Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Inside the delivery box lay a lipstick broken into two pieces, the color identical to the one I had snapped in my palm on my wedding day. Beneath it was a photocopy of my father’s medical records, with a sentence circled in red ink in the bottom right corner: Withdraw the lawsuit by 3:00 AM tomorrow.

I stared at those words, my palms slick with cold sweat. The room was unnervingly quiet-so quiet that I could hear the sound of my own fingernails scraping against the paper.

The door pushed open, and Cheng Xubai’s expression darkened the moment he saw the items on my desk.

“Don’t touch the packaging. I’ll have someone come for fingerprints.”

“They know my father’s hospital ID number.” I handed him the medical records. “This isn’t just a threat; they’re testing to see if I’ll back down again.”

He looked at me for two seconds, his tone steady. “Let’s go to the hospital first.”

I grabbed my coat and left immediately. As the elevator doors closed, Lu Jingchuan’s words from the meeting room in the previous chapter suddenly flashed through my mind: “the things you rely on.” A wave of nausea rolled through my stomach, but this time, I didn’t let the fear dictate my actions. I turned on my phone’s recording app, photographed the medical records to upload them to the cloud evidence database, and forwarded them to my contact in the police economic crimes investigation unit.

When we reached the ward, my father was asleep, the green line on the monitor rising and falling rhythmically. The nurse on duty saw me and lowered her voice, mentioning that half an hour ago, a man claiming to be an “authorized family representative” had asked to see my father’s post-operative medication records. She had stopped him.

“What did he look like?”

“He wore a hat and a mask, so I couldn’t see clearly. He left a surname, though. He wrote ‘Lin’.”

Lin. The name was like a needle, precisely pricking an old wound.

I didn’t say anything, merely noting the timestamp for the nurse station’s surveillance footage. Cheng Xubai stood beside me. He didn’t ask if it was Lin Qingyue; instead, he turned his laptop toward me, showing that he was already pulling public surveillance footage from the hospital entrance and parking lot.

“Nianhe,” his voice was very low, “you can choose to take a step back for now.”

I looked at my father’s thin hand and shook my head. “I used to think victory meant having someone on my side or having someone love me. Now I understand that victory is being able to decide my own next move, no longer being led around by the neck.”

He gave a soft “mm,” paused, and then added: “Then this time, you make the call. I’ll handle smoothing out the road.”

Those words carried more weight than a simple “I’ll help you.” I knew he was changing, and I knew I was too.

The next morning, I called the company’s legal department, outside counsel, and two heads of non-profit organizations into the conference room. Only four words were written on the whiteboard: Evidence Preservation.

“We aren’t creating an emotional fluff account or a ‘chicken soup’ community,” I said, flipping through the proposal page by page. “I want to start a Women’s Legal Aid Project. In the first phase, we will focus on only three things: anonymous consultations, evidence escrow, and emergency referrals. Every process must be traceable, and every authorization must leave a digital footprint.”

Someone hesitated. “President Xu, this topic is too sensitive. It’s easy to draw fire to ourselves.”

I looked up at him. “The fire has already burned me. What we need to do now is hand the fire extinguisher to others.”

By the time the meeting concluded, my mother had arrived. She sat in the reception area, her eyes red, her voice carrying that familiar, urgent tone under the guise of “doing it for your own good.”

“How long are you going to keep making a scene? Your father is still in the hospital. What is this aid fund you’re starting? What will people think of our family?”

I poured her a glass of warm water but didn’t sit down. Standing, I said, “What you’re afraid of is what people think, not how I survive.”

Her hand trembled, spilling water onto her skin. “How am I not doing this for you? If it weren’t for the Lu Family back then-”

“Back then, you made me sign the prenuptial agreement, told me to endure it, and told me not to let our ‘shameful’ business get out.” I looked at her. “Mom, I’ve lived your way for many years, and the result was that I nearly lost myself entirely. That’s enough. We’re done.”
She opened her mouth, but in the end, only one sentence came out: “You’ll regret this.”

“My biggest regret is that I used to always try to be reasonable instead of prioritizing my own survival.”

She didn’t look back as she left. I stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, my chest feeling tight, but I didn’t crumble. The pain felt like an old bone being snapped back into place-it was unpleasant, but it was a step toward being able to stand firm.

Three days before the project launch, the first batch of help request forms flooded in. There was someone whose husband had taken her salary card for seven years; someone being forced to shoulder “joint marital debt”; someone who didn’t even dare to keep a recording of a police report for fear of being beaten if discovered. Each short line of text on the screen felt like a heavy blow from a club.

I split the team into two groups: one for initial screening and one for emergency cases. Cheng Xubai took the compliance consultants through the “evidence cold storage” process three times, tightening the data deletion deadlines after authorization withdrawal down to the minute.

At two in the morning, I was still in the office revising the volunteer lawyer agreements when he knocked on the door and walked in carrying two bowls of beef noodles.

“If you stare at that screen for another ten minutes, your eyes will be swollen for the press conference tomorrow.”

I took the chopsticks and gave a small smile. “Since when did Lawyer Cheng take a part-time job in lifestyle management?”

“My fees are very expensive.” He placed a piece of paper in front of me. “Sign the terms of service first.”

I looked down to see three handwritten points:

First, I won’t make decisions for you.
Second, no critical information stays overnight.
Third, if I overstep, you can call a halt at any time.

After reading them, my heart suddenly softened. I took a pen and added a fourth line at the bottom: Fourth, we confess our fears to each other and don’t use silence as protection.

He looked at the line and nodded. “Deal.”

On the day of the press conference, the audience was filled with media, partner law firms, and several women who had previously sought help anonymously and were now willing to take off their masks and speak. The lights hit my face; I could hear my heart beating fast, but it wasn’t erratic.

“This project doesn’t provide miracles,” I said into the camera. “It only provides tools. We don’t teach anyone to endure; we only teach how to preserve evidence, how to save oneself, and how to change ‘he will change’ into ‘I have a way out.'”

Just as the applause began, my phone vibrated. It was that number with no registered location again.

I didn’t hang up; I pressed the speakerphone button immediately.

A male voice, distorted by a voice changer, came from the other end: “Xu Nianhe, do you really think holding a press conference makes you safe? You touched accounts you shouldn’t have touched.”

The audience went silent instantly, and all the cameras turned toward me.

I gripped the phone, my voice steady. “Very good. You’re finally willing to use the word ‘accounts.’ Let me remind you, this is being live-streamed in its entirety. What you just said has already entered the chain of evidence.”

There was a second of silence on the other end followed by a curse, and then the line went dead.

I looked toward the side of the stage, where the police liaison had already raised a hand to signal they had received it. Cheng Xubai stood in the wings and nodded at me. I put the phone down and continued to finish the final segment. My voice was a bit raspy, but it was steadier than it had ever been.

By the end of the press conference, the list of partners was three times larger than expected, and the first batch of donations broke eight figures before the books closed for the day. I thought I would be shaking with excitement, but when the moment actually came, I was surprisingly calm. It wasn’t because the waters were still, but because I had finally learned how to grab the helm when the storm hits.

At nine in the evening, I returned to my new office to find a manila envelope tucked into the door crack. Inside was a single printed sheet-a board meeting notice for the new company I had just finished registering. At the bottom, a line was handwritten:

Welcome back, President Xu. Tomorrow morning at nine, your first strategic investor wants to see you-he says he’s here to discuss an old debt that “belongs only to you.”

There was no name in the signature, only a single letter: L.