The soaring melody died down. Lianne exited the private room, and the evening wind swept a few strands of loose hair across her forehead.
Warm, orange lights in the courtyard lit up the vermilion-red corridor. Lianne strolled along the walkway when a message popped up on her phone.
She stopped in her tracks and tapped on WeChat to read it.
It was from Ethan Sinclair's executive assistant.
"Miss Lane, Mr. Sinclair had to leave for an urgent matter. Please enjoy the rest of your evening. Someone will be arranged to take you home later."
Lianne replied, then put her phone away.
She stood on the white marble steps and gazed into the distance. The night sky was vast and empty, a deep, dark canopy like the spreading of thick ink.
"Lianne?" a voice suddenly called out.
Hearing the voice, Lianne drew her gaze back to the person who had arrived. She recognized him as Zachary Alden, the young master of the Alden Family.
He was dressed in decadent, disheveled luxury, his face flushed with drink as he stared at her with a leering smile.
A thick stench of alcohol washed over her, and Lianne subtly raised a hand to cover her nose.
Zachary Alden drawled suggestively, "I'm hosting a party next week. How about coming over to play a piece?" 'This chick is gorgeous, with a killer body,' he thought. 'Unbelievably hot.' He had coveted her for a long time.
"The orchestra's performance fee is very high." Lianne maintained a cool distance.
"Money? That's easy," Zachary Alden said, his face a mask of derision. "Whatever Mr. Sinclair is paying you, I'll double it."
A cunning glint flashed in Lianne's eyes, but her tone was even as she retorted, "You'll really double it?"
Zachary Alden, thinking she'd caved, looked utterly smug. "Naturally! I'm a man of my word."
"In that case, Mr. Alden, please go ahead and sever your own legs. I'll play for you the moment you deliver that payment."
"You...!"
Realizing he'd been played, Zachary Alden flew into a rage. And yet, after licking his dry upper lip, he suddenly broke into a strange laugh.
"Lianne, you should know what's good for you. Mr. Sinclair will dump you in less than a month. You'd be better off with me."
Lianne had no intention of wasting her breath on a drunk, so she turned to leave.
"I'm telling you, don't push your luck!" Zachary Alden bellowed.
A proud, arrogant young master like him could never tolerate being ignored by a woman.
As Lianne brushed past, Zachary Alden reached for her shoulder. But before he could touch her, she shot her leg out and kicked him squarely in the kneecap without a shred of hesitation. THUMP. The sound of a body hitting the ground mingled with a pained scream.
"Aargh!"
Zachary Alden tumbled down the steps, his knees crashing hard onto the pavement. A sharp, intense pain shot through his bones.
He lay sprawled in a pathetic heap on a bed of withered, once-vibrant petals, only to hear Lianne's innocent, horrified voice:
"Oh my goodness, what happened? I thought you were a rat!"
"A rat? Are you blind?! You can't tell the difference between a rat and a person?" Burning with rage, Zachary Alden struggled to his feet.
The cool night wind bit at her skin, aggravating the pain in her wrist. Lianne turned to leave, but a hand suddenly seized her by the wrist.
And of course, it was her injured one.
Lianne's brow furrowed. She spun around to retaliate, but someone else had come up from behind and was now effortlessly prying Zachary Alden's hand from her wrist.
Lianne turned and saw a tall, straight-backed man standing by a flowering crabapple tree. He had a prominent brow, long, narrow "phoenix eyes" that tilted up slightly at the corners, and an aura that seemed to give him a faint, ethereal glow. His was an aggressive kind of handsome.
A single glance from him was enough to feel an oppressive, suffocating pressure.
She froze, momentarily forgetting the pain.
Seth Sinclair released his grip with deliberate slowness. Zachary Alden stumbled back two steps before managing to regain his balance.
"Master Alden, have you drunk yourself stupid? Don't you know who you're messing with?"
The profile of Seth Sinclair's face was lost in the dappled light and shadow. His Adam's apple bobbed as he spoke, his voice laced with a lazy amusement that was nonetheless chilling.
Zachary Alden's eyelids twitched. His mind snapped into sobriety, and his shock was palpable.
He immediately dropped his crude, thuggish act, his voice filled with terror and awe. "Seth!"
Hearing the name, "Seth," Lianne's heart clenched. She finally remembered who he was.
Seth Sinclair. Ethan Sinclair's younger brother.
She had almost no interaction with him.
The last time they'd met was the year before last, on a private yacht in The Port District.
Back then, he'd been wearing a patterned shirt, a cigarette dangling from his lips. With his hands in his pockets, he leaned lazily against the railing, and from the middle of a throng of people, he had shot a casual glance in her direction.
He looked like a dissolute, wicked playboy.
His features were similar to Ethan Sinclair's, but his entire aura was completely different.
Seth Sinclair's cold, sharp eyes swept carelessly over to Lianne. She immediately lowered her gaze, adopting the posture of a docile, perfect student, as if she weren't the same little pantheress who had just viciously kicked a grown man to the ground.
A tremor ran through Lianne's hand. She pressed down on it, trying to still it.
'Don't shake. Don't shake.'
'You're doing great...'
With her head bowed, she avoided looking at either man. She heard Zachary Alden apologize through gritted teeth, followed by the sound of his footsteps fading away.
In the quiet courtyard, only the girl and the flowers remained.
Lianne let out the breath she'd been holding.
She lowered her gaze and rolled up her sleeve to inspect the injury.
Her wrist was red and visibly swollen. The joint ached horribly, and a weak, numb feeling spread through her entire arm, as if it were useless.
Lianne felt like she was auditioning for the role of a one-armed martial arts hero.
She walked out the main gate of the courtyard residence. The driver hadn't arrived yet.
It was hard to hail a cab at this hour inside the Second Ring Road.
While she waited, Lianne walked to the 24-hour convenience store around the corner on the next street.
The convenience store didn't have any medicine, only food.
She bought ice cream and an onigiri. The ice cream was to temporarily numb the throbbing, burning pain, and the onigiri was to fill her stomach.
When it was about time, Lianne left the convenience store and started walking back. Traffic was sparse on the Second Ring Road now, and the few cars that passed were all luxury models.
A Hongqi L9 with tinted windows emerged from the mouth of an alley and pulled to a smooth stop beside her.
In a neighborhood where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, the ink-black car looked like a predator lying in wait.
A man got out of the driver's seat. It wasn't her usual driver, an older man, but a handsome, clean-cut young man.
"Miss Lane." Liam Shaw opened the car door for her respectfully.
Lianne was halfway inside the car before she realized there was another man inside, resting with his eyes closed.
He was leaning back against the seat. The lines of his brow and the bridge of his nose were sharp and elegant, and his chiseled, handsome face held a sleepy, languid air.
When she saw who it was, her pupils dilated slightly.
The person Ethan Sinclair had sent to take her home was... Seth Sinclair!
'If life had a progress bar,' Lianne thought, 'I would definitely drag it backward—all the way back to before I got in this car.'
But alas, there was no rewind button.
The car's interior was spacious, with fine leather seats. Lianne sat bolt upright, pressing herself as close to the door as she could.
The car slowly merged into traffic, and time itself seemed to crawl.
The enclosed cabin was utterly silent. The air carried the crisp scent of alcohol, mixed with an unidentifiable, dark fragrance that held a faint hint of fir.
A fine, prickling numbness radiated from her wrist, leaving her no capacity to ponder the strange scent.
Her fingertips trembled uncontrollably. Lianne pressed her right hand firmly over her left.
Seth Sinclair lazily lifted his eyelids. His dark eyes were deep and bottomless as his gaze slowly fell upon her hand.
Outside the window, the city's nightscape blazed with dazzling lights.
The car drove smoothly, but the pain was so consuming that Lianne couldn't spare a single thought to worry about the intensely imposing man beside her.
Liam Shaw turned the steering wheel, suddenly pulling the car over at an intersection.
Lianne was confused.
'Are we here already?'