When Chen Ying stepped through the massive mahogany front doors, she braced herself for a collision. She expected her father, Chen Heng, to be waiting in the foyer with a list of accusations, his face purple with rage, demanding to know how his "troublesome" daughter had managed to provoke the most powerful man in the country.
Instead, she found a scene that defied everything she had thought of.
The foyer was bathed in the warm, amber glow of the chandeliers, but the air felt heavy with a deep, weary anxiety.
Chen Heng was there, pacing the length of the marble floor, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, his shoulders hunched as if carrying the weight of the entire city.
The moment he saw Chen Ying, he stopped dead in his tracks. He didn't scream about the plummeting stock prices or the billions of yuan in canceled contracts. He rushed toward her, his eyes scanning her face with a frantic protective urgency.
