Chapter 2: The CEO She Once Saved

That night Xiaoyue barely slept. She lay in bed with the file Chengyan had let her take home beside her pillow, but she didn’t dare open it again. She was afraid. Afraid that the more she read, the more she’d realize that the world she had believed in for twenty-six years was only a thin shell.

The next morning she went to work determined to hand in her resignation the moment she saw someone from HR. But when she reached her desk, she stopped short.

On it sat a small wooden box, carefully wrapped in a pale blue silk ribbon, her favorite color, though she had never told anyone at this company.

She opened the box.

Inside was an old silver bracelet, engraved with a little bird spreading its wings.

Her hands began to shake.

She recognized the bracelet instantly.

Ten years ago, on a pouring-rain afternoon, sixteen-year-old Xiaoyue had witnessed a horrific car crash on a deserted road near her home. The car had flipped on its side, smoke billowing out. No one stopped to help for fear of getting involved, but Xiaoyue ran over and dragged a boy about her own age out of the wreckage before the flames erupted.

In his pain and delirium, the boy had grabbed her hand, slipped the silver bracelet off his wrist, and pressed it into her palm, a thank-you he couldn’t put into words.

Before he passed out, he managed to whisper one sentence:

“Someday… I’ll find you. I promise.”

Xiaoyue had waited. She had hoped. But the years went by, the boy never appeared, and she gradually came to think of it as just a beautiful memory from her youth, tucked away in a deep corner of her heart.

She never imagined that “the boy from back then” was Xie Chengyan, the cold CEO she had spent three years trying to reach.

Holding the bracelet, she walked straight into his office without knocking.

“You’re the boy from that day?”

Chengyan looked up from a stack of documents. There was no surprise on his face at all, as if he had known this question was coming.

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you look for me in ten years? Why did you wait until I applied to this company myself?”

Her voice held confusion and a touch of resentment she hadn’t expected to show.

Chengyan stood, came around the desk, and walked over to her. This time, instead of answering, he set another thick file in front of her, its cover stamped “TOP SECRET.”

“Because I needed time to uncover the truth. And that truth… is directly connected to you.”

Xiaoyue opened the file. Inside was the entire investigation into the accident: the scene report, photographs, a list of witnesses, and pages marked in red under “points of suspicion.”

She read to the last line, and her whole body went cold.

The person accused of causing the accident wasn’t some unknown driver.

It was her own father, Tang Baichuan.

“That’s impossible…” she stammered, gripping the edge of the desk to keep from collapsing. “My father died in a traffic accident when I was little. He couldn’t have…”

“Your father didn’t cause that accident,” Chengyan cut in, his voice dropping, carrying a strange certainty. “He was a victim. Just like you.”

“Then who was really behind it?”

Chengyan’s eyes darkened, as if he too were struggling to say the next part.

“The person behind that accident… is the one who has raised you for the past ten years.”

Xiaoyue’s legs nearly gave way. She stepped back and hit the corner of the desk. It hurt, but she didn’t feel it, because only one image filled her mind: the kind face of Madam Zhou, the woman who had cared for her and raised her since she was sixteen, the woman she had always called “Mom.”

Without stopping to think, she pulled out her phone and dialed Madam Zhou with trembling hands.

After three rings, someone picked up.

“Mom…” Her voice caught. “Mom, I need to ask you about what happened back then…”

The line was silent for so long that Xiaoyue thought the call had dropped. Then a voice came, cold and completely unlike her usual tone, every word a blade:

“You are not to investigate any further. For your own sake, stop.”

“Mom, what are you hiding from me?”

“Stop, Xiaoyue!”

The line went dead.

Xiaoyue stood rooted in the middle of the office, the top-secret file shaking in her hands.

For the first time in her life, she realized that the mother she loved and trusted most might be the one hiding an earth-shattering secret from her.

Chengyan quietly came to her and wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders, his voice unusually gentle:

“No matter how cruel the truth is, I’ll be with you while we find it.”