YOU LOVE ME LIKE A SECRET

YOUR NUMBER DOESN’T EXIST

The first thing I learned after leaving the hospital was that Xu Shein’s world operated by rules I had never been taught.

It didn’t allow mistakes.
It didn’t offer clarity.
And it certainly didn’t let go easily.

That night, back in my apartment, rain still tapping against the windows like impatient fingers, I tried to call him. I needed something — anything — to anchor the chaos swirling inside me. His voice. An explanation. Even silence would have been better than nothing.

The call never connected.

“The number you have dialed is not in service.”

I stared at the screen, thumb hovering, refusing to believe it. I tried again. And again. Each attempt ended with the same cold mechanical rejection.

He had erased himself from my reach.

I sank onto the sofa, phone trembling in my lap, still wearing the damp silk dress that smelled faintly of rain and him. Disbelief hit first. Then a hollow ache that settled low in my chest — and traitorously lower, between my thighs, where my body still remembered the thick stretch of him, the way he had filled me so completely I forgot how to breathe.

He had been real. He had been inside me. And now he was smoke.

The next morning I went to his office building — that gleaming tower of glass and power in the heart of Shanghai. The receptionist’s smile was polite, professional, impenetrable.

“Mr. Xu isn’t available,” she said. “And he won’t be for the foreseeable future.”

“Why?” My voice cracked despite my best efforts.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “He left no instructions for messages.”

I walked away before the humiliation could swallow me whole.

Later that afternoon, I met Eden Hernandez at a quiet café downtown. She sat with her hands laced on the table, calm as always, but the shadows beneath her eyes told the real story.

“Why can’t I reach him?” I asked before I even sat down.

Eden studied me for a long moment. “Because he wants you to start finding the answers yourself.”

I laughed bitterly. “What does that even mean?”

“Xu Shein is cautious. Strategic. Right now he can’t afford to be seen — not by anyone who might ask the wrong questions. Including you.”

“I’ve already asked every wrong question!” My voice rose, drawing glances from nearby tables. “I’ve been given half-truths and fragments while his wife lay dying. Why should I have to chase ghosts?”

Eden’s eyes softened with something close to pity. “Because this isn’t just about you, Lin Yue. It’s about understanding his world. Elena’s world. And where you fit inside it.”

“I don’t want to fit,” I whispered. “I want to understand.”

“That’s the same thing,” she said gently.

Her calmness only sharpened the ache inside me. The frustration. The grief. The lingering, shameful desire that still pulsed between my legs every time I remembered his hands on my body.

I left the café with my fists clenched and my heart hardened into something sharper.

I was going to find him.

Even if it meant walking through every door he had tried to close. Even if it meant stepping into the carefully hidden corners of his world and tearing them open.

By the time I reached home, my phone buzzed with a new message from an unknown number.

“Stop looking for me.”

I stared at the words, rain still streaking the windows like tears I refused to cry.

A bitter smile curved my lips.

Challenge accepted.

Because whatever Xu Shein was hiding — whatever truth Elena wanted me to hear — I was no longer content to remain his beautiful, obedient secret.

Not anymore.