"Stormbound Heiress: The Beggar Bride of Jiangcheng"

That storm came howling through Jiangcheng that evening, and one would think even the skyscrapers quaked under its weight. Neon signs flickered like dying fireflies, and the Huangpu River churned as if in concert with the city's most hidden sorrows. Xu Xiao, CEO of Lingyun Group, stood at an awning of a tea shop that closed well, his customized suit drenched to the cuffs, and his umbrella given up long before to the wind. He had just fired three executives this morning, signed a merger that resulted in over five hundred job cuts, and now found it impossible to hail one for himself. Then he saw her. She was no more than nineteen. She was a beggar girl barefoot: her dress once white, now gray, clinging to her body like seaweed, her black as river hair plastered onto a face of sharp angles and shadow. But her eyes-they were storm-tossed jade in color and had a quiet defiance that made him forget the rain. She stood on the other side of the street outside the shuttering gates of a round-the-clock pharmacy grasping onto something against her chest. A broken umbrella with ribs sticking out like broken wings. When the green light came, she didn't budge an inch. A taxi honked, swerved, and left a wave of sidestreet gutterwater over her feet. She remained totally unshaken. Without pausing, Xu Xiao crossed the street. "Hey," he said, in a voice that was scuffed from disuse. "You will get a cold." "Death's cheaper than rent," she looked up. The defiance flickered, replaced by something wary. Almost smiled—almost. "You're bleeding." A thin line of red snaked down her left arm and mixed with the rain. "Come with me. My car's—" He glanced around. No car. Right. "My apartment's two blocks. You can clean up." She stared at him for a moment, as though he were a jigsaw puzzle missing the most important piece. "People like you don't help people like me." "People like me are the reason people like you exist." he added placidly. "Consider it cosmic atonement." A faint smile. "The cosmic doesn't pay for antibiotics." The suit jacket, ruined anyways—Armani—he shrugged it off and laid it across her shoulders. She stiffened but held on. Under all the grime, he caught a scent: not the staleness of the streets but more a late-summer rain on jasmine. "I'm Xu Xiao," he added further. "Xu... Xiao," she tasted the word as if it were poetry. "Means 'dawn' and 'night.' Contradiction." "My mother was poetic," he admitted easily. He extended his hand. "And you are?" She hesitated. "Manning. Just Manning." ---- The Walk They walked in silence as the rain drowned the noise of the city and poured around them. It was a monument made of glass and steel and indeed all the way up to the sky, and there other apartments towered in his Cloud Tower, a monument to the wealth he had clawed from nothing. Manning dripped across a marble lobby, and the doorman, Old Chen, raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. The elevator reflected her watching him there tall and sharp in a damp shirt, her smothered child playing dress-up in the house of this jacket. "Does your place have food?" she suddenly asked. "Leftover truffle pasta. And Band-Aids." "Truffles are overrated. Do you have instant noodles?" He laughed: Out loud-for the first time in months. ---- The Apartment: Minimalist even into sterile black leather and chrome, with one dying orchid on the window. Manning paused at the entrance, feet pooling with rainwater. "This is... a lot." "I don't do clutter." He pointed toward the guest bathroom. "The shower's through there, and I'll find you clothes." She disappeared behind frosted glass. He stood in his kitchen, staring blankly at the truffle pasta, as if it had committed betrayal against him. After a moment, he dumped it in the trash and then pulled out the emergency ramen-gifts from his assistant, who insisted that carbs were "soul food." When she came out, she was wrapped in his old Tsinghua University hoodie and some sweatpants that had been rolled several times over at the waist. Her wild hair was towel-dried into a cloud of curls, and the cut on her arm, shallow thankfully, looked clean. She looked so young, almost as if she could break. "Sit," he ordered, shoving a steaming bowl toward her. "Eat." She stowed in the noodles like a refugee. As she gulped, she muttered, "You're not what I expected." "You've been expecting me?" "Someone like you," she said with a vague wave. "Rich. Cold. The type who'd step over someone bleeding on the sidewalk." "I've stepped over plenty," he admitted. "Tonight wasn't... the type." She studied him. "Why?" "Why not?" But that was not the reason. His eyes found something in her eyes that reminded him of himself at sixteen, sleeping in subway stations after his father's suicide, before the scholarships and the hunger that consumed every soft thing in him.---- The Secret After finishing her food, she took out from her pocket a locket-a cheap metal which turns skin green inside. Inside it, however, is a dang picture so faded it can't be made out. "That's my mom," she said. "She died last year. Cancer." "I'm sorry." "She used to say storms were portals. If you walk through them, you'll end up somewhere you're supposed to be." She laughed bitterly. "Looks like I've ended up in a billionaire's kitchen." He wanted to ask, Why were you on the street? Do you have no one? But something about her posture stopped him. Instead, he said, "You can stay tonight. Couch pulls out." She tilted her head. "Just tonight?" "Let's see how the storm feels about portals."---- The Night At 3:00 a.m. when Xu Xiao woke up from a sound of crying, he made a little move not too noisily. A soft sound like rain against glass has got to find her in the balcony. A hood has slept zipped to her chin with those stares directed into city skin-neon veins. "Nightmare?" he asked. She did not turn. "I don't sleep much." He also joined her by leaning on the railing. Below, a garbage truck growled through empty streets at 3:00 am. "When I was twelve," he said, "I thought if I climbed high enough, I'd see my dad. He jumped from the roof of our building. I kept wondering, did he see me before he let go?" Manning's hand found his—tentative, then firm. "Did he?" "No. But I saw him. That's enough." They stood there until it came to a stop, and the first pale light of dawn started to creep over the river. Somewhere in the distance a bird called-a single, lonely note. The Twist: With the sun rising, Manning looked upon him, "I lied," she whispered. "About?" "My name." Again she opened the locket. This time, the photo caught the light. A woman with the same jade eyes, but the man beside her… Xu Xiao's breath caught. He'd seen that face on Forbes covers. On billboards. On the news last week announcing a $50 billion merger. "This is Xu Zhenghong," he said slowly. "The richest man in Asia. Your…?" "My father," Manning-no, Xu Manning-whispered. "And he thinks I'm dead."