Genius Little Genius: CEO Daddy, Bring It On

Chapter 6: Father and Son Reunited

The cool air from the central air conditioning, mingled with the sour, stale smell of coffee stains, hung heavy in the cramped space of the break room. Elena leaned against the edge of the sink, the chill of the tiles seeping through her soaked silk blouse and into her skin. The pale pink scar on her wrist throbbed like a red-hot wire, each pulse tugging at the rumbling echo of a collapse deep within the tea plantation. She turned on the faucet, letting the cold water wash over the tiny, fresh cuts where the vine’s marks had split open on her wrist. The bloodstains swirled and faded, vanishing in an instant.

“Ms. Ren?” The administrative assistant peeked in cautiously. “Would you like me to take care of the carpet?”

“No need.” Elena turned off the water; her voice sounded as if sandpaper were scraping her throat. She pulled out a tissue to wipe away the water stains; her watch showed there were only forty minutes left before the kindergarten closed. The image from last night’s surveillance footage—those tweezers smeared with coral-colored lipstick—overlapped with Julian’s scream in the elevator, “How much longer do you plan to run?” The memory pulsed against her temples. She had to pick up Leo immediately.

Traffic was at a standstill at the border between the financial district and the residential area. Elena stared at the real-time kindergarten feed on her phone—in the footage, Leo was sitting in the sandbox simulation area of the children’s finance camp, his little finger swiping rapidly across the tablet. Red loss warnings kept popping up on the virtual account of the blond boy next to him, while the asset curve on Leo’s account soared like spring bamboo shoots on a tea mountain. Sweat trickled down Elena’s spine as images of cracked mudflats and withered tea branches in the tea fields flashed before her eyes. She pressed the call button: “Sebastian, look up the sponsor of the ‘Future Capital’ Children’s Finance Camp for me.”

“Funny you should ask,” came a voice on the other end, accompanied by the crisp click of a keystroke, “The controlling shareholder is the Vanderbilt Charitable Foundation. The equity structure was just updated this afternoon.”

Traffic finally began to move. As Elena rushed into the kindergarten, the setting sun was casting a golden glow around the stained-glass windows. She spotted Leo standing by the sandbox at a glance, while that tall figure in a smoke-gray cashmere sweater was bent over, pointing at the Nasdaq index model in the sand. Julian’s signet ring reflected a cold gleam in the fading light; the caramel cookie in his hand hovered at his lips as his gaze remained fixed on Leo’s fingertips as he operated the tablet. The boy was explaining an arbitrage strategy in his childish voice: “When the spot premium exceeds the risk-free rate, buy the futures while shorting the spot portfolio…”

The cookie in Julian’s hand crumbled to dust. When he looked up, his gaze collided head-on with Elena’s. Those eyes, which always seemed to be quenched in ice, were now churning with a storm of turmoil. His Adam’s apple bobbed as if he were about to speak, but Leo suddenly tugged at Elena’s sleeve: “Mommy, this man said my hedging model is like The Wolf of Wall Street.”

“Thank you for acknowledging my son’s interest, Mr. Vanderbilt.” Elena shielded Leo behind her, the burning pain in the scar on her thumb suddenly intensifying. “But we need to go home.” Without waiting for Julian’s reply, she scooped up the child and strode toward the entrance. As the glass doors closed, she caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of Julian still standing frozen in place, crumbs of biscuit trickling through his fingers onto the sand table, like a miniature empire crumbling to the ground.

The Moonlight Tea Garden was suffused with the musty stench of withered branches and fallen leaves. The stream bed was dry and cracked, and the fallen tea bushes oozed amber sap that congealed into gelatinous teardrops on the muddy ground. Elena knelt beside a row of dead Longjing tea plants, her fingertips brushing against the charred leaves. For the first time in five years, she perceived the space’s lament with such clarity—it was fading away alongside her increasingly uncontrollable emotions.

“Mom,” Leo’s voice drifted from the bamboo pavilion, “I built a new firewall using the tea sap.” The boy held up his tablet; the screen was filled with densely packed, scrolling code. “Just three more layers of encryption to break, and we’ll access Julian Vanderbilt’s DNA database.”

Elena spun around abruptly, the tea branches snagging at her skirt with a sharp tearing sound. “You hacked into his system?”

“Just verifying blood type compatibility.” Leo tapped open an encrypted folder, revealing a blood test report for Type AB, Rh-negative. “His collection of biometric data constitutes a violation. According to Section … of the Genetic Privacy Act—”

“Log out immediately!” Elena snatched the tablet from his hands, her fingertips turning white with the force. A silent bolt of lightning suddenly split the sky above the tea plantation, causing dry branches to snap and rattle in the shockwave. She had never spoken to her child in such a sharp tone: “Do you have any idea what the consequences would be if they found out? They’d lock you up in a lab! They’d dissect your brain like they’re observing bacteria under a microscope!”

Leo stared at her in shock, the tablet’s pale blue light illuminating his suddenly pale face. The small, light-brown mole on his left earlobe trembled slightly, like the droplet of blood that had spattered from Julian’s earlobe five years ago when the piano lid had crashed down. The boy slowly curled his fingers, and the code screen faded silently behind him.

“So,” he asked softly, his eyelashes casting a bluish-gray shadow beneath his eyes, “the person in the elevator who made you tremble—was that my father?”

The scar on his palm suddenly split open, and fresh blood dripped onto the cracked earth, instantly swallowed by the greedy soil. Elena stared at the spot where the blood had vanished, while the moonlit tea plantation trembled with a death rattle at her feet.