Rain pattered gently against the apartment windows as Yinlin tucked a sleeping Mei into bed. Her daughter's breath was slow and steady, small hands curled to her chest. Yinlin brushed Mei's hair from her forehead, lingering a moment longer than usual.
That strange man's face and his sharp, obsidian eyes still haunted her.
Down the hallway, she poured herself a cup of lukewarm tea and sat at the kitchen table. The apartment was small but tidy, furnished with secondhand furniture. A drawing Mei had made hung crooked on the fridge. A small potted plant drooped by the window. It was all Yinlin could afford. And all she had.
She pressed her fingers to her temples. The headache had been building since her shift ended. Something about that man, Xu Tao, unsettled her. He spoke with the ease of someone who had once belonged in her life.
But no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember him.
*************
Elsewhere…
From the tinted windows of a black car parked across the street, Zhengqiang lowered his camera. He had been watching Yinlin's apartment for over an hour. Through the lens, she looked nothing like the girl from the old yearbooks. There was no trace of the carefree student she once had been, just a woman who carried the weight of survival in every gesture.
He tapped a note into his tablet.
Subject resides in modest housing. Apartment 4B. Single mother. No signs of partner. No suspicious behavior observed.
So far, his investigation had turned up only fragments: a college dropout, medical records noting severe head trauma, a marriage certificate without divorce filing. And now, a death record. He hadn't told his boss yet.
Four years ago, a workplace accident ended the life of a young man, Zhou Wei, 26, on a night shift at a construction site. Newspapers reported the death, leaving behind a pregnant wife: Wen Yinlin, 24. Insurance claims had stalled; witnesses were missing, paperwork incomplete. Since then, she had raised her daughter alone, scraping together a life from whatever crumbs fate had thrown her way. No justice. No one had ever noticed her struggle.
This woman, who had survived so much, had no idea that she was about to cross paths with the most dangerous man she would ever meet.
He'd brief Tao in the morning. No need to trigger another one of his moods tonight.
Zhengqiang exhaled and started the engine.
**************
The sun dipped low behind the city skyline, casting a burnt-orange hue through the tall windows of Xu Tao's penthouse. But inside, there was only the sterile cold of control, of a man who had spent a decade burying the wound left behind by a woman.
Xu Tao leaned back in his leather chair, the tablet still glowing on his desk. His fingers tapped slowly on the glass as he reread the report.
Name: Wen Yinlin. Age: 28. Status: Widowed. One daughter, age four. Husband deceased due to a workplace accident four years prior.
His lips twitched into something between a smirk and a sneer. So fate hadn't been kind to her either.
"She disappeared," he muttered, more to himself than to his assistant Zhengqiang on the line. "Vanished on me without a word. And now this. A waitress. A widow." He let out a soft, humorless chuckle. "Almost poetic."
On the other end, Zhengqiang stayed silent, sensing the volatile blend of satisfaction and suppressed bitterness in his employer's voice.
Tao swiveled in his chair, staring out at the glittering skyline. "All these years, I thought she left me because I wasn't enough. That maybe she outgrew me. Married someone richer, better. But no—she just… lived small. Lived poor. She traded me for that?"
He rose to his feet, his jaw tightening as a memory surged forward—Yinlin smiling at the airport, promising to wait for him while he went abroad. Then, silence.
Nothing. No calls. No letters. No goodbye.
"I suffered," Tao whispered, voice ragged. "I waited like a fool."
His fists clenched at his sides. And yet… part of him felt strangely vindicated. As if her life unraveling was proof he hadn't been the only one punished.
"Zhengqiang," he said suddenly, voice clear again. "Keep following her. Discreetly. I want to know wheat she does, who she meets, what time she picks her daughter up. I want full surveillance by the end of the week."
"Understood, sir."
"Oh, and one more thing—" Tao paused, his voice dropping to a whisper, more intimate and venomous than before, "—if you find more information about her husband's death, send it to me. I want to know exactly how he died."
As he hung up, Tao exhaled deeply, as though releasing a decade of rot from his lungs. He wasn't just going to reclaim Yinlin. He was going to make her remember who she abandoned. And this time, she wouldn't walk away without consequences.