The jungle path was dead quiet, which was exactly what Su Nian wanted after the day she'd had. She cracked the throttle of her scooter, letting the cool evening air hit her face to wash away the memory of her relatives' nagging.
Then, her headlight caught something up ahead.
She slammed on the brakes, the tires skidding on the dirt. A dozen people lay unconscious in the grass by the roadside. Standing over them was a tall, handsome man wearing a black mask. His eyes locked onto hers.
Before she could even think about screaming, the man moved.
He lunged forward, vaulted onto the back of her scooter, and shoved her from behind. A sudden, heavy numbness flooded her brain, dropping her instantly into a helpless trance.
The man grabbed the handlebars, twisted the gas, and tore down the dirt track toward the highway.
When Su Nian finally shook off the fog, the scooter was idling on the shoulder of the busy main road. The man was long gone.
A thick stack of cash sat in her lap—more than enough for "scooter rent." Then her phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number showing a photo of her taken while she was out cold, followed by a brief message: Mention tonight to anyone, and you're an accomplice.
Su Nian gripped the handlebars, furious at her own bad luck.
She had only taken that shortcut to get some peace. Her foster grandfather, Su Jie, had passed away that morning, and before his body was even cold, her uncle, Su Fan, had started breathing down her neck. All because her grandfather had left every single piece of property to her.
To the rest of the world, Su Nian was just the daughter of the late military heroes Su Weijie and Qin Su. But the reality was different.
When she was six, a rescue team led by Su Jie and his son had pulled her out of a human trafficking ring. The childless couple adopted her on the spot, keeping her case file under strict military lock and key. They died in a war barely a year later, leaving her to grow up with Su Jie in the countryside. Only the dead knew she was adopted. Now, Su Fan—who ran the main Su family branch in H City—had arrived like a vulture to take the land.
[Su Family Countryside Home – 9:00 PM]
The main hall of the old house was loud and tense.
Su Fan and the family elders were huddled around the table, arguing loudly about how to corner Su Nian, force her to sign over the deeds, and split the money among themselves.
The front door opened. Su Nian walked in.
Dozens of angry, greedy eyes locked onto her, but she didn't look back. She walked straight past them, went into her bedroom, and locked the door.
A little while later, there was a knock.
Su Nian opened it to find her aunt holding a plate of dinner, already launching into a fake-sweet speech about how managing land was too hard for a young girl and how she should let her uncle handle it.
Su Nian leaned against the doorframe. "Don't waste your breath," she cut her off. "Grandpa made arrangements before he died. The house and the fields are already sold. The buyers take over in ninety days."
The aunt froze. "You... what?!"
"And next month," Su Nian added, "I'm leaving for H City to start at No. 1 College."
She shut the door in her aunt's face. A second later, she heard her aunt stomp down the hall, screaming for Su Fan.
[The Highway]
A black car sped down the highway. In the front seats, two men were talking.
The passenger pulled off his mask and wig, tossing them onto the dashboard.
"Boss," the driver said with a grin, "how was the first meeting with your long-lost fiancée?"
The man looked out the window. "Good. Remove the main security detail around her. Just leave one shadow guard, and tell them to only step in if her life is actually threatened."
The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror. "Are you sure? Our reports said she might run into trouble tonight."
"She needs to face it," the man said flatly. "I tested her perimeter tonight. She's smart, but she's gotten too comfortable. She just made a major breakthrough on that case, which means people will be coming for her. She needs to know what she's up against."
"Wouldn't it be easier to just tell her the truth?"
"No. We wait until she's stronger. The people in the dark don't know her real identity yet anyway. My little stunt tonight was just a warning to keep her sharp."
The driver chuckled. "A lot of women in the city are going to be miserable if they find out Mr. Heart is worrying this much about a girl from the countryside."
"Drop it," the boss said. "Let's focus. We have a flight to catch."
"Fine. But when are you actually going to meet her properly?"
The man watched the streetlights flash by. "Within five years."
[Su Family Countryside Home – 11:30 PM]
In her dark bedroom, Su Nian's phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She picked it up. An encrypted text from an undisclosed number read:
[There is a new mission specifically asking for you. Do you want it?]
Su Nian scoffed. [Is the client sick?]
Her rate on the dark net was already ten times the market average just to keep people from bothering her. Without waiting for a reply, she texted back:
[I'm not taking it.]
She threw the phone onto the bed and pulled up a mobile game to distract herself, but within minutes, a string of urgent pings forced the game to close.
Annoyed, she plugged in her headphones, turned on a voice changer that flattened her voice into a dry, robotic rasp, and answered the call.
"Which idiot is offering five times the price?" she demanded. "Do they have too much money or just a death wish?"
The handler on the other end went quiet, intimidated by her tone.
"I set my price that high so people would leave me alone," Su Nian said quickly, her irritation clear even through the scrambler. "Tell them no."
She hung up.
An hour later, the phone rang again.
"The client just updated the escrow account," the handler said, their voice staticky over the secure line. "They raised it to fifty times the baseline. Ghost... are you sure you want to stay in retirement?"
Su Nian leaned back against the wall, keeping silent for a long moment.
Finally, she said, "Who is it?"
"What?"
"I asked who the fool is. Send me the details." Su Nian spun the headphone cord around her finger.
The handler sounded relieved. "Sending the file to your secure inbox now."
The line went dead. A second later, an encrypted document arrived. Su Nian bypassed the lock and opened it.
As she scanned the target info and the client's name, a muscle twitched in her jaw. She closed the file, opened the chat, the client is someone who can't be provoked and the case is also too sensitive and she was directly involved with that issue so she had to type one word.
[Okay.]
Simple and crisp.