Chapter 9: Zhou Minghao's Poisoned Kindness
1568 Words
Night had swallowed Haicheng whole—ink-black, absolute.
But high above the city, at the summit of Mingyu Group's headquarters, a single light burned in the chairman's suite. A lighthouse moored in darkness.
Zhou Minghao stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, swirling a glass of Romanée-Conti that cost more than most men's cars. The crimson liquid caught the lamplight, reflecting off his handsome features—features that would have been perfect, were they not underlain with something harder to name.
He was waiting.
For a call he knew would come.
Brring. Brring.
The phone split the silence. Caller ID: Uncle Wang .
A smile curved his mouth—not warm, not kind. The smile of a man watching a trap spring shut exactly on schedule.
He let it ring twelve times before answering. And when he did, his voice had transformed: solicitous, concerned, the ideal nephew.
"Uncle Wang? It's late. You should be resting."
The response was immediate, a dam burst.
"Rest?! That unfilial daughter and that worthless parasite are trying to kill me! Minghao, you won't believe it—Zhang Tianyou, that useless nobody, he's gotten his hands on money somehow and registered some godforsaken 'Foresight Capital'! What does he think he's doing? A man like him, playing at business? Who does he think he is?!"
A ragged breath.
"And Wanru! I told her to rein in that husband of hers. Does she listen? She locks herself in her office all day like a ghost. Won't even hear me out! What has this family come to?!"
Zhou Minghao listened. His face, had Wang Jianguo been present to see it, was not sympathetic.
It was patient. Calculating. Recording.
When the old man's fury had exhausted itself into heavy breathing, Zhou Minghao finally spoke—his voice calibrated to the exact frequency of comfort.
"Uncle Wang. Please don't upset yourself. Your health is what matters. And frankly... I saw this coming."
"You did?"
A soft, forbearing sigh. "I've encountered men like Zhang Tianyou before. No real ability, but a pride so fragile it's practically pathological. This little company he's scraped together—it's not about business. It's about proving himself to Wanru. A pathetic attempt to cling to her by pretending to be something he's not."
A pause. Then, dropping to sincerity:
"Don't pressure Wanru. She's confused, that's all. Give her time. As for Zhang Tianyou..."
His voice hardened almost imperceptibly.
"...I'll handle him."
"He needs to understand the distance between mud and clouds."
The words were perfectly weighted. Reassuring to the old man. Self-positioning to the listener not present. And beneath it all, a promise of violence so subtle only its intended target would recognize it.
Wang Jianguo exhaled, the fight draining out of him. "Minghao... you're the only one I can rely on. With you watching over us, I can rest easy. The Wang family's future... it's in good hands."
"Of course, Uncle Wang."
---
The call ended.
Zhou Minghao's benevolent expression dissolved like frost under a killing sun. What remained was not pleasant.
He drained his wine in one swallow—a negation of craftsmanship, money as anesthetic. Then he retrieved his private phone and dialed a number he knew by heart.
---
Wang Group Headquarters. The penthouse office.
Wang Wanru hadn't moved.
Before her, the Foresight Capital registration documents. Those seven characters, typeset and official, seared into her corneas.
Foresight.
Her mind was still locked in the icy grip of what she'd learned. The omniscient operation. The two million conjured from nothing. The prophet who had slept in her house for three years while she treated him like furniture.
She couldn't think. Couldn't process.
Her phone screamed.
She looked at the caller ID.
Zhou Minghao.
Once, this name was the deepest brand on her heart. Every****, every half-formed fantasy, crystallized around these seven strokes. Her heartbeat would accelerate at the mere sight of it.
Now?
Now she looked at those characters and felt her stomach revolt .
Behind that jade-smooth voice: "We broke his legs."
Behind that gentleman's smile: "I'll pick your family's bones clean."
Her thumb hovered over Decline .
But she couldn't. Not yet.
She breathed. Once. Twice. Forced her finger steady. Accepted.
"Wei."
Her voice—she didn't recognize it. Frost. Distance. Nothing.
"Wanru? You're still awake."
His voice. So familiar. So practiced. The exact timbre of manufactured tenderness.
Once, it would have melted something in her chest.
Now, it collided in her skull with another voice—raw, bleeding, cursing —
[He'll discard you like trash.]
Her entire body went rigid.
"Is there something you need?"
Cold. Each word chipped from permafrost.
If Zhou Minghao noticed, his voice betrayed nothing. Still that manufactured warmth, that assumption of intimacy.
"I just spoke with your father. He told me about Zhang Tianyou's... venture. Don't take it to heart. Don't be angry with him. He only wants what's best for you."
The concerned mediator. The reasonable peacemaker.
And in her skull, Zhang Tianyou's bitter echo:
[Wang Jianguo, you blind old fool. You'll die never knowing that the man you trust most is the man digging your grave.]
Her grip on the phone turned her knuckles white.
Silence.
Zhou Minghao mistook it for agreement. Pressed forward toward his true purpose.
"Wanru. I know you have a good heart. But kindness to men like Zhang Tianyou only encourages them. This 'Foresight Capital' farce—it's just him thrashing, trying to prove he's not completely useless. Child's play. Beneath your notice."
Contempt. Undisguised. The way one speaks of a cockroach that's wandered onto fine china.
"If he bothers you again, tell me. I'll make him understand, once and for all, that his time is over."
His voice dropped—the intimate register he'd always assumed she craved. Possessive. Proprietary.
---
Each word was a poisoned blade, sawing at her nerves.
Prove himself?
Wang Wanru saw, superimposed over this phone call, another man's face. Not desperate. Not pleading.
Detached. As if she were a problem he'd already solved and filed away.
Prove himself?
He'd turned one hundred thousand into two million in one day . He'd executed a trade so flawless it made her chief assistant—a man with twenty years' experience—describe it as divine providence .
He'd shattered her pride, her assumptions, her entire worldview, with a single banking screenshot.
Bother her?
He couldn't be bothered to look at her. To speak to her. To acknowledge her existence beyond the barest civility.
His mind, his heart, his fury, his tenderness— all of it belonged to another woman .
And Zhou Minghao—
Who was he to speak of Zhang Tianyou with such contempt?
Who was he to judge a man whose shadow he wasn't fit to stand in?
The fury crested. Broke.
" Zhou Minghao. "
She cut him off.
Her voice was not loud. It didn't need to be.
It was the temperature of space. The silence between stars.
On the other end of the line, Zhou Minghao froze. He'd been mid-sentence, mid-performance—and she'd just shattered his rhythm.
"Wanru? What's—"
"My family's affairs," she said, each word distinct, deliberate, final , "are none of President Zhou's concern."
And before he could respond—
Click.
---
Dial tone.
Zhou Minghao stood paralyzed, phone pressed to an ear that no longer received.
His handsome face—the benevolent mask still half-affixed, half-sloughed—was a study in cognitive dissonance. The smile hadn't fully faded. But beneath it, confusion crawled upward. Then disbelief.
She... hung up on me?
President Zhou?
She hadn't called him that in years. That was the address of formality, of distance —the wall she erected between herself and the merely professional.
He was not supposed to be on the other side of that wall.
He stood frozen for thirty full seconds.
Then—
Something detonated. Not loud. But absolute.
He hurled his phone at the Italian leather sofa. It struck the upholstery with a muffled thud and bounced to the floor, screen spiderwebbed but intact.
Something was wrong .
Wang Wanru's attitude had shifted .
Since his return, she'd been his most faithful acolyte. His prize. His insurance policy. She orbited him like a moon, and he'd never once doubted her gravity.
But just now—she'd pushed him away . With ice. With finality.
Why?
Had that worthless Zhang Tianyou said something to her?
Impossible. That parasite didn't even register in her awareness. A cockroach doesn't advise the homeowner.
So what had changed?
Zhou Minghao paced. The office, so vast, suddenly felt too small. Too confining.
For the first time since his return to Haicheng—since he'd set this beautiful game in motion—he felt something unfamiliar.
Uncertainty.
The sense that events were slipping .
His eyes hardened.
"Zhang... Tianyou..."
He spoke the name like he was chewing glass.
"It seems I underestimated you."
He retrieved his phone. Dialed. When his right-hand man answered, Zhou Minghao's voice had shed all pretense of warmth.
" Watch him. Zhang Tianyou and his 'Foresight Capital.' Every meeting. Every conversation. Every transaction that passes through his accounts. I want it all."
A pause.
"And—" His voice dropped further. "Find out what's happened between him and Wanru. Recently."
His reflection in the dark window stared back at him—handsome, controlled, and suddenly, fractionally, uncertain .
"Something's wrong. I can feel it."
- Writer
