Xia Ruyan soon received the contract, and the next morning, she was ready to join the office.
She dressed in loose, wide white pants and a loose white silk button-down, layered with a crisp white blazer. She wore a very simple watch, her only visible ornament. But if one looked closely, they might glimpse a slender golden chain encircling her ankle, adorned with a solitary red ruby, delicate and almost invisible beneath the sweep of her pant leg.
This chain was not mere decoration. It had been with her since she was sixteen.
She still remembered it being tied to her, beneath a blooming Chinese fringe tree. She could recall it all as if the past lived just beneath her skin. The feeling of the cold chain brushing against her warm ankle, the scent of the tree's white blossoms mingling with the wind, the softness of the grass under her feet, and the way the moment had folded itself into her being. She had smiled then, a real, open smile, believing, in that breathless instant, that the world was hers.
She closed her eyes. That memory, so vividly alive, made her feel hollow. Because she remembered everything too clearly, she also knew what she had lost.
The warmth. The affection. Her entire world.
And so, the ruby did not glitter, it pulsed with absence. The chain did not shimmer, it clung, almost like memory made visible. A secret only her body remembered.
The door opened without a knock.
Mo Yichen entered the room, his eyes immediately landing on her still figure by the window. Light spilled beautifully across her pale silhouette like moonlight on marble. For a brief moment, something flickered behind her composed exterior. He paused.
For that one second, he thought he saw her eyes shimmer. Not with light, but with something deeper. A sorrow. Drowning sadness, locked behind those gorgeous but lifeless amber eyes. But he dismissed the thought almost instantly.
If there was anything he had learned over the last two weeks, it was that Xia Ruyan was incapable of softness or vulnerability. All he had ever seen in her was elegance edged with arrogance. A woman made of ice.
He scoffed internally.
"I don't want you to flaunt that you are my wife," he said, dispensing with any courtesy. His voice was sharp, rehearsed. "Work in the office. That is what you are meant for in office."
She slowly turned, and her gaze met his. Her expression did not falter. There was not even the hint of a reaction, only poise. An elegant detachment, as if he were a stranger offering instruction on the weather.
"I don't flaunt what I didn't ask for," she said, voice low but clear.
She straightened the cuffs of her blazer with precision, as if resetting a boundary.
He stared at her, frustrated. The lack of visible emotion, the refusal to defend or defy, it disarmed him more than confrontation ever could. She didn't shrink, nor did she rage. She simply was.
And yet, something in him wanted to crack that stillness. He wanted her to flinch. To care.
His eyes dropped, almost involuntarily, to her ankle. That flash of gold, delicate and restrained, caught the light as she shifted. He frowned.
"Yeah. That's why you married me," he said suddenly, his tone sharp with provocation. "Didn't you say you wouldn't? See now?" His voice dripped with taunt, almost bitterly amused.
"So did you," she replied, voice flat and unaffected.
It was true. He was the first to refuse this marriage, the first to claim he didn't want it, and yet, here they stood. Husband and wife. Tangled by circumstance.
He sneered, stepping closer.
"Do you think I want this?" he said with quiet venom. "To be with someone like you? The stakes were high. And you're not worth that much loss."
Ruyan's face remained calm, almost serene. But her words were measured like a scalpel.
"You also know the stakes were high," she said, looking at him directly. "Yours was only an inheritance. Mine… was life."
Her tone was not dramatic, nor pleading. It was cool, as if she were stating the weather.
Mo Yichen stiffened. How did she know?No one was supposed to know why he agreed to this marriage, not even his closest aides. And yet she said it like a fact, not a guess.
For a second, something trembled beneath his anger. Confusion. Intrigue. Her words weren't metaphors. Not the way she said them.
Life? What did she mean by that?
He opened his mouth, then paused. He wanted to ask. Demand, even. But before he could speak, she turned away, deliberately, shutting down the conversation as though he didn't exist.
She had dismissed him with silence.
Again.
And that infuriated him.
Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out, the echo of his footsteps a sharp contrast to the stillness in the room.
The door shut behind him.
Silence returned.
Ruyan sat down at her vanity, quietly. Not from fatigue, but as though she were seating herself within herself again. Regaining her center. Composing the barriers, he had tried to chip away.
The edge of her trousers shifted slightly as she crossed her legs.
The anklet caught the sunlight once more, thin gold, red ruby. The chain of memory. Of something unspoken. Of a promise no longer kept.
Meanwhile, down the hallway, Mo Yichen's thoughts refused to settle.
Her voice echoed in his mind:
"Yours was only an inheritance. Mine was life."
He didn't understand it, but it unsettled him. What did she mean? He pulled out his phone, jaw tight. There was only one person he could rely on for a discreet investigation.
He dialed. "Lee Jian," he said curtly. "Find out what happened to the Xia family on the day of the marriage registration. Everything. Don't leave a single detail out."
There was a brief pause on the line. Then Lee Jian's voice: "Understood, sir."
As the call ended, Mo Yichen stared out the window, the view blurred by his thoughts.
Who exactly had he married?
And what was it that she had lost… to marry him?