Ava knew Lucas would open the file.
She also knew it wouldn't help him.
Not really.
She'd made sure of that.
The blurry school photo had been intentional—positioning, not sabotage. Cameras didn't always catch the truth when you knew where the light would hit. Her entire academic record had been cleaned and quietly rewritten during her first year back—she'd used school networks, teacher biases, and sheer invisibility to her advantage.
Her name appeared ordinary. Her choices looked random.
Even the lottery win?
A well-placed guess.A pattern she remembered from a conversation between two startup founders in the world that no longer existed. One of them had been drunk. The other was dead now.
Here, they were still young. Still hopeful. Still stupid enough to open a private round to a teenage investor who'd claimed to be "testing a long-term strategy."
Thirty thousand yuan became four hundred thousand in four weeks.
And she hadn't touched a cent.
She didn't need the money.
She needed the pattern.
Lucas Bai wouldn't be able to ignore it.Not once he saw it.Not once it pointed at her.
She sat in a narrow booth at a quiet tea bar that smelled like dust and citrus. Her notebook was open in front of her, steam rising from the cup at her elbow. The pen in her hand didn't move yet.
She was thinking.
Calculating.
Across the screen of her burner phone, a live feed played in grainy black and white—courtesy of a hacked surveillance drone hovering just outside the Bai Financial Tower. Lucas had drawn his blinds. Smart. Annoying.
She wasn't watching him now.
She was watching who came to him next.
Angel wouldn't go quiet. She never did. The woman only ever ran when she had an exit. If Lucas was distancing himself, Angel would escalate. Force the next scene. Perform more affection. She couldn't help it. That was her fatal flaw—too theatrical under pressure.
Ava tapped her pen once on the paper.
She was already designing her next trap.
Public this time.
Not for exposure.
But to make Lucas act.
To force him into a decision.
Ava didn't need to convince him.
She needed to overwhelm him with evidence until denial collapsed under its own weight.
She took a sip of tea. Sharp. Bitter. Familiar.
Behind her, no one paid attention to the girl in the booth with the calm eyes and quiet presence. She was still invisible. Still boring.
Perfect.
Let them keep thinking she was no one. A quiet girl with dark eyes and a pencil case full of mechanical lead. A lucky guesser.
A stalker with a soft spot for a man she didn't understand.
She never dressed loud. Never lingered too long in conversations. She kept her posture neutral, her presence small. She wore the kind of clothes people forgot—grey knits, flat shoes, a plain messenger bag she could drop and walk away from in two seconds if she had to.
Because forgettable was power.
And attention?
Attention was a weapon best used from behind glass.
She tapped her pen twice against the edge of the notebook, then drew a square.
Inside it, she wrote one word:
Bai.
Then another under it:
Exposure.
And beneath that:
Too early = deflection.Too late = denial.Sweet spot = evidence + pressure + public tension.
Her handwriting was tight, surgical. No curls. No wasted strokes.
A notification blinked softly on her phone screen.
📩 Asset proximity: Zone 3. Movement eastbound.
Lucas's Ducati.
He was heading into the East District. Not toward his office. Toward the university sector.
She smiled.
Not with excitement. Not with nerves.
With precision.
Lucas Bai didn't drift into places. If he was headed into her part of the city, it meant he was making a move. A subtle one. Controlled. Wrapped in the illusion of coincidence.
She knew the tempo of his decision-making.Observe. Confirm. Corner. Control.
He wasn't coming to confront her.He was coming to look her in the eyes and decide if she was a threat.
She flipped to a clean page in her notebook.
Wrote one word:
Composure.
She didn't need to prepare a story. She didn't need to explain.
He wasn't going to ask questions. Not directly. He'd offer observations. Drop implications. Wait to see how she reacted.
Ava didn't plan to react at all.
But she had one stop to make first.
Lucas wasn't the only one being lied to.
She turned off the main road and ducked into a small alley café, the kind of cramped space with a flickering sign, one security camera, and a cheap espresso machine that always smelled faintly burnt.
At a corner table near the back, two people sat close. Closer than colleagues should. One wore a charcoal blazer with the Bai insignia still barely visible at the collar. The other had no uniform, but held their phone between them like a shared secret.
They were laughing.
Fools.
Ava slid into a booth nearby, pulling out a thumb-sized transmitter from her pocket. She didn't need to hear everything; just the names.
"We'll move the rest by Friday. The shell's ready. If Bai signs off on the deal "
"He won't notice until next quarter. I can cover the trail. You've seen his schedule, he doesn't breathe without delegation."
"And the Cayman wire?"
"Already cleared."
Ava's face didn't change.
No flicker of surprise. No flash of anger.
Just a small note scrawled in the corner of her notebook:
Yen Wu + Davis Lin.Cross-departmental. Asset theft. Relationship concealed. Funds rerouted via Crimson Shell.
She closed the notebook.
Took her phone out.
No call. No confrontation.
Just a single, coded message sent to William Zhou's private inbox.
She didn't even sign it.
By the time Lucas would notice the funds had gone missing, the people responsible would already be gone.
And he'd never know who had cleared the threat.
Ava didn't need credit.
She just needed the board clean when he finally took his seat at the real table.
She walked out of the café without looking back.
Lucas was still coming; and now, he'd find her with calm eyes, steady hands, and no shadows near her name.
Because while he watched her;
she was still watching over him.