The Art of Concealment
Su Jinglan was dead.
She died during the last mission she ever undertook with her nemesis, Li Xunchuan. A moment before the arms depot blew sky-high, he called to her through the flames: “Don’t die here.”
And then she died. On the evacuation route, in the shock wave of the explosion, in an “accident” that has never been solved.
Three months later, a surreptitiously taken photo set the internet ablaze: late at night at the docks, she stood shoulder to shoulder with Li Xunchuan. It was the last time they saw each other before the mission.
Her closest friends went ballistic. They’d never gotten along with him, and now that the photo was out, they demanded that he deal with it and make sure nothing disturbed her rest in peace.
So Li Xunchuan found Xu He.
A C-list actress loathed by the entire internet, whose profile looked seven-tenths like hers.
He slid a contract across the table. “Five million a month to play someone.”
She asked, “Who?”
He said, “Someone who’s already dead.”
She signed and moved into his villa.
He thought she was a stand-in.
She was a stand-in, just not for someone else. She was standing in for herself.
He thought she was a tame little canary, never realizing that this canary had made him lose four times before.
And he had no idea that her closest friends were quietly regrouping, her old comrades were waiting for her to return, and the shadow watching from outside the window was someone her master had left behind for her.
The explosion all those years ago had never been an accident.
A storm was about to break, but she remained unshaken.
Only this time, she wouldn’t be alone.
"After her death, she became his substitute and lived in the house of her sworn enemy. He thought she was in a cage, but little did he know - the cage cannot contain the king."