A guard approached their section of the yard, his heavy boots crunching loudly on the gravel path. "Lin Shuyin!" he called out, his voice sharp and imperious.
Shuyin's head jerked up at the sound of her name, the sudden movement sending fresh, electric pain radiating through her injured neck and shoulders.
"You got visitors waiting for you," the guard announced, stopping before her. "Multiple visitors, actually. Come on, you need to move it now."
Tank's eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. "She's seriously injured and barely able to walk properly. Can't the visitors wait until she's in better condition?"
"Do I look like I give a shit about her condition?" The guard didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed Shuyin's good arm roughly and hauled her upright. "Move it. They're waiting in Visitation Room 3 and they don't have all day."
Shuyin struggled to her feet, biting back a sharp cry of pain as her broken ribs protested violently against the movement. Tank stepped forward instinctively to intervene or help, but Blade was faster, reaching out and grabbing Tank's arm firmly, holding her back.
"Let her go," Blade said, her voice a low, urgent command. "This might be exactly what we need. Let's see who came to visit her."
The guard pulled out cold metal handcuffs and locked them around Shuyin's wrists. He was at least careful enough to avoid her broken hand, a small mercy for which she felt a pang of bitter gratitude.
He then led her, stumbling, across the yard toward the main building. The other inmates watched her go, a gallery of silent witnesses, their expressions a chilling spectrum from curious to predatory to coldly calculating.
"Stay put!" the guard snarled over his shoulder at her cellmates, his glare a clear warning against any intervention.
She was led to a sterile, windowless visitation room, her body screaming a protest with every step. The air was cold and smelled of antiseptic and despair. She sank onto the hard stool before a cold metal table, her heart pounding a frantic, painful rhythm against her broken ribs. The door clicked open.
It was her stepmother, Madam Chen, and Yueling.
The faint, foolish flicker of hope that had sparked in her chest died instantly, extinguished and replaced by a cold, hard stone of dread settling in her gut. Her stepmother was impeccably dressed in a tailored cream-colored suit that spoke of a world of luxury and freedom. Beside her, Yueling looked radiant, glowing with health and a vile contentment, a stark, brutal contrast to Shuyin's own battered and broken state. There was no sign of the "critical illness" Zeyan had emotionally described to her.
"Oh, my dear," Madam Chen spoke up, her voice dripping with a syrupy, false sympathy as her eyes performed a slow, clinical inventory of Shuyin's injuries. "What have they done to you in this terrible place?" She didn't wait for an answer, the question was as perfunctory as her concern.
She placed a sleek, leather-bound folder on the table between them. "We're here to help you, to simplify things. You just need to sign these papers...."
With trembling, bruised fingers, Shuyin fumbled the folder open. The documents inside were share transfer forms. They were for her grandmother's estate, the controlling shares her Popo had left solely to her.
They were the last things of value she still owned, her final tether to the woman who had loved her. They were stripping her of everything, even from behind bars.
"Sign them," Yueling spoke up, her voice deceptively sweet but her eyes as cold and flat as a snake's. "It's not like you'll need them in here. We'll put them to much better use with us living out there."
Shuyin's gaze lifted from the damning forms to Yueling's face. That's when she noticed it. Underneath Yueling's open coat, she was wearing a simple, elegant, ivory-colored dress. It was her Vera Wang wedding dress. Slightly altered to fit Yueling's body frame, but unmistakably, devastatingly, the same one.
Yueling saw her looking and smiled, a triumphant, vicious slash of a smile. She smoothed the fabric over her slightly rounded stomach with a deliberate, possessive gesture. "It's a shame to let it go to waste, don't you think? We had a small, simple ceremony yesterday. Just family. It was perfect."
It was the final, cruelest cut. They had not only taken her fiancé and framed her for murder. They had stolen her future, her freedom, and now, they were wearing her very dream as a trophy. They had come not to help, but to gloat and to pick her bones clean.
Shuyin's hand, hovering over the documents, began to shake, not with weakness or pain, but with a rage so profound and pure it felt like a physical force burning through the numbness.
Madam Chen leaned forward, her expensive perfume a nauseating cloud, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper that slithered across the table. "Sign the papers, Shuyin. It's for the best. Make this easier on yourself."