William Zhou poured a second cup of tea without being asked.
Lucas sat across from him in the Bai Manor's war room; an ironic name for a space that had no weapons, no screens, no trace of technology. Just wood, paper, and silence.
A place his father used for strategy and his mother used for secrets.
Now it was his.
He hadn't spoken since sitting down.
William waited.
As always.
Then finally—
"She doesn't blink when she lies."
William didn't look up. "Most good liars don't."
"She's not lying for gain. Not leverage. Not money."
William raised an eyebrow. "You sound disappointed."
Lucas ignored that. He tapped a finger once against the side of his teacup.
"She knew about Angel. She knew about Locke. She knew about the Hollow club. And now she's walking around with blurred government records, and a clean fingerprint placed on a window like she wanted me to collect it."
"Did you?"
"No," Lucas said, sipping his tea. "But I wanted to."
William leaned back slightly. "So what's the problem?"
"She knows too much. But she's not using it."
"Yet."
"That's the problem."
William studied him.
"She bothers you."
Lucas didn't answer.
So William continued. "You're used to being the observer. She took that from you. Reversed the lens. Now she sees you—and not in the way people look. She sees through."
Lucas was silent again.
But his jaw tightened.
William set his tea down, steepled his fingers, and said, "She's dangerous."
Lucas looked up sharply.
"You sound certain."
"I am."
"Why?"
William's gaze didn't waver.
"Because she's playing the game you play. And she's doing it with your rules."
A pause.
Lucas exhaled slowly. "Then the question is… what's her endgame?"
William tapped once on the armrest.
"No." he looked at him, steady"The real question is why do you care what she wants, when you're already treating her like she's yours?"
That silenced the room.
Lucas said nothing.
He just looked at the steam curling from his tea, thoughts knotting tighter with every breath.
William let the silence sit.
Then, with a shrug of calculated indifference, he added, "By the way... those two employees you're going to fire next quarter?"
Lucas looked up.
"The ones siphoning funds offshore?" William said, reaching for his cup again. "Yen Wu and Davis Lin."
Lucas froze.
William took a long sip of tea.
"You weren't supposed to catch that for another six to eight weeks. Maybe never, considering how clean their shell company was. But someone caught it yesterday."
He met Lucas's gaze with mild disapproval.
"I wasn't going to mention it," William said. "Not unless you sat down in front of me and started asking about the girl like she wasn't real."
Lucas's voice was low. "She flagged it?"
"She neutralized it. Tagged the shell, cross-referenced the IP routing to our internal finance queue, then sent me an anonymous tip with backup logs."
He set the cup down with a soft click.
"Saved you about a hundred million, give or take. Depending on how the quarterly reports go."
Lucas didn't react. Not visibly.
But William could see the gears behind those golden eyes grinding faster now.
"She didn't want credit," William added. "Didn't even sign it. Just... handled it."
Lucas leaned back in his chair, jaw tense, hand slowly curling around the armrest like he needed something to ground him.
William folded his arms. "You can keep chasing her like she's a problem. Or you can start asking yourself what it means that she keeps solving yours."
Another silence.
This one heavier.
Lucas didn't say a word.
But William knew.
Knew that silence meant more than anything Lucas might've said out loud.
Still, he added — almost like an afterthought, though it wasn't —
"Your father is already on her trail."
Lucas's eyes lifted.
Not quickly.
But sharply.
William met his gaze, steady.
"You didn't think he'd miss this, did you? Girl shows up out of nowhere, starts trimming threats from the inside without leaving a footprint? That's his favorite kind of chaos."
Lucas didn't respond, but something behind his expression flickered. Not fear.
Agitation.
William let the moment stretch.
"He hasn't moved yet. Just watching. But that won't last. So if you're going to do something about her…"A pause."...you might want to do it soon."
Lucas's jaw tightened.
William leaned forward slightly, voice low now. Not scolding. Not sarcastic.
"I've known you since you were a boy, Lucas. I've seen you win meetings no one else understood. Tear apart boardrooms without raising your voice."
He tilted his head.
"But I've never seen you like this."
Lucas stilled.
William continued, slower.
"You're not just calculating her. You're reacting to her. That's new. And rare. And dangerous."
Another pause.
Then—
"She's in your head."
Lucas didn't deny it.
Couldn't.
Because even now—sitting in the quietest room in the manor, tea cooling in his hands—his mind wasn't here.
It was with the girl who never asked for anything.
The girl who never demanded to be seen—because she already was.
Lucas didn't move, didn't speak.
But something shifted.
A silent calculation snapped into place.
Test her.
See what happens when she's cornered.
Not personally. Not directly.
He pulled out his phone and tapped a number from memory. No contacts. Just raw digits. A line that wasn't recorded anywhere official.
Three rings.
A voice answered.
"Chen," Lucas said quietly.
The man on the other end let out a sharp breath. "It must be serious. You never call first."
"I need a name run. Ghost protocol. Deep net. Quiet. Target is a minor—Zhang, Ava. Cross-check lottery wins, private investment logs, deleted school records."
A pause.
Then: "And you want this done now."
"Yes."
"No problem," Chen said. "Give me four hours. I'll have her background stripped down to the bone."
Lucas ended the call without another word.
Three hours, forty minutes later, Chen called back.
This time, his tone wasn't confident.
It was rattled.
"Lucas… who the hell is this girl?"
Lucas didn't answer.
He waited.
"I traced her investment to a dead fund. Except it's not dead—it's folded inside a company owned by a blind trust that just swallowed a military-adjacent AI lab in Shenzhen."
A pause.
"School records show modifications, but the edits are clean. Cleaner than most state-level redactions. Whoever did this didn't just erase her trail. They rewrote the path forward."
Lucas was silent.
Then Chen added, lower now:
"And then this happened."
A chime cut in. A soft digital tone. Lucas's screen flashed. So did Chen's, on his end of the call.
Both screens—different hardware, different encryption—went dark.
Then lit up with a single video feed.
No traceable address. No signature.
Just her.
Ava Zhang.
Sitting calmly in what looked like a subway car. Black coat. Dark eyes. Hair tied back.
She looked directly into the camera.
Didn't say a word.
Then—
She blew a kiss.
Unsmiling. Icy. Controlled.
Not affection. A signature.
And then she was gone.
The screens went black.
Chen's voice returned, brittle. "Lucas. That wasn't a warning."
Lucas exhaled through his nose, calm but sharp.
"No," he said quietly. "It was a checkmate gesture."
The line went quiet for a second.
Then Chen's voice came back, clipped and sharp. Not professional—personal.
"Alright. What the hell is going on with you?"
Lucas didn't respond.
"Since when do you send me after high school girls who backtrace me through layered encryption and hijack both our screens like she's sipping tea in a war room?"
Still, Lucas said nothing.
"No. Don't do the silent thing with me. That girl looked right at us, Lucas. Like she knew we were watching. She planned it. She picked the exact second to appear. That's not instinct. That's intimacy with your damn methods."
Lucas rubbed a thumb against his temple. He wasn't annoyed at Chen—he was annoyed he didn't have answers either.
"You knew she was dangerous," Chen continued. "But you didn't think she was this dangerous. And now she's in both our systems, smiling like she owns the building."
A beat.
"You sleeping with her?"
"No," Lucas said immediately. Too fast.
Chen let that hang.
"So what is she to you?"
Silence.
"Lucas," Chen said, voice harder now. "If this was anyone else—if it were a rival CEO, or a government plant, or someone from your father's chain—I'd say burn them down."
"But this girl? You're not thinking straight. You didn't call to catch her. You called to test her."
Lucas didn't deny it.
"You're chasing her like a threat," Chen continued. "But you're reacting like a man who just found someone who knows where you keep your real face."
Lucas stared out the window.
Downtown shimmered below, quiet and slow. But his mind was racing.
"So what is it, Bai?" Chen asked. "You afraid she's going to ruin your life?"
Lucas spoke softly.
"No. I think she's going to rearrange it."
Chen went quiet.
Then finally:
"I've known you a long time, man. I've watched you bury people for breathing in the wrong direction. And this girl shows up with no power, no access, and somehow she's running laps around your firewall."
"You don't need my help, Lucas. You need to decide: are you going to stop her… or follow her lead?"
Lucas didn't answer.
But the silence wasn't uncertain.
It was considering.