"She was at the main estate at dawn," Yang Muchen's deep baritone vibrated through the earpiece, his voice tight with an underlying layer of freezing anger. "She used the excuse of bringing rare tea to my grandmother and Aunt Shuhua. By the time I arrived to retrieve the ledger books, the air in the pavilion was already foul with her standard diplomatic poison."
Chen Ying sat in the passenger seat of a nondescript, matte-black SUV, her long, pale fingers lightly balancing a sleek digital tablet on her lap. Outside the window, the towering concrete architecture of the imperial capital was rapidly giving way to the sprawling, rugged green of the northern highway networks.
