Contract Marriage with the Cold CEO

The Threat

# Chapter 11: The Threat

Gray seeped through the curtains, the kind of light that made everything look bruised. Su Nian hadn't slept. She'd spent the night sitting on the edge of her bed, replaying that phone call, *We found her. She's in the mansion.* , until the words had worn grooves in her brain.

She didn't knock.

The door to Shen Liangchen's study swung open, and he looked up from his desk with the flat patience of a man who'd been expecting company. His tie was loose. Coffee steamed beside his elbow. He'd been awake too.

"You know why I'm here," she said.

He set down his pen. "I don't have time for guessing games."

"Last night. The gala. I heard your phone call." She stepped into the room, letting the door close behind her. "You said, 'We found her. She's in the mansion.' Who did you find? My mother?"

Shen Liangchen's jaw tightened. "I don't know where your mother is. And I'm not obligated to explain my calls to you."

"You're lying."

"I don't owe you the truth about every conversation I have."

"Then tell me this one." She planted her hands on his desk, leaning forward. "Where is Su Mei? What did you do to her?"

He stood, and the motion had weight. Not anger, something colder. "You think I hurt her? You think I'm hiding her body in the basement like some villain in a drama?"

"You've given me no reason to think otherwise."

"Then you're blind." He moved around the desk, and she forced herself not to step back. "Your mother wasn't a victim, Su Nian. She was a problem."

"What does that mean?"

"It means she was tangled up with people you don't want to know exist." He stopped two feet from her, arms crossed. "People who follow amber eyes."

Her breath caught. "What do my eyes have to do with anything?"

He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a cream-colored envelope. The paper was thick, expensive. He held it out to her like an offering or a warning.

"This came this morning. Delivered to the mansion gate. Addressed to the 'Amber-Eyed Girl.'"

She took it. Her fingers felt numb.

The envelope was unsealed. Inside, a single sheet of paper, folded once. She pulled it out, and something metal clattered to the floor, a bullet. Brass. Shiny. New.

The note was written in clipped, blocky handwriting:

*You have her eyes. You will share her fate. Leave the Shen house or die in it.*

No signature. No return address.

Su Nian's hand shook. "This is a death threat."

"No. This is a promise." Shen Liangchen's voice had gone low, stripped of its earlier edge. "Your mother didn't flee the country with a lover. The police report is manufactured. She disappeared because she uncovered something, something connected to the people who wrote that letter."

"Then where is she?"

"I don't know. But they're looking for her. And now they've found you." He gestured to the bullet at her feet. "They tracked you through the charity gala. Someone in that room took your picture. Someone recognized the amber irises."

She stared at the note. At the bullet. At the letters swimming before her eyes.

"Why would you protect me?"

He didn't flinch. "I told you from the beginning. This marriage isn't for love. It's not for family pride. It's a cage, but a cage keeps predators out as well as it keeps prey in."

"You've been hiding me."

"Keeping you alive."

"By locking me in a mansion with your mother?"

"Madam Shen doesn't know. My grandmother does. She helped arrange things." He sat on the edge of his desk, abruptly looking tired. "I know you hate me. That's fine. Hate keeps you alert. But if you walk out that gate right now and disappear into the city, you'll be dead before midnight."

The threat letter crinkled in her grip. The bullet lay silver against the dark wood floor.

"Why should I believe you?"

He met her eyes. "You shouldn't. But you should consider why I would go through this elaborate charade, a fake marriage, a locked room, a mansion full of enemies, just to keep one woman in my sight."

"Because you need something from me."

"Because your mother asked me to protect you before she vanished."

The words hit like a physical blow. Su Nian's knees went weak. She grabbed the edge of his desk to steady herself.

"My mother asked you?"

"Six months ago. She sent a letter with no return address. She said her daughter would be targeted. She said to find you before they did." He pulled out his phone, scrolled to a photo, and held it up. A handwritten note in familiar script, her mother's handwriting, the same loops and slants she'd seen on birthday cards and grocery lists. *Keep her safe. Tell her nothing until she's ready. , Su Mei.*

"It's real," Su Nian whispered.

"I don't show this to anyone." He put the phone away. "I'd burn it before letting my family see. But you needed proof."

She looked at the threat letter. At the bullet. At the man who'd been her enemy for weeks.

"I don't know what to believe anymore."

"Then don't believe anything." He stood, straightening his tie. "Believe the bullet. Believe the letter. Believe that someone out there wants you dead, and that until we find out who and why, you're safest here."

"What about Lin Yuxin? I saw you with her at the gala."

"That's separate. That's family business."

"Your family or hers?"

His eyes hardened. "Both. Neither. It doesn't concern you yet."

"Yet."

"Yet." He walked to the door and held it open. "You can stay in the study and read that letter until you know it by heart. You can search every drawer. You can call the police. But I'd advise you to think carefully before you trust anyone outside these walls."

She stayed rooted to the spot. "And inside these walls?"

"Inside these walls, you have me." He paused. "For what that's worth."

He left.

The door clicked shut.

Su Nian stood alone in the morning light, the threat letter trembling in her hands, the bullet cold against her shoe. Somewhere in this mansion were answers. Somewhere was her mother.

And somewhere out there, someone with her mother's eyes was watching.