Ten Rules to Bind Her Heart - Chapter 44
“What? Five minutes?”
Xia Zhiyao shuddered. The ecstasy of their reunion had not yet fully ignited in her chest when those words doused it with ice water.
She looked up in stunned disbelief at the solemn Ken beside her and hurriedly asked in a trembling voice,
“Mr. Ken, what happens after the five minutes? Where will my parents go? Will they…”
“Please don’t worry, Miss Xia,” Ken replied.
“Mr. Shen has assigned people to escort them. In five minutes, a convoy will depart and take the VIP route across the border. Your parents will arrive safely in Huaguo before tonight.”
His words reassured the three trembling figures locked in an embrace.
At the word “home,” light burst into the eyes of Xia Zhiyao’s parents—the light of people who had escaped death.
They shook with excitement and clutched each other’s hands.
“Thank goodness… Thank goodness. We can go home…”
Her mother wept with joy. Then a realization struck her. She looked anxiously at Ken and then at her daughter.
“What about Yaoyao? Is she leaving with us?”
The air instantly froze.
Without the slightest hesitation, Ken coldly shattered their hope.
“No.
“Mr. Shen intends for Miss Xia to stay a while longer,” he said.
“A while… How long is that?”
Her mother pressed him, clinging to a shred of hope, though her voice unconsciously weakened.
Ken fell silent.
Sometimes silence was the cruelest answer.
The light in her mother’s eyes slowly dimmed.
She lowered her gaze to her daughter and extended a shaking hand, gently stroking the shimmering dark green dress.
She had been too busy crying to examine it earlier. Only now did she see that her daughter’s dress was breathtakingly beautiful.
Although she had suffered terribly in the compound, she had spent years in the business world. Despite her wretched state, she had not lost her eye for quality.
The fabric was warm beneath her touch and as smooth as air.
Dark green and sapphire blue intertwined, flowing with an extravagant sheen beneath the sun. The muted gold embroidered totems appeared so lifelike that they seemed ready to fly from the cloth.
Xia Zhiyao’s father froze as well. He extended one filthy, trembling hand toward the fabric but stopped a centimeter away, afraid he might soil it.
“Is… is this Peacock King?”
His voice was dry and disbelieving.
“I once saw a piece of it the size of a handkerchief at an auction, and it was worth a fortune… Yaoyao, you…”
He was a worldly man and had heard that this fabric was made almost exclusively for royalty and the highest nobility. Money alone could not buy it.
He raised his head and studied his daughter’s exquisite makeup and the expensive agarwood hairpin in her hair. Its two rubies gleamed seductively beneath the sun.
The cost of everything she wore was unimaginable.
Her naturally innocent face had been enhanced by meticulous light makeup, making her devastatingly beautiful.
In Pakong, a place awash in mud and blood, his daughter looked clean and noble, an alien presence.
Xia Zhiyao’s mother’s heart clenched painfully. She was no fool. An immensely powerful man had gone to great lengths to rescue them and dressed their daughter like this. The implications were obvious.
No kindhearted stranger would pull someone from hell without reason. Nor would any employer buy an employee clothing of such staggering value.
Their daughter had become some powerful man’s… forbidden possession.
Immense grief welled in her heart. Her eyes reddened as she asked shakily,
“Yaoyao, this… Mr. Shen they mentioned. What does he do?”
Xia Zhiyao’s heart jumped.
What did he do?
He was an international magnate who controlled the region’s premium supply chains and legitimate security systems, a man of overwhelming influence.
But how could she tell her parents that? She was afraid of frightening them, and even more afraid that once they learned the truth, they would rather die than leave.
“He… he’s…”
Her eyes darted around as she faltered. Finally, she blurted,
“He… he sells… things…”
“Pfft—”
Ken’s mouth twitched violently. Standing ramrod straight beside them, he almost laughed aloud. He quickly turned away and covered it with a cough.
Their boss held the lifelines of premium supply networks and legitimate security technology in his hands, yet Miss Xia had described him as… the proprietor of a corner shop?
He wondered what Mr. Shen would think if he heard that.
“He sells things? What could he possibly sell to warrant all this?” her mother asked, clearly unconvinced.
Xia Zhiyao’s face flushed with anxiety. She glanced at the distant guards, who treated Shen Yu’s vehicle with reverence and did not even dare raise their heads. All she wanted was to reassure her parents, so she forced herself to continue.
“I don’t understand the details. Anyway… he’s very rich and powerful. Everyone here is afraid of him.”
Her mother looked at her evasive eyes and understood.
“Very rich…”
She murmured to herself. Then, as though struck by an idea, she pulled her husband down and knelt before Ken.
“Sir!”
“Mom, he’s Mr. Ken,” Xia Zhiyao quietly reminded her.
“Mr… Mr. Ken,”
her mother pleaded through a torrent of tears,
“could you please speak to Mr. Shen for us? Could we buy Yaoyao back? We’ll pay any amount! We don’t have cash on hand now, but we’ll raise it as soon as we return! We’ll pay any price if we can redeem our daughter!”
Her father knelt as well, tears running down his aged face. “Please. Yaoyao is only nineteen. She still has to finish school…”
Xia Zhiyao’s eyes reddened as she shook her head frantically. “Mom, Dad, don’t do this…”
The trace of amusement vanished from Ken’s face.
He looked down at the naive couple, and a murderous chill entered his voice.
“I understand how you feel.
“But the fact that the two of you have been rescued already means you owe Mr. Shen an enormous debt of gratitude. In this place, some matters cannot be solved with money.”
Had Mr. Shen acted any later, the two of them, already bled dry of value, would have entered circumstances from which survival was unlikely.
Ken paused and swept his gaze across the depraved land. At last, he looked toward the black armored security vehicle in the distance.
“Besides, Mr. Shen has no need for money. Nor does he have anything to do with the filthy operations of these compounds. He intervened this time only because of Miss Xia, making an exception on her behalf.
“I hope you will value this final opportunity and refrain from making unrealistic requests. Otherwise…”
Otherwise, if they angered that man, none of them would leave.
He did not say the final words, but everyone understood.
“You have one minute left, Miss Xia.”
Ken raised his wrist and glanced at his watch.
That single minute was the boundary between life and death.
