Chapter 3

I called her back.

She stood with her back to me, shoulders rigid.

“Who is the father of Lin Yin’s twins?”

She did not answer. Carrying the food containers, she hurried away so flustered that she nearly struck the doorframe.

I waited for the door to close, then called my special assistant.

“Investigate Lin Yin. Everyone she saw during her pregnancy, who signed the paperwork when she gave birth, whether the Gu family ever had a paternity test. I want all of it.”

6.

The documents reached my inbox that night.

At the top was a paternity report. Its conclusion was clear: Gu Yanshen and the twins were biologically consistent with a father-child relationship.

I stared at that line for a long time without turning the page.

Apparently I really had chosen my husband badly.

He had dared to do it, dared to keep the woman and children there under their birth mother’s eyes, yet had not dared admit it. That night at the dump, he had looked straight at me and insisted over and over that the children were not his.

I gave my assistant two orders.

First, send the paternity report and supporting material that could be verified to Gu Group’s directors and the relevant media outlets at the same time.

Second, freeze all cooperation between Su Group and Gu Group, suspend undisbursed payments, and begin the contractual risk-review process.

Before the market opened the next day, the news had spread through financial circles.

Search terms about Gu Group’s heir cheating on his wife and fathering twins quickly began trending. The paternity report appeared directly in the articles. The immaculate image he had cultivated for years became a joke.

Gu Group’s shares plunged. The board called an emergency meeting and suspended Gu Yanshen’s authority. Once Su Group withdrew its funding, several partners who had been watching from the sidelines began reassessing their projects.

In my office, I watched the figures flicker across the screen without joy.

This was not a game in which to flaunt a victory. It was simply the inevitable consequence of ending a marriage.

That afternoon, my office door was flung open.

Gu Yanshen strode in, hair disheveled, his suit jacket misbuttoned.

“You released it?”

“Yes.”

He planted both hands on my desk and stared at me.

“I told you it isn’t what you think. There are reasons for the children. Why did you have to drag the whole company down?”

I pushed the report toward him.

“Explain it to that, then.”

His eyes dropped. Every trace of color left his face.

“Where did you get this?”

“Does it matter?”

I stood to face him.

“You broke every rule for Lin Yin. You cared for her through pregnancy and childbirth, helped her hide the children, then came home and told me it was only repaying a debt. Every step was your own choice. Now the evidence is in front of you, and you still think someone else should bear the consequences.”

“I didn’t make the first move!”

His voice suddenly rose.

“I was drunk that night. My mother put something in the wine. She knew you didn’t want children and was afraid the Gu family would have no descendants, so she sent Lin Yin into my room. By the time I woke up, it was too late.”

My stomach churned.

That explanation did not make anything cleaner. It only showed me more clearly what the Gu family thought I was.

Mrs. Gu had schemed to use another woman to produce a child. Lin Yin had accepted the arrangement. After waking up, Gu Yanshen had not called the police or told his wife. He had chosen to conceal it, stay beside her through childbirth, and afterward plan to hand the children to me.

Perhaps he had not planned it from the beginning. But once he was sober, he had become an accomplice.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He had no answer.

“Because you were afraid I’d divorce you, and you couldn’t bear to give up those two boys. You claimed to treasure our marriage while enjoying Lin Yin’s dependence on you, waiting for me to raise your children in the end.”

I threw the revised divorce agreement against his chest.

“Sign. You are the party seriously at fault in this marriage. Under our prenuptial agreement, you will withdraw from our joint projects. I won’t take a penny that belongs to the Gu family. And you will not touch the Su family’s interests again.”

“Wantang, I admit I handled it badly. But I don’t have feelings for her. What I really want to keep is our marriage.”

“What you want to keep is the standing the Su family gives you.”

He opened his mouth. I pointed to the door.

“Sign, then leave. Otherwise, the posts, photographs, and full timeline will all go public. Then she won’t only have to explain the children. She’ll have to explain why she was recovering from childbirth in the Gu family’s old house.”

Gu Yanshen stood for a long time. At last, he bent to pick up the agreement.

His hand kept shaking as he set the pen to the signature line.

7.

I thought that was the end of it.

The day after we signed the divorce agreement, police came to the company. Someone had accused me of abusing an infant and unlawfully collecting a sample from the child.

Reporters crowded below our building at the same time.

At the station, Lin Yin sat holding one of the babies. Her eyes were red from crying. The moment she saw me, she tightened her hold on the swaddling blanket.

“Officer, it was her. To get back at me, she secretly sent someone to approach my child and take a sample by force. He cried all night afterward. Frightening a tiny baby like that—how is it not child abuse?”

Every sentence trembled with tears, as though I were a vicious woman who had harmed a newborn out of jealousy.

The baby slept peacefully in her arms. To support her performance, she deliberately patted his back, making him stir twice in his sleep.

I looked at her. “You used the children to fight for a position. Now you’re using them to attack me. Have you ever really thought about them?”

Something vicious flashed in her eyes before she began crying again.

“Of course you don’t care. You can’t have children, and you don’t want them either. Yanshen loves my babies. You’re jealous, so you want to destroy us.”

“Jealous of someone who gave birth inside another woman’s marriage and hid in the old house calling herself Mrs. Gu?”

Her expression changed at once.

My assistant soon arrived and handed the interviewing officer the full video.

It showed Auntie Lin holding the baby in the sunshine at a park. A few naturally shed hairs had caught on his hat. After they left, an employee wearing gloves collected the hairs from the bench. At no point did anyone approach, touch, or frighten the child.

The forced sampling Lin Yin described had never happened.

After watching the footage and comparing both sides’ documents, the police said the available evidence did not establish child abuse. Whether the paternity result could be admitted in a divorce dispute was a separate matter. It did not mean I had injured the child.

Lin Yin would not accept it.

“Even if she didn’t touch him, taking his things in secret is still wrong! She’s rich and powerful. Who knows whether she fabricated the evidence?”

“If you doubt the report, apply for another test,” I said. “At the time, I was still Gu Yanshen’s lawful wife. I investigated adultery and children born outside our marriage to resolve a divorce dispute. If you really think you’re in the right, don’t use that relationship to fight for an adoption arrangement while denying who the children’s father is.”

She could not answer.

The police asked for the child’s medical records after the alleged fright. Lin Yin could only produce a few undated videos of a baby crying at night. They did not establish any connection to the sampling. Then she changed her story: the child had not seen a doctor, she had held and soothed him all night until he recovered.

One accusation had become three different accounts in half an hour.

I also submitted her earlier posts and the time her account was deactivated. In those posts, she had repeatedly displayed the children’s surroundings in the Gu family’s old house and voluntarily shared photographs of Gu Yanshen. If privacy and safety truly worried her, she would not have broadcast her supposed husband’s identity, their home, and the details of childbirth to strangers online in the first place.

Lin Yin hastily claimed she had only been recording her life.

“Then why deactivate the account as soon as I took screenshots?”

“I can delete it if I want. What’s it to you?”

“Because Gu Yanshen warned you. You knew I recognized the man in the photo. You knew you couldn’t hide it anymore, so you wiped the account.”

She gripped the edge of the blanket without answering. The pressure made the baby uncomfortable, and he suddenly cried. Lin Yin deliberately held him higher so everyone could see his flushed face.

The police told her to soothe the child first and stop upsetting him. Only then did she draw him back into her arms.

As I left the station, reporters surged toward me.

“President Su, do you admit unlawfully taking samples from an infant?”

“People say the baby was frightened. Will you apologize?”

“Is it true that a wealthy wife took revenge on a child born outside her marriage?”

Each question was nastier than the last. Several phones were livestreaming. Clearly Lin Yin had contacted the media beforehand, ready to brand me with the words “child abuse.”

She stood beyond the crowd, holding the baby, unable to hide her satisfaction.

Then she turned tearfully to the cameras. “Please stand up for us. I only want to protect my child. Why should money let someone bully us like this?”

I did not argue at the door.

Passing her, I stopped for a moment.

“Every word you said today will be recorded. I hope you’ll still dare repeat it once the evidence is public.”

Her smile froze.

I got in the car and left.

Early the next morning, no reports of my supposed child abuse could be found online.

It was not a case of money suppressing the truth. The company’s legal team had promptly sent the police’s findings and the full video to the platforms. Media outlets that received formal letters could no longer keep publishing accusations refuted by the evidence.

Only a few scattered screenshots remained from Lin Yin’s carefully arranged livestream. It had not stirred up the outrage she wanted.

She panicked completely and brought the baby to our company entrance. When security refused to let her in, she sat outside crying and shouting, drawing a crowd of passersby.

“Su Wantang is abusing her power! She hurt my child and blocked the news! Does being rich put you above the law?”

I stood at my office’s floor-to-ceiling window and watched her for a while.

She spotted a figure in the building and shouted my name, demanding that I come down and face her.

I told security to give her the microphone at the scene. My voice came through the speakers by the entrance.

“Lin Yin, first you interfered in a marriage, then fabricated child-abuse accusations and contacted the media in advance to spread false information. The police have the video. Do you dare agree to its release?”

She went pale but persisted. “Gu Yanshen liked me first! The Su family drove us to this!”

“Then let’s also release the messages you sent him, the recording of you discussing the childbearing arrangement with Mrs. Gu, and your payments to accounts hired to seed public opinion. Shall we?”

Lin Yin abruptly fell silent.

8.

That evidence had not suddenly appeared when she came to the company.

While investigating the children’s parentage, my assistant had traced payment accounts and found Lin Yin’s dealings with promotional accounts. Recordings of her discussions with Mrs. Gu—how to enter the family, how to wait until the children were born and persuade me to accept an adoption—had also been preserved in the cloud backup of her old phone.

I had not released them earlier because the divorce was not yet final. I also did not want the children dragged further into the dispute.

But now Lin Yin had gone to the police and paid the media to frame me for child abuse. I had no reason to protect her reputation.

The company gave the evidence and a statement to the police, and sent them to the outlets that had covered the affair. The statement contained no abuse or exaggeration. It simply set out, in chronological order, how she had approached Gu Yanshen, cooperated with Mrs. Gu, used the children as leverage to enter a wealthy family, then fabricated the account of how the samples were taken.

An hour later, public opinion had completely reversed.

The first outlet to change its stance was one that had blocked the station entrance the day before. It released the full video and admitted it had previously relied only on Lin Yin’s account. Several platforms then removed their “child abuse” headlines and added that police had never found I had harmed the child.

The accounts she had paid still tried to steer the story toward “a wealthy family crushing an ordinary mother.” Once the payment records became public, their supposedly spontaneous support collapsed. Chats with the promoters about filming the baby crying and raising the blanket when I appeared also made her tears at the station look thoroughly staged.

I did not allow a triumphant company statement. I only asked that each issue be clarified in turn. Children could not choose their parents. Nor should adults repeatedly exhibit them as evidence in fights over their own interests. In every public document, the twins’ names and faces were concealed. Only Lin Yin’s own actions remained visible.

Internet users also dug up her old pregnancy posts.

Details once admired as signs of a loving marriage now all became evidence of her intrusion into someone else’s.

The “get-out-of-jail-free card” she had mentioned only proved that Gu Yanshen had given another woman the care he should have reserved for his wife, crossing boundaries he should have maintained.

The police continued investigating the new material to determine whether she had deliberately fabricated facts and manipulated their dissemination. The promotional accounts that had worked with her hurried to cut ties, handing over payment histories and chat screenshots.

Already in crisis over its heir’s scandal and the withdrawal of funding, Gu Group took another blow. Several key partners demanded additional guarantees at the same time. Banks tightened credit limits. Suppliers pressed for payment. The company’s cash flow soon broke down.

The board removed Gu Yanshen from management entirely.

When Mrs. Gu learned that the recording about the childbearing arrangement had been released, she fainted and was hospitalized. The dignity she had spent half her life preserving was ultimately destroyed by the very old tragedy she had chosen to repeat.

The weather was beautiful on the day we finalized the divorce.

Leaving the Civil Affairs Bureau, I saw Gu Yanshen by the road. He had lost a great deal of weight. His once-immaculate shirt was creased, and his face had lost its composure.

He hurried over and blocked my way.

“Wantang, I know I was wrong.”

“We’ve completed the paperwork.”

“I can court you all over again.” His eyes reddened. “I’ll handle the children. I won’t see Lin Yin anymore. It doesn’t matter what happens to the Gu family. Just give me another chance.”

I looked at him and remembered the first post I had stumbled across.

Lin Yin had said that her husband cleaning up her messes late in pregnancy was a permanent “get-out-of-jail-free card.”

But she had been wrong about one thing.

That tenderness had never belonged to a marriage that could stand openly in the light. It certainly could not erase Gu Yanshen’s deception of his wife. One gentle act did not grant immunity for every hurt that followed.

“You enjoyed her adoration and dependence while clinging to the benefits the Su family brought you. Now you’ve lost both, you say I’m the one you really want.”

He shook his head urgently.

“No. Wantang, you’re the one I’ve always loved. I was just so foolish then—”

“You weren’t foolish,” I interrupted. “You simply assumed I would accept it in the end.”

He went white.

“What if I ask for nothing? What if I only beg you to come back?”

“That’s your choice too. It has nothing to do with me.”

I walked around him toward the waiting car.

He did not follow. Behind me, he asked hoarsely, “Is there really no chance left for us?”

The door opened. I looked at him one last time.

“No.”

I got in. The driver calmly pulled away.

The original screenshots were still on my phone. I did not delete them or open them again. They had served their final purpose: before the lies could entangle me completely, they had shown me the true face of my marriage.

At an intersection, the driver asked whether we were going home or to the company.

I thought for a moment, then said the company.

There was still an afternoon meeting that had been delayed by the divorce paperwork. I did not intend to waste any more time on the Gu family.

For three years, I had put our families’ interests, the elders’ expectations, and my responsibilities as Mrs. Gu ahead of myself.

Now the paperwork was done. Responsibilities that had never truly been mine could be left behind.

In the rearview mirror, Gu Yanshen’s figure receded until it disappeared.

From that day on, I was no longer Mrs. Gu.

After the Su and Gu families ended their cooperation, Su Group went through a brief period of instability, then quickly recovered.

I gave the time I had spent maintaining the alliance back to my work and my life. I no longer had to wait for someone to come home, or smell the overpowering disinfectant at the entrance.

After the divorce, I went to meetings and on business trips as usual, taking Su Group step by step to new heights.

Partnerships that had once revolved around the Gu family were replaced. My life grew peaceful again.

Whether I married or fell in love again was a question for the future.

For now, at least, my career was going well and I felt free.

And I would never again treat one kindness as anyone’s get-out-of-jail-free card to hurt me over and over.