A discreet VVIP event at Xintiandi.
Yinlin frowned after receiving the last minute phone call from Xu Tao.
Yinlin hesitated. Mei was already asleep, hugging her favorite bunny plushie. Ah Jia had offered to look over Mei for the night while she studied for an exam. It wasn't ideal, but Yinlin had worked stranger hours. The VVIP floor meant obedience, no questions asked.
"I'll go," she said finally, kissing her daughter's head. "He better pay me double pay for the late notice."
That was her first mistake.
The club was in the heart of Xintiandi—one of those sleek, low-lit places that dripped money without needing to shout about it. Velvet curtains. Gold accents. A piano no one played. And shadows that moved like secrets.
Yinlin arrived in her crisp uniform, tugging down her skirt as she stepped through the mirrored hallway. The moment she gave her name, a staffer ushered her through the private section of the club with the hushed reverence usually reserved for royalty.
She expected a kitchen, or a client briefing.
What she found instead was just him.
Xu Tao sat in a curved leather booth near the back, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, glass in hand. The lights painted him in shades of bronze and danger. Two men she didn't recognize were just leaving, one clapping Tao on the back with a laugh. Business partners, maybe. Or distractions.
As she stepped forward, Tao looked up. And smiled.
"Miss Wen," he drawled. "Punctual as always. Please, take a seat."
Yinlin's composure fractured into a thousand sharp pieces. The fury was immediate and cold.
"There's no catering," she stated, her voice clipped and professional, fighting to keep the tremor out of it.
"No," he admitted easily, gesturing to the space opposite him. "But there is very good whiskey. And an even better reason for you to be here."
She stood rooted to the spot, a perfectly pressed, navy silhouette of outrage. "You tricked me. You knew I made arrangements for my daughter. I left her for this childish game?"
His eyes flickered at the word daughter, a momentary acknowledgment of the cost of his manipulation, but he didn't apologize.
"I invited you," Tao corrected, his voice a low, soothing challenge. "With an excellent excuse. Now, if you're going to be angry, sit down and do it quietly. Or you can leave, and I will be forced to forget all about your transfer to the executive floor."
Yinlin stared at him. It was simple, transactional cruelty. Stay or lose the job. The rent notice tucked in her drawer weighed more than her pride. Of course. He could give her the promotion and tooke it back when he no longer found her entertaining.
She turned sharply, grabbing the strap of her small bag. "I'm leaving."
"Yinlin."
She stopped dead.
His voice had dropped—not louder, but heavier. It cut through the club's bass line and straight to her spine. It was the sound of a hook being set.
"You can't leave yet," he murmured. "Not when I'm the only man in this city who can tell you the name of the high school we both attended."
Her breath hitched, a sharp gasp she couldn't suppress. High school. She remembered nothing before ten years ago, a blank, terrifying void the doctors politely called dissociative amnesia. The missing years of her life—her identity—were his leverage.
She slowly turned back, her feet moving against her own will, every nerve screaming run.
"I brought you here because I wanted to see if anything stirred in you," he said, his gaze fixed and intense. "Anything at all. I know what you used to call me. I know the day you first saw me. I know why you stopped seeing me."
Yinlin sank onto the leather seat, the tension in her legs giving out. The silk uniform felt like a cage. She didn't look at the glass he'd poured.
"What do you want?" she asked, her voice soft, betraying only the slightest quiver of desperation.
"I want you to stay and listen," he replied gently, a predator playing with its prey. "I want to see the old Yinlin emerge from behind that lovely, polite mask. Because I know she's still there. Buried. But there."
Her heart beat like a drum against a locked door. She should have run. She knew she should have run.
But the thought of walking away from the truth—the one thing money couldn't buy—the memory she had lost—was unbearable.
She placed her hands in her lap, fingers interlaced to hide their tremor. She didn't have to drink the whiskey, but she had to hear the story.
"Talk," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Tell me about the past. About... Us."
"I love how eager you are to remember." And that was her second, most profound mistake. Because Xu Tao never let anything he loved, or anything he wanted, walk away twice. "Have a drink first."
Her second mistake.
The glass touched her lips only once.
A single sip.
That was all it took.
The effect was subtle at first — a softening in her eyes, the way her shoulders lost their tension. Her lips parted slightly, as if to speak, but no sound came. She blinked, slowly, like she was struggling to remember where she was.
Xu Tao watched her in silence.
He didn't reach for her. Didn't move.
Just waited.
Yinlin wavered on her feet, one hand fumbling for her purse, the other gripping the edge of the low table. Her gaze swung toward him — cloudy, unfocused — and for the briefest second, he thought she might scream.
But she didn't.
Her knees buckled.
And Tao was there, catching her before she hit the floor.
She collapsed into him like she'd always belonged there.
Her cheek against his chest.
Her breath against his neck.
He exhaled through his nose, slowly. Controlled.
Not yet.
He carried her out through the side door, the one reserved for guests who required privacy. He got into the car. The driver didn't ask questions. The suite was already prepared — lights dimmed, bed turned down, the air just warm enough to lull someone into sleep.
Tao laid her gently on the mattress, his movements reverent, almost ceremonial. He removed her heels, unpinned her hair, and covered her with the silk throw. She didn't stir.
Then he sat beside her. Still in his shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, jaw tense with restraint.
The room was silent.
Only the sound of her breathing — steady, shallow — filled the space.
He didn't touch her.
Not like that.
Instead, he looked.
He looked like a man starved.
Ten years.
Ten years of chasing shadows, of waking with her name on his tongue and no one beside him. Of rage. Of grief. Of building an empire just to have something to offer her when she finally reappeared.
And now, here she was.
In his bed.
Her skin flushed from wine and warmth, her features softer in sleep. Her fingers curled slightly, as if they remembered something her mind refused.
He traced the air above her cheek with a finger — never touching — and sighed.
"You came back to me," he whispered. "Even if you don't know it yet."
The line between love and madness blurred in his eyes.
He wanted to lie beside her, to close the distance between her shoulder and his chest, to rest his chin in her hair and pretend the last decade never happened.
But he didn't.
Instead, he sat in the armchair by the bed, arms folded, eyes never leaving her form.
He would wait.
He could be patient.
He didn't want her unconscious. That wasn't love. That wasn't what he promised himself.
When she woke, it would be her choice. He would be there, gentle, caring. The protector. The man who never stopped waiting.
Even if he had to twist fate itself to make her stay.
Because to Xu Tao, this wasn't obsession.
It was devotion.
And he'd already decided:
She would never leave his bed again.