Yi Rong's marriage announcement appeared exactly where it should.
The right publications. The right phrasing. Photographs taken from a distance that suggested dignity rather than intimacy. Old money liked its unions documented, not celebrated. The groom came from one of the wealthiest families in the country—an heir with lineage thick enough to smother dissent. The alliance was praised as appropriate.
Appropriate was another word for obedient.
At first, she adjusted easily.
The residence was larger than anything she had lived in before, the kind of house where corridors absorbed sound and rooms existed for no other purpose than to display silence. Staff learned her preferences quickly. The family elders nodded at her politely. Meetings were cordial. Smiles were measured.
Power, she told herself, always came with rituals.
She endured them without complaint.
The first sign of rot arrived quietly.
A woman whose name was never spoken too loudly. A schedule that no longer aligned. Excuses that didn't bother to pretend they were temporary. The mistress was not hidden; she was managed. Introduced to the household under the euphemism of private arrangement.
When the child was born, the family congratulated the father.
No one spoke to Yi Rong about it.
Later, at a dinner she was seated three places away from her husband, an aunt leaned over and said lightly, "It's a shame you're so busy with work. A woman's value, in the end, is still measured at home."
Yi Rong smiled and continued eating.
She had trained her face well.
The comments multiplied over time—soft, reasonable, impossible to confront without appearing hysterical. Invitations arrived late or not at all. Decisions were announced after they had already been made. She began to notice that when business was discussed, the room subtly reoriented itself away from her.
She submitted proposals anyway.
They were thorough. Profitable. Forward-looking.
They were declined.
Months later, the same ideas resurfaced under another man's name.
No one acknowledged the origin.
Eventually, she was thanked for her "contribution" and gently removed from involvement. Not dismissed—never that crude. Simply excluded. Meetings rescheduled without her. Access quietly restricted.
She still had status.
She no longer had authority.
The humiliation was cumulative, but the moment that broke something fundamental arrived without ceremony.
It came during an internal review.
She had been asked—politely, belatedly—to look over a bundle of legacy property documents the family was consolidating under a new trust. Burial land, ancestral holdings, long-term allocations that would never appear on balance sheets but defined permanence more than any company ever could.
Yi Rong skimmed them with practiced efficiency.
Funeral plot maps. Trust structures. Beneficiary tables.
Then she stopped.
Her husband's name appeared exactly where she expected it to—central, anchored, protected by layers of legal redundancy. His future was secured down to the last square meter, indexed across generations.
Beside it, another name appeared.
Not footnoted. Not provisional.
Allocated.
The mistress.
Listed under spousal accommodation.
A smaller share. Still irrevocable.
Yi Rong's eyes moved instinctively, scanning for her own.
She found it several pages later.
A marginal allocation. Peripheral land. The kind used when presence was required for formality, not belonging. No shared designation. No adjacency. No permanence implied.
She read the clause twice.
Then a third time.
It wasn't malice.
It was planning.
She sat very still, the papers resting lightly in her hands.
In ink and zoning codes, in legal language too precise to argue with, her place in the family had been defined—not as a partner, not even as an equal, but as an eventual inconvenience accounted for in advance.
Even in death, the hierarchy would remain.
That night, she did not cry.
She sat alone in her room, removed her jewelry piece by piece, and placed them carefully on the vanity. Her reflection stared back at her—composed, immaculate, intact.
Power without dignity, she realized, was just confinement with better lighting.
The divorce, when it came, was executed with surgical precision.
No scandals. No public fractures. She left with her reputation untouched and her silence well compensated. The elite community welcomed her back cautiously at first, then with renewed interest. A woman who survived old money learned things others never did.
She rebuilt herself efficiently.
Cold, capable, admired.
And then—inevitably—she saw his name again.
Luminar.
Not as a rumor. Not as an experiment.
As fact.
Valuations climbing. Expansion steady. No family war. No internal collapse. No mistress stories. No humiliating footnotes. Gu Ze Yan stood entirely on his own—clean lines, clear authorship, unborrowed power.
She read every article.
Not with longing.
With rage so controlled it almost felt like clarity.
He had chosen the harder road—and it had rewarded him.
She had chosen certainty—and paid for it daily.
One evening, alone in her office, Yi Rong poured herself a drink she didn't intend to finish. She stared at the city through floor-to-ceiling glass, lights scattering like distant constellations.
For the first time, she allowed the thought to surface fully.
I chose wrong.
The admission did not soften her.
It sharpened her.
Regret, she discovered, was not something to be healed. It was something to be redirected.
She set the glass down untouched and opened her laptop.
Luminar's rise was proof.
And proof, once established, could also be erased.
If that company did not exist—
if his independence could be dismantled—
then her decision would no longer be a mistake.
It would simply be… unfinished.
Yi Rong closed the file, her reflection steady in the darkened screen.
Somewhere far away, Gu Ze Yan continued building a world that did not need her.
She smiled faintly.
She would correct that imbalance.
And this time, she would not leave quietly.
She wants him.