Yichen's POV
Air.
That's what I told her I needed. As if the problem were oxygen. As if my lungs weren't working because the room was too small, and not because every time I looked at her, I forgot how to breathe.
The hallway was empty. Silent. The thick carpet absorbed my footsteps, and the polished brass of the elevator doors reflected a man I barely recognized—sleeves shoved up, hair disheveled by my own hands, eyes dark with a frustration that had nothing to do with business and everything to do with the woman I'd just left shaking on a hotel bed.
You think I'm using you for revenge.
Her words followed me. They echoed in the sterile hum of the descending elevator. I jabbed the button for the lobby. I needed noise. Crowds. Something loud enough to drown out the memory of her voice breaking.
Isn't it?
The doors slid open to a wall of sound.
Music. Laughter. The clinking of glasses. The company's welcome cocktail hour was in full swing in the grand ballroom, spilling out into the expansive lounge. A sea of suits and cocktail dresses, familiar faces from a dozen different departments, all orbiting one another in a carefully choreographed dance of ambition and alcohol.
Perfect.
I could disappear here. Become just another silhouette in the dim light. I moved toward the bar, my mind a static of white noise. I didn't want to think about the way she'd looked at me. I didn't want to examine why the idea of Yiran still having access to her felt like a physical violation. It was supposed to be clean. A transaction. A strategic move on a chessboard.
Nothing about her was clean. She was all messy edges and quiet storms, and I was standing in the center, getting wet.
"Whiskey. Neat."
The bartender nodded. I turned, leaning back against the polished wood, surveying the room without seeing it. My eyes scanned for threats out of habit—competitors, board members, sycophants. I saw Marketing's VP holding court. Saw a group from Finance laughing too loudly. Saw—
Him.
My body went cold before my mind could process.
At the far end of the lounge, standing near the grand piano, was my father.
He wasn't supposed to be here. The conference was for mid-level management and rising stars. His attendance was a last-minute, unannounced power move. A reminder that his eyes were everywhere.
He was talking to old Mr. Wang from the Singapore office, his posture relaxed, a glass of water in his hand. But his eyes—those hawklike, calculating eyes—were slowly sweeping the room. Cataloging. Assessing.
And he was about to look my way.
My pulse hammered against my ribs. Every exit route calculated and discarded in half a second. The main doors were behind him. The terrace was to my left, but it was a glass cage with nowhere to hide. The service corridor was too far, and moving toward it would draw attention.
I was trapped.
My whiskey arrived. I gripped the glass, the cold solidity a feeble anchor. Think. Move. But my feet were frozen to the floor. All my carefully constructed alibis, my layers of separation, my impeccable control—stripped away by my own stupid, angry need for air.
His gaze was moving, a lighthouse beam in the fog of the party.
It swept past the piano.
Past a group of junior analysts.
Past a waiter with a tray of canapés.
And landed on me.
Time didn't slow. It stopped.
His eyes met mine across thirty feet of crowded space.
For a fraction of a second, there was only surprise in his expression. Then it vanished, replaced by a cold, penetrating comprehension. He didn't look angry. He looked interested. That was worse. His head tilted slightly, a predator identifying a disruption in the pattern.
Why are you here, son?
The unspoken question hung in the air between us. Mr. Wang was still talking, but my father was no longer listening. He gave me a slow, deliberate nod. An acknowledgment. A summons.
My throat closed. This was it. The careful house of cards, trembling. All because I couldn't stand to be in a room with a woman who looked at me like I'd broken something she was still trying to hold together.
He excused himself from Mr. Wang with a polite smile and began to walk toward me.
Each step was measured. Unhurried. The crowd seemed to part for him instinctively. I saw the moment his mind began connecting dots. The conference. The hotel. The woman his other son had publicly shamed. The woman now linked to me in a headline. His gaze sharpened, boring into me, demanding an explanation I didn't have.
Five steps away.
My knuckles were white around the glass.
Four.
I could smell his cologne now. Clean, sharp, expensive. The scent of my childhood. Of expectations. Of never, ever being caught off guard.
Three.
—
Hua's POV
The click of the door was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.
It reverberated in the hollow space he left behind, in the hollow space inside my chest. I will, he'd said. And he did.
Anger was a hot, bright coal in my stomach. How dare he? How dare he storm in here, upend my life, drag me into his war, and then blame me for the shrapnel?
You keep protecting him. As if my silence was a shield for Yiran, and not a cage I was building for myself.
I paced. Three steps to the window, three steps back. The luxurious room felt like a cell.
But with every pass by the window, the anger began to cool, and underneath it, a colder, sharper fear began to crystallize.
Where did he go?
He was furious. Reckless. He'd walked out with nothing but his jacket and a head full of fire. In a hotel crawling with people who could destroy him. With people who could destroy us.
I checked my phone. No messages. The screen was a silent, mocking black.
He needs to be careful.
He isn't being careful.
The thought was a jolt of ice water. My fight with him didn't matter. The hurt didn't matter. If he was seen, if he was caught…
Zhang Wei's voice was in my head. You're easier to sacrifice.
Maybe. But he wouldn't walk away unscathed. His father's suspicion would harden into certainty. The plan would fracture. And the man who kissed me in a hallway like he was starving would disappear into a boardroom, sealed away by consequences I'd helped trigger.
I couldn't stay here.
I needed to find him. Not to apologize. To warn him. To pull him back from the edge he was too angry to see.
The logic was flimsy, a threadbare excuse over a churning panic I didn't want to name. I smoothed my hair, put on a dress, fixed my makeup, and slipped out the door.
The lobby was a symphony of elegance. I moved through it like a ghost, my senses straining. No sign of him near the reception. The pool area was quiet, lit by blue underwater lights. Empty.
The sound led me to the ballroom lounge—the pulsing beat of music, the murmur of a hundred conversations. The company party. Of course. Where else would a man trying to escape his thoughts go to drown them?
I hovered at the edge of the crowd, near a potted ficus tree that offered scant cover. My eyes scanned. I saw colleagues from my department. I saw my supervisor laughing. And then—
I saw him.
Yichen. At the bar. His back was tense, his shoulders a rigid line. And he was holding a glass like it was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
My relief lasted less than a second.
Because then I followed his frozen gaze.
And saw the man walking toward him.
His fathe. He wasn't taller than Yichen, but he carried an aura of absolute authority that seemed to shrink the space around him. He moved through his own employees like a king through subjects, his eyes locked on his son with a focus that made my blood run cold.
Yichen was statue-still. Caught.
The distance between father and son closed. Ten feet. Eight.
My mind blanked. Pure, undiluted terror. They couldn't meet here. Not now. Not with me here. The collision would reveal everything. It would be a catastrophe written in the slight lift of his father's brow, in the forced calm of Yichen's reply.
Do something.
But what? I couldn't walk over there. I couldn't speak. I was a ghost. A secret. The one thing that must not be seen next to Yichen.
Six feet.
My hand, moving on its own, shot out and closed around the stem of a champagne flute on a passing waiter's tray. He startled, but I was already turning, the cold glass a shock in my palm.
Four feet.
His father was raising a hand, about to speak.
I didn't think. Thinking was for people who had time.
I took two quick steps forward, head down, as if I'd tripped on the lush carpet. I bumped squarely into the immaculate, dark wool of his father's suit.
And I let the champagne go.
The golden liquid arced through the air in a graceful, terrible wave. It cascaded down the front of his jacket, over his silk tie, soaking into his pristine white shirt with a sound like a sigh.
Time unfroze into chaos.
Gasps. A few startled laughs quickly stifled. The waiter's horrified "Sir! Oh, my goodness, sir!"
His father recoiled, looking down at the ruin of his clothes with an expression of utter, profound shock. It was probably the first time in twenty years something had happened to him that wasn't pre-approved.
"I am so sorry!" I gushed, my voice high with false panic, my head bowed so my hair fell forward like a curtain. "The carpet—I'm so clumsy—please, forgive me!"
I dabbed uselessly at his chest with a cocktail napkin, creating a smeary mess. Other waiters descended with towels. A small crowd gathered, a mix of concern and morbid curiosity. It was the perfect, humiliating distraction.
In the periphery of my vision, I saw Yichen.
He hadn't moved. He was staring at me, his whiskey forgotten in his hand, his face a mask of stunned comprehension.
Go, I pleaded with my eyes, still hidden by my hair. Now.
As if hearing my silent scream, he blinked. The spell broke. He set his glass on the bar, turned, and melted into the crowd, disappearing toward the shadowy archway that led to the service corridors.
I kept apologizing, a broken record of faux distress, until a firm hand—the hotel manager's—guided me gently but insistently away from the furious, dripping patriarch. "It's quite alright, miss, accidents happen. Let's get you some water."
I let myself be led, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. When I was deposited near a quiet alcove, I murmured something about needing air and slipped away before anyone could ask my name or department.
I didn't go toward the lobby. I went toward the shadows Yichen had vanished into.
The service corridor was a different world—harsh fluorescent lights, the smell of laundry and lemony cleaner, the distant clang of pots from the kitchens. It was empty.
I walked quickly, my heels clicking on the linoleum. A door marked 'STAIRS' stood ajar. I pushed it open.
Silence. And then, from half a flight up, a voice.
"What in the absolute hell was that?"
Yichen stood on the landing, silhouetted against the grey concrete wall. He was breathing hard, as if he'd run up the stairs.
I climbed toward him, my own breath coming in short gasps. The adrenaline was fading, leaving me shaky. We stared at each other in the grim, utilitarian light.
"You shouldn't have done that," he said. His voice was low, rough. Not with anger anymore, but with something else. Something awed and terrified.
I didn't answer. I couldn't. Words were beyond me. All the fight, the hurt, the accusations—they were ashes now, blown away by the frantic wind of what had just happened.
He took a step down. Then another. Until he was on the step just above me, our faces almost level.
His eyes searched mine, looking for the calculation, the strategy. He found only the aftermath of pure panic. I saw the moment he understood the risk, the sheer, insane audacity of it. I saw the fury he'd promised—before I do something I regret—transform in his gaze. It softened at the edges, melted into a bewildered, blazing heat.
The air between us in the stale stairwell was more charged than it had ever been in the luxury suite.
Slowly, giving him every chance to pull away, I reached out.
My fingers found his hand where it hung at his side. It was cold. I wrapped mine around it, a simple, wordless anchor.
His breath hitched. His fingers tightened, intertwining with mine in a grip that was almost painful. A silent thank you. A silent apology. A promise.
We stood there in the humming silence, holding on in the dim stairwell light, two partners in crime who had just survived their first real heist. The world outside was full of dangers—a furious father, a suspicious brother, a collapsing plan.
But here, in this hidden space, there was only the solid warmth of his hand in mine, and the terrifying, exhilarating understanding that the line between revenge and something else had just been irrevocably crossed.