Chapter 3 - The Price of a Red Ink Seal
The third-floor apartment in the old district smelled of damp concrete and fried scallions. Lin Xia sat at the small wooden table under the flickering light of a fluorescent tube that had been buzzing like an angry hornet for three months. Across from her, the check sat on the oilskin tablecloth, its clean white surface looking like a tooth dropped in mud.
Her phone buzzed against the wood. It was an automated notification from Renji Hospital:
Xia covered her face with her hands. Her fingers were cold, the skin rough around the nails from hours of adjusting the matte finishes on corporate CAD models. One hundred and forty-two thousand yuan. It might as well have been one hundred and forty million. Her salary at the architecture firm was six thousand five hundred a month, and her boss, Director Wang, had already told her that her bonus was being "deferred" to the next fiscal year because her team had failed to secure the commercial plaza contract.
The door to the apartment opened with a rattling clank. Her cousin, Lin Feng, walked in, his Dami Technology identity badge still swinging from his neck by a bright blue lanyard. He looked exhausted, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a grease stain from a convenience store lunch visible on his sleeve.
"Xia," Feng groaned, throwing his laptop bag onto the sofa. "The fourth floor is a madhouse. The executive suite has been locked down since Tuesday. The rumor is that the Chairman went missing during his annual sabbatical. The board is going crazy trying to find him before the market opens on Monday."
Xia looked down at the check on the table. Her fingers trembled as she pulled it toward her. "Feng... what does the Chairman actually look like? You’ve seen him, right?"
"Once," Feng said, pouring himself a glass of tap water. "At the annual gala. He sat at the center table behind six bodyguards. He doesn't look like a human being, Xia. He looks like an AI model that someone programmed to manage money. Sharp jaw, eyes like a hawk, never smiles. He’s thirty-four, but he looks like he’s lived three lifetimes in a cold room."
"Does he... does he have a scar along his left wrist?" Xia asked, her voice dropping into a register that made Feng stop drinking.
Feng turned around, his brow furrowing. "How do you know about that? That’s not in the press releases. He got that during the supply chain riots in Guangzhou five years ago when someone tried to tip his vehicle."
Xia felt the room spin. The man from the market—the one who had begged for thirty yuan, the one who had eaten her steamed buns while sitting on a crate of rotten cabbages—had that exact scar. A long, pale line that cut right through his left sleeve where the button had been torn away.
"Nothing," Xia whispered, sliding the check into the pocket of her jeans before Feng could notice the blue ink. "Just something I read online."
"Don't believe the forums," Feng muttered, collapsing onto the sofa and closing his eyes. "If the Chairman doesn't show up by Monday, the stock is going to drop ten percent. If that happens, my division is going to get cut, and I won't even be able to help you with Uncle’s medical bills next month."
Xia didn't answer. She walked to the small bathroom, locked the door, and looked at herself in the cracked mirror. Her hair was messy, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and an old, desperate anger that had been building inside her since her father first collapsed in the workshop. She had spent her whole life playing by the rules—working the double shifts, saving the twenty-yuan bills, saying "thank you" to men like Director Wang who treated her like a piece of office furniture. And where had it gotten her? A red notice from the hospital and a leaking roof.
She pulled the check out of her pocket. The paper was clean, but it felt like a hot coal against her palm.
"Three million," she whispered to the glass. "Six months."
At exactly eight o'clock the next morning, a silver Mercedes-Benz Maybach pulled up to the curb outside her tenement building. The car didn't idle; its engine was so silent it seemed to absorb the noise of the market around it. The door opened from the inside, and the man from the market sat in the back seat, wearing a tailored charcoal suit that fit his shoulders like a second skin. His hair was pushed back, his face clean, his jaw smooth.
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He didn't look down at her as she stood on the pavement with her small canvas bag.
"Get in, Miss Lin," Ethan Vance said, his eyes fixed on the tablet screen in his lap. "The notary is waiting at the district court, and the hospital has already received the first transfer."
