Jade Splendor in the Night Rain

When she was eight, she hid in a wardrobe and counted to one hundred. The game of hide-and-seek never ended. Instead, she found her parents’ bodies.

Jiang Lin’s life was torn in two on a rainy night: the first half, a cherished darling; the second, a lonely ghost. She watched a man in a monkey mask plunge a knife into her father’s heart, heard her mother’s screams swallowed by the downpour, then crawled through the blood and fled for three whole blocks.

When the last pair of headlights bore down on her, she thought she was finally free.

But when she opened her eyes again, she had become “Ye Lin.” The man who had hit her held her hand and said, “I’m your brother.”

Ye Ranzhi, head of the Ye family, the ruthless king of the business world, was feared by everyone. He doted on her, an amnesiac, in every way, punished her bullies, and even learned the nursery rhyme she was always humming in her dreams to lull her to sleep. She thought it was salvation, until one day she pried open his safe. There were no jewels inside, only an old newspaper from twelve years ago, with the headline: “The Jiang Couple Murdered, Only Daughter Missing, Presumed Dead.”

In the photo was her eight-year-old self. On the back, in his sharp handwriting, were the words: [Witness, alive, whereabouts unknown]

So all that tenderness had been a scheme from the start. He had saved her for the case.

“Brother,” she said with a smile, holding up the photo, though her eyes were red. “Should I call you Ye Ranzhi, or should I call you a liar?”

He was silent for a long time, then pressed her hand against his heart. “Call me a liar. But this...” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “This is real now.”