frowned. “Discretionary?”
“Code word,” Han supplied smoothly.
Zhen flipped to the next page, a notarized report, stamped with syndicate insignia. A young woman’s name scrawled across the top leapt out in cruel clarity, Zhao Meilin.
Zhen’s lips parted, the sound escaping closer to a hiss. “Zhao… Ethan’s cousin..”
Han leaned forward, voice low. “His cousin. Serena Lin’s close friend, once upon a time. Pretty thing. Bright smile. Too curious for her own good. She disappeared one winter without a trace, and the Zhaos buried the scandal.”
Zhen’s grip tightened on the papers. The next sheet was a testimonial, written in shorthand by one of Han’s old contacts, a dockhand turned informant. The words were brutal in their simplicity.
‘The Feng boy brought her himself. Said she was collateral. Syndicate took her. Never saw her again.’
Zhen swallowed hard, reading it twice, thrice, as though the ink might shift into something else.
Han chuckled, cruel satisfaction lacing his tone. “Lucien Feng. The golden heir. The ruthless tycoon. The protector of Serena Lin. And yet, years ago, he handed her best friend over to the underworld like she was… payment.”
He tapped the folder with a lazy finger. “If this isn’t power, I don’t know what is.”
Zhen’s mind spun. Serena and Meilin had been inseparable during their school years, he remembered hearing the stories. They’d gone shopping together, attended charity functions together. Then Meilin vanished. The gossip had been cruel, but with time, people forgot.
Serena hadn’t. She had carried that wound in her first life, her husband Ethan offering cold comfort as the Zhaos closed ranks.
Zhen remembered it now. Serena Lin’s eyes, red rimmed at a gala, whispering Meilin’s name like a prayer no one else cared to answer. And now she lay every night in Lucien’s bed, the man who had orchestrated it all.
Zhen’s lips curved into something dangerous. “If she ever learns this…”
Han’s grin spread, sharp as a knife. “Her marriage, his empire, his carefully curated image, gone. One truth can unravel everything.”
Zhen shut the folder with trembling fingers, both exhilarated and unsettled. “But why? Why would Lucien do this?”
Han’s eyes glinted with shadowed memory. “Debt. Leverage. Maybe cruelty. I don’t pretend to know the heart of a man like Lucien Feng. I only know what he’s capable of.”
Silence draped the table. In that silence, Zhen’s greed blossomed. He could see it now, the fall of the Feng heir, the triumph of the Wengs. Arabelle restored, Adrian in power, the Feng elders bending to his influence.
He slid the folder closer to himself, like a dragon hoarding gold. “This is enough. With this, Lucien is finished.”
Han finally leaned back, his smile never faltering. “Finished? Perhaps. But don’t mistake information for victory, Zhen. Men like Lucien… they don’t die quietly.”
But Zhen wasn’t listening anymore. His mind was already racing, already planning. He would confide in Arabelle. He would show her this weapon, give her the courage she lacked. Together, they would strike.
Neither of them noticed the shadow outside the booth curtain, a young waiter frozen mid step, listening. Neither of them thought about how quickly whispers travel in a city where Lucien Feng’s reach was everywhere.
And somewhere, fate shifted. Because the truth they held, the truth of Zhao Meilin, wasn’t just Lucien’s ghost. It was Serena’s, too.
The bar’s lights were low, warm amber spilling across polished wood and velvet drapes, but to Zhen Weng it suddenly felt like the spotlight of a stage.
He had just tucked the folder beneath his arm, his mind buzzing with strategies, when the curtain at the booth shifted.
A tall shadow slid into their space as though it belonged there, bringing with it a chill sharper than winter air.
Lucien Feng.
His suit was midnight silk, immaculate as always, but it wasn’t the clothes that froze Zhen’s spine, it was the eyes. Cold, steady, glinting with something unreadable. A smile tugged faintly at Lucien’s lips, but it was a smile without warmth.
“Zhen,” Lucien murmured as he slid into the seat opposite, his presence swallowing the booth whole. His gaze flicked briefly toward Han, who had gone very still, and then back to the elder Weng. “I didn’t expect to find you here. Discussing business at this hour?”
Zhen forced his grip on the folder to relax, easing it closer to his side like it was merely an afterthought. His laugh was dry. “Ah, Mr. Feng. I could ask the same of you. What brings you to such a place?”
Lucien leaned back against the booth, crossing his legs with a languid ease that only sharpened the tension. His fingers brushed against the crystal glass left abandoned on the table, spinning it once before setting it down with deliberate softness.
“I was told,” Lucien said evenly, “that some old acquaintances of mine were making noise. I don’t like noise. It distracts me.” His gaze sharpened on Han, and the broker swallowed, hiding it behind a smirk.
“Noise,” Han drawled, lifting his drink in mock salute. “Or truth? Sometimes the two sound alike, depending on the ears that hear them.”
Lucien’s smile curved, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And sometimes men mistake rumors for weapons, only to find they’ve been holding glass instead of steel.”
Zhen’s palms dampened, but he steadied his tone. “Come now, Lucien. We’re only sharing stories. The past has a way of resurfacing, doesn’t it?”
Lucien tilted his head, his gaze dropping briefly to the folder at Zhen’s side. His voice lowered, silk and steel in equal measure. “I find the past is best left where it belongs. Unless, of course, someone has a reason to dig it up.”
Han and Zhen exchanged a glance. Han’s smirk faltered just slightly, Zhen stiffened, fingers brushing the folder as if to reassure himself it was still there.
Lucien didn’t miss it. He never missed anything.
He leaned forward now, elbows on the table, his aura tightening around them like a noose. “So tell me,” he said softly, almost conversationally, “what story was worth sharing tonight?”