Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Less than half an hour after Lin Qingyue dropped the line “Do you really think you’re going to win?” she started a livestream.

I was still wearing my wedding dress, stained with red wine, standing in the fire escape of the hotel’s backstage area. My phone screen was blindingly bright. On the screen, she was crying, her voice hoarse as she claimed she had been coerced and exploited. She accused me of maliciously fabricating the pregnancy and the ledgers just to climb the social ladder, claiming all the recordings were “spliced.”

Comments slashed across the screen like blades. Some people who had been cursing her ten minutes ago were already starting to hesitate: Could there be another reversal?

Cheng Xubai took my phone, his fingers sliding quickly across the screen. His voice was low. “She’s betting on one thing-that you can’t produce the original data chain.”

“I have a cloud backup.”

“A backup isn’t enough. You need timestamps, device serial numbers, and upload logs. You can’t be missing a single one.”

He looked up at me, his tone still cold, yet he draped his suit jacket over my shoulders. “Nianhe, this isn’t about saving face anymore; it’s about seizing the narrative. Give me the word, and I’ll issue the lawyer’s letter and the evidence list immediately.”

I stared at Lin Qingyue’s face in the livestream, remembering how she used to hand me coffee in my office. My fingers slowly tightened. “Send it. Send everything. Including the full surveillance footage of her tampering with the emails.”

We didn’t leave the hotel that night. The lights in the banquet hall were all out, but the large screen behind the stage was still frozen on the image of me tearing up the prenuptial agreement, like a scar that hadn’t been properly cleaned. Cheng Xubai made seven phone calls in a row at his computer, while I organized the evidence directory one by one, re-labeling every file with its source, time, and operator.

At two in the morning, Lu Jingchuan’s side released a screenshot of a diagnosis claiming I was “mentally unstable,” trying to drag the whole affair down into an emotional farce.

Staring at that forged medical record, I suddenly stopped trembling.

In the past, whenever I encountered conflict, I always thought about explaining, reconciling, and proving I wasn’t a bad person. That night, I understood for the first time that what truly saves a life isn’t “believe me,” but “here is the evidence.”

As dawn approached, Cheng Xubai pushed a cup of cold coffee toward me. “Everything is set with the hospital. Your father will be transferred this afternoon. I’ve already signed the guarantee.”

My throat tightened, and I managed only two words: “Thank you.”

“Don’t be so quick to thank me.” He looked at me. “The next ninety days will be even harder. Public opinion, litigation, your mother’s side, and potential pressure from the Lu Family to settle. Whether you want to fight this to the end needs to be decided today.”

I placed the wedding ring box on the table and pushed it toward him. “I won’t settle.”

The days that followed were like a steel wire stretched to its limit.

During the day, I held meetings at the company to handle risk inquiries from partners; in the afternoon, I went to the hospital to sign my father’s treatment consent forms; at night, I worked with the legal team on the materials, verifying every word of the testimonies.

Lu Jingchuan’s side first claimed it was all a “misunderstanding.” Seeing that I wouldn’t budge, they turned to threats. Finally, they sent word through an intermediary: as long as I withdrew the public accusations, the debt on the old house could be “wiped clean.”

I laughed when I heard that. “That debt never existed in the first place. What is there to wipe clean?”

The hardest part was my mother.

She sent me over a dozen voice messages every day-crying first, then coaxing, then scolding. She said family scandals shouldn’t be aired in public, that the Lu Family was still more reliable than strangers no matter how bad they were, and that a woman had to learn to endure in this life. At first, I replied, but later I only responded with necessary information when she mentioned my father’s treatment.

She eventually rushed to the hospital room door to intercept me, grabbing my arm and shaking. “You’ve made such a mess of things. Who will ever dare to marry you now?”

I slowly pried her hand off. “Mom, what I want right now isn’t for someone to marry me. I want my dad to live, and I want to live.”

She froze for a few seconds, her eyes red. “I’m doing this for your own good.”

“You’re doing it for the sake of appearances.”

After that day, we didn’t speak a full sentence to each other for a long time.

On the ninetieth day, I received three legal documents at the courthouse entrance. The paper was thin, yet the edges were sharp enough to make my fingers ache.
The first document: Lu Jingchuan was officially charged with contract fraud and embezzlement, and his application for bail pending trial was rejected.

The second document: Lin Qingyue issued a public apology and paid compensation for forging evidence and commercial defamation; her social media accounts were suspended for three years.

The third document: My mother, as a joint party to the coercion, was held jointly and severally liable for civil damages.

She sat on a plastic chair in the mediation room, her makeup heavily smeared, repeating the same sentence over and over: “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was just afraid you wouldn’t be able to handle it alone.”

I stood, refusing to sit. The electronic clock on the wall ticked second by second, sounding like someone was counting the years I had spent suffering in silence.

“I used to be afraid too,” I said, my voice remarkably calm. “I was afraid of disappointing you, afraid of the family falling apart, afraid of people saying I was being difficult. So, no matter who pressured me, I always blamed myself first. But look at what all that fear got me.”

She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

“From today on, I’m done paying the price for everyone else’s sense of propriety.”

As I turned to leave, Cheng Xubai was waiting for me at the end of the hallway, holding a drafted set of foundation bylaws. He didn’t ask what had happened in the mediation room; he simply handed me the documents. “You decide on the name. I’ve designed two different funding paths for you, both of which have passed compliance. The first group of volunteer lawyers has already been contacted.”

I flipped to the last page, where the signature line was blank. The moment my pen touched the paper, my hand stopped shaking.

On the day the foundation was established, we held our first briefing in a small meeting room. There were no flowers or banners-just a row of folding chairs and a whiteboard. I spoke about three things: how to preserve evidence, how to identify financial control, and how to prioritize personal safety when facing threats. I didn’t offer empty platitudes like “women should be strong.” I only shared the pitfalls I had fallen into myself-don’t accept verbal promises, get them in writing; don’t delete chat logs, make mirror backups; don’t go to meetings alone, leave your location and have a witness.

After the session ended, a girl in her twenties caught up with me at the door, clutching an old USB drive so hard her knuckles were white.

“Miss Xu,” she said softly, “my boyfriend wants me to sign an investment proxy agreement. He says it’s for our future. I feel like something is wrong, but I don’t know if I’m just overthinking it.”

I took the USB drive; it felt cold in my palm. For a moment, it was like I was looking at myself from three months ago-standing amidst wedding dresses and lies, knowing the ground beneath me was empty but almost jumping anyway.

“You’re not overthinking it,” I told her, looking her in the eye. “You did the right thing by coming to ask before making a decision. we’ll help you look it over tomorrow.”

Her eyes instantly reddened, and she nodded repeatedly.

That evening, Cheng Xubai and I ate takeout beef noodles in the office; the noodles had gone a bit soggy. He pushed the chili sauce toward me. “It’s the first day. How does it feel?”

I thought about it for a moment. “It feels like I’ve finished tearing down a burning house and just finished tamping down the foundation.”

He gave a soft hum of agreement. “Then we’ll keep building. It’s okay to go slow.”

Near eleven o’clock, the duty phone rang. I pressed the speakerphone button. At first, there was only the sound of breathing, then a woman spoke with a suppressed sob: “Is this… Xu Nianhe’s foundation? I only have twelve hours left. They’re forcing me to go to the notary office to sign papers first thing tomorrow morning.”

Cheng Xubai and I locked eyes. He had already reached for his laptop.

“Don’t hang up,” I said, pulling my own notebook toward me, my voice steadying. “Tell me your current location and what materials you have. We’ll work on a plan together tonight.”

The neon lights outside reflected on the glass like a newly lit line. Suddenly, I realized with total clarity that my wedding day hadn’t been the end; it had simply been the moment I was violently wrenched out of an old script. Real life, the real battlefield, was only just beginning.

The door to a new life had been pushed open, and my journey was just getting started.