The first slap wasn't a hand against a face; it was the sound of a bank statement hitting the polished teak dining table.
"Bankrupt." The word, uttered by Mr. Chen, hung in the air like a death sentence. "We are one month from losing everything. The house. The business. My father's legacy. Everything damn thing.
The opulent dining room, with its crystal chandelier and gilded mirrors, seemed to shrink, trapping the four occupants in a cage of despair.
Jia Chen stared at her reflection in the dark wood, her beautiful face pale. She was the only child, the heir to a crumbling empire she had never wanted.
Her mother, Meiling, let out a choked sob, her perfectly manicured hand flying to her throat. "How? How did this happen?"
"It happened," Mr. Chen's voice dropped to a venomous whisper, his eyes cutting to the end of the table, "when we opened our doors to a curse."
All eyes followed his gaze to Leo.
He sat there, as he always did, in silence. Dressed in a simple, faded shirt, he was a stark contrast to the obscene wealth around him. Two years ago, Jia had found him lying in an alley behind their luxury apartment building, injured and disoriented, with no memory and nothing but the clothes on his back. A moment of pity had led her to bring him in. When her parents' scheme to marry her off to David Wei the son of a rival billionaire became unbearable, she had proposed a desperate deal to the quiet, enigmatic man: a marriage in name only. He would be her shield; he would have a roof over his head.
He had become her cage.
"Don't look at him," Jia said, her voice trembling with a mixture of defiance and exhaustion. "This isn't Leo's fault. It's bad investments. It's...
"It's his presence!" Mr. Chen slammed his fist on the table, making the porcelain jump. "He is a leech! A gutter rat you dragged in! We took him in, gave him our name, and he has brought us nothing but ruin. If you had married David Wei, his family would have saved us by now!"
The familiar accusation hung in the air. Leo didn't flinch. He simply finished the last bite of his food and placed his chopsticks down with a quiet, precise click. His calmness was a provocation.
"Father, please," Jia whispered.
"Don't 'Father' me!" He stood up, leaning across the table towards Leo. "Do you have anything to say for yourself? Or are you as mute as you are useless?"
Leo finally lifted his head. His eyes, a deep, unsettling shade of brown, met Mr. Chen's furious gaze. For a moment, there was no submission in them. There was something else something ancient and knowing that made Mr. Chen's bluster falter for a fraction of a second.
"The problem isn't the lack of money, Mr. Chen," Leo said, his voice low and steady, devoid of emotion. "The problem is the snake in your inner circle. Your CFO, Mr. Ling. He's been funneling funds into an offshore account for the last eighteen months. The bankruptcy isn't an accident. It's a theft."
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the ticking of a grand-father clock.
Then, Meiling let out a shrill, disbelieving laugh. "Listen to him! The amnesiac street rat is now a forensic accountant! This is the most he's spoken in two years, and it's a pathetic lie to cover his own inadequacy!"
Jia stared at Leo, her mind reeling. It was an outrageous claim. Mr. Ling had been her father's most trusted friend for decades. But the certainty in Leo's voice... it was something she had never heard before.
"Get out," Mr. Chen seethed, his finger pointing to the door, his body trembling with rage. "Get out of my house, you viper! You not only steal our prosperity, but you now try to poison us with lies about loyal friends? GET OUT!"
Leo rose. His movement was not one of a cowed man fleeing. It was fluid, almost graceful. He didn't look at the sputtering Mr. Chen or the weeping Meiling. His gaze rested on Jia for a long moment. It wasn't a plea. It was an unspoken question.
Then, he turned and walked out of the dining room, his footsteps silent on the plush carpet.
The moment he was gone, Jia's phone buzzed. A message from her best friend, Selina, lit up the screen: *"Darling! Heard the awful news. Don't worry, we're all here for you! Let's have lunch tomorrow at the club. You can cry on my shoulder!
Jia felt a cold shiver. The news of their financial ruin wasn't public yet. How did Selina know?
As she sat in the wreckage of her family's life, two thoughts collided in her mind: Leo's shocking accusation and Selina's suspiciously timely message. For the first time, the world she thought she knew felt like a carefully constructed stage, and the man she had married as a pawn was standing in the shadows, his true face hidden in the darkness.