My Ex-Boyfriend's Name Was in the Chairman's Will - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Lanzhou was a three-hour drive from Haicheng. Luo Yuncheng drove while I sat in the passenger seat, spending the entire journey processing the truths that had arrived eight years too late.

“Sleep for a bit if you want,” Luo Yuncheng said suddenly.

“Just focus on the road.”

“I am focused.”

I turned my head to look out the window. After a moment, I couldn’t help but ask, “What happened to your mother later on?”

Luo Yuncheng’s hands on the steering wheel stiffened slightly. “She passed away two years ago.”

I froze.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If I had told you, you would have come,” he said. “I didn’t have the courage to see you back then.”

I fell silent for a long time, finally whispering only a few words: “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

At one in the afternoon, we followed the address to an old residential compound on the outskirts of Lanzhou. The house numbers were peeling with age, and the stairwell was narrow and chilly. A woman in her forties opened the door; she was thin, her expression guarded.

“Yuan Anhe?” Luo Yuncheng presented his lawyer’s credentials.

When the woman saw the name “Haisheng,” her expression shifted instantly, and she turned to slam the door shut.

I reached out to block the door. “Ms. Yuan, my father is Song Zhiyuan.”

The door stopped.

She looked up at me, her gaze trembling as if she had been struck by something.

Minutes later, we were sitting in her home. Yuan Anhe poured us glasses of plain water, her hands shaking the entire time.

“I thought no one would ever mention this again,” she said softly.

“What do you know?” I asked.

Yuan Anhe was silent for a long time before she spoke. “A month before the accident at North River Phase 3, the Finance Center received an abnormal payment used to cover up fake accounts for a supplier. I handled the data entry for the approval form. Pan Yuming signed it, but the one who actually made the final call was Fu Mingzhang. Engineer Song came to see me later and asked me to back up the accounts. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should give the files to a journalist.”

“Why didn’t you hand them over?”

Her eyes reddened instantly. “Because I was being watched, too. I had just given birth then, and my husband was working out of town. Someone followed me home and left a dead cat at my doorstep.”

A chill ran down my spine.

Yuan Anhe brought out a metal box from the bedroom. She opened it to reveal a memory card and a signed manuscript.

“I’ve moved so many times over the years because I was afraid they would find me,” she said, handing the items to me. “I originally planned to wait until my child was older and then mail them out anonymously. But since you’re here, these should be returned to you.”

My hands shook as I took the memory card.

Luo Yuncheng asked, “What’s on here?”

“Scanned copies of the original financial ledgers and a backup of some office surveillance footage,” Yuan Anhe whispered. “Pan Yuming went to see Engineer Song that night.”

Before we left Lanzhou, Yuan Anhe suddenly called out to me.

“Mr. Song.” She looked at me, appearing to have finally made up her mind. “Before your father’s accident, he met with Fu Mingzhang one last time. When he came back, he said something.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that Fu Mingzhang wasn’t the most ruthless one. The most ruthless person was the one in a hurry to shut him up.”

When I walked out of the stairwell, my legs felt weak. Luo Yuncheng draped his coat over my shoulders and asked softly, “Can you hold up?”

I nodded, then suddenly asked him, “If the most ruthless person really is Pan Yuming, what will you do?”

“I’ll put him behind bars.”

“What if that destroys Haisheng? What if it destroys everything I’ve built over these years?”

Luo Yuncheng looked at me and said very slowly, “Yucheng, you stayed behind to find the truth, not to be buried with Haisheng.”