Liang Meng parked her car in her home garage.

As she stepped out with her Kelly bag in hand, she happened to glance at the half an orange sitting beneath the front windshield.

The orange lay there with its peel pulled back, its tendrils of membrane spread across it full of vitality.

Liang Meng reached down and took it, cradling it in her palm as she walked into the courtyard of the Tanshan Villa.

Jiang Han was standing beneath a pine tree in a Chinese-style black brocade shirt, hands clasped behind his back.

It was as though he had deliberately — or perhaps not deliberately — been waiting for her.

“Have an orange.”

As Liang Meng passed by, she reached out and handed the orange to him.

Jiang Han accepted it and unhurriedly peeled off a segment, placing it in his mouth.

“Is a five-yuan-for-two-catties orange good?”

Liang Meng asked as she walked on ahead.

Jiang Han fell into step beside her, and with an easy smile, said in a tender tone: “Anything you give me is good.”

Before the warmth of those words could even begin to rise in Liang Meng’s heart, their respective identities made her eager to deliver Jiang Han a decisive, magnificent roll of her eyes.

That eye-roll was enough to make Jiang Han stop in his tracks.

He stood at the stone-paved entrance to the courtyard, helplessly watching Liang Meng’s figure quietly disappear through the archway of the covered walkway.

All of this was taken in from upstairs in the villa by Liang Xing, who stood at the second-floor window, watching everything.

A cold laugh stirred inside her.

Ha. Jiang Han — devoted lapdog.

Xitu Lanya Restaurant.

Steamed egg with whitebait rose in wisps of delicate steam.

Jiang Han sat alone at the dining table and instructed someone to go and call for Liang Xing and Liang Meng.

Liang Meng came down shortly after, dressed rather formally.

Since Jiang Han and Liang Xing had married, she no longer wandered around the house the way she used to — barefoot in her home nightgown without a care.

Liang Xing’s assistant went to Liang Xing’s room to call for her.

Liang Xing stood at the window, leisurely swirling a glass of red wine in her hand.

“I won’t come down. Let them eat.”

The assistant didn’t understand: “President Liang, you should at least come down and have a bit to eat. Skipping dinner isn’t good for your health.”

“That’s fine.” Liang Xing turned around with composure and said to her assistant: “I suspect Jiang Han has something to say to Liang Meng tonight. I won’t go down and make it crowded.”

“Then…” The assistant gave a small nod and pulled out her phone. “I’ll order delivery for you.”

“No need.” Liang Xing shook her head to stop her. “Jiang Han will come to my room tonight. He doesn’t like the smell of takeout food.”

The assistant sighed quietly, closed the door, and withdrew from Liang Xing’s room.

“President Liang says she won’t come down — she says to go ahead and eat without her.”

“How can we do that?”

Liang Meng stood up immediately, ready to go to her sister’s room and call for her.

The assistant quickly blocked her: “President Liang says she’s on a diet. Right now she’s in her room doing yoga and is not to be disturbed by anyone.”

“On a diet?!” Liang Meng set down her chopsticks and snapped at the assistant: “Do you think I’m three years old? My sister is as thin as a willow branch — what on earth does she need to diet from?!”

Still not satisfied, she pointed at the assistant and continued sharply: “How have you been looking after my sister? You draw such a generous salary every month and you don’t even feel the slightest bit uneasy about it? You can’t even get her to come down for a meal! I think you’d better not come back tomorrow!”

Liang Meng knew perfectly well that Liang Xing might very well be deliberately avoiding dining with her and Jiang Han — but she couldn’t help feeling put out all the same.

Liang Xing had been slender since childhood, putting on neither weight nor flesh, and she couldn’t go long without eating.

Which meant Liang Meng had been taking it out on the assistant.

Having followed Liang Xing for nearly ten years, the assistant knew this dynamic all too well.

She had long since grown accustomed to it — being scolded while not making a sound.

Jiang Han stepped in to defuse the tension, pressing his hands down on Liang Meng’s shoulders and firmly guiding her back into her seat.

“Alright, that’s enough! I’ll bring a plate up to your sister in a bit. You eat first — the whitebait gets rubbery when it cools down.”

Liang Meng sat back down most unwillingly, red-eyed as she ate a few scattered bites of rice.

Once only Liang Meng and Jiang Han were left in the Xitu Lanya Restaurant, Jiang Han placed a pair of chopsticks’ worth of dishes in Liang Meng’s bowl and asked with concern: “How did the executive meeting this afternoon go?”

Liang Meng replied with some irritation: “Weren’t you watching through the surveillance cameras?”

Jiang Han was rendered speechless, then after a pause, said: “Mm. I watched you… come out victorious.”

Liang Meng caught the note of irony embedded in Jiang Han’s “victorious” and immediately lost her appetite for the whitebait in her mouth.

She set down her chopsticks with deliberate gravity, crossed her forearms over her chest, and asked: “I want to ask you something — the whole business with the brand ambassador. What exactly happened?”

Jiang Han was momentarily taken aback, then broke into a gentle smile.

“Wasn’t it you who wanted to replace the brand ambassador? Now that it’s done, why are you asking me?”

Liang Meng didn’t humor him, and went straight to the point: “Jiang Han, just tell me the truth — was my sister also behind the idea of replacing Zhou Zelong? Did she use me as a pawn?”

“Then you should go ask your sister.”

Jiang Han shook his head in helpless amusement, picked up his chopsticks, and added another piece of the egg dish to Liang Meng’s bowl.

Without getting an answer, Liang Meng rose to her feet in frustration and, without a word of warning, overturned the entire plate of steamed egg with whitebait!

A burst of yellow and white flew through the air — visually striking and deeply jarring.

Once again Jiang Han was completely blindsided!

“Eat eat eat! All you do is pile food on me! Do you think I’m still growing? Jiang Han, let me tell you — ever since I came back from studying abroad, my tastes have changed! I don’t like this dish anymore!”

What Liang Meng truly wanted to say, deep down, was: “Ever since you got married, I haven’t liked it anymore.”

Jiang Han was truly having terrible luck.

He had genuinely driven all the way to Lake Tai himself, painstakingly hauled back a whole crate of fresh whitebait, given the chef a thousand careful instructions, and then timed everything down to the minute to have it served at exactly the right moment — terrified the egg would overcook and the fish would lose its tenderness.

And this second young lady of the Liang family had repaid all of it with one sentence — “I don’t like it” — like a bucket of cold water poured over him from head to toe.

In the face of Liang Meng’s random, unpredictable outbursts ever since his marriage — turning the table over at will, with no warning — all Jiang Han could do was endure it, keep enduring it, and continue enduring it. There was no other recourse.

The path was one he had chosen himself — no matter how much pain it brought, he had to walk it to the end.

Very calmly, he used his chopsticks to scrape the scattered whitebait from the tabletop into his own bowl, piece by piece.

Jiang Han ate the retrieved food with composed tranquility.

“Wasting food is not a good habit.”

Who would ever believe it — the cold-blooded, formidable, untouchable “Master Jiang,” at his own dining table, picking up leftovers?

Liang Meng paid no mind, and turned to go back to her room.

A person only lets themselves be truly unrestrained in front of someone they trust completely.

She had only taken a few steps.

Then Jiang Han said quietly: “Care to hear a story?”

Liang Meng pressed her lips together, turned back stubbornly, and sat back down.

She maintained an icy front on the outside, but inside she had steadied.

The provocation had worked. She knew Jiang Han wouldn’t just let things be.

“Once upon a time there was a man who sold wine. The wine he brewed was of excellent quality, his prices were fair, and he treated his customers with genuine warmth and care.

Yet strangely, other sellers always had customers streaming through their doors in droves, while his shop was nearly deserted. Over time, the wine he couldn’t sell went sour.”

Liang Meng listened quietly to the story of the wine gone sour.

“Later, a wise man told him: the problem is not the wine, not the price, and not you. The problem is the dog you keep — it’s too ferocious.”

Liang Meng thought about it for a moment and said nothing.

There is a line from the film The Godfather: people who can see through to the essence of things in half a second, and people who spend their entire lives unable to see the essence of things at all, are destined for entirely different fates.

Perhaps she had been focusing on the wrong thing — the provocation at today’s executive meeting might have had nothing to do with the brand ambassador Zhou Zelong at all.

“Everyone is afraid of being bitten by a dog. Even if the dog only looks ferocious but doesn’t actually bite.”

Jiang Han finished what was in his bowl and wiped his mouth composedly with a napkin.

Liang Meng sat with a furrowed brow, working hard to find the thread hidden within his words.

Jiang Han refilled a bowl with something warm and placed it gently in front of Liang Meng.

“Eat, and I’ll keep talking.”

Liang Meng looked Jiang Han in the eyes and thought: if I don’t pick up the chopsticks, will you simply say nothing?

Indeed — she didn’t reach for them, and Jiang Han would not utter a single word.

Reluctantly, Liang Meng picked up the bowl.

“Last month, didn’t you bring up at the executive meeting that all of Longquan’s product lines should move into ‘livestream e-commerce’?” Jiang Han asked.

“Isn’t livestream e-commerce the trend right now?”

Liang Meng didn’t follow, and asked in a flat, joyless tone.

Could it really be that “livestream e-commerce” had become that ferocious-looking dog?

“Daiwei is in the marketing department — he could easily have stayed out of your way and let things run without conflict.” Jiang Han continued. “But you want to do ‘livestream e-commerce.’ Think about it — whose interests does that threaten, at the root?”

“The distributors.”

“Exactly.” Jiang Han, seeing that she had grasped it, continued to guide her thinking. “Back when Longquan first built itself up, it was the distributors across the country who made it possible. What you’re doing now — launching ‘livestream e-commerce’ in a big way — is essentially smashing their rice bowls right in front of their faces. Why would they accept that?”

“So the Zhou Zelong incident was just a distraction. My sister… and the distributors — they wanted to teach me a lesson?”

Liang Meng put the pieces together, and a heavy, crushing feeling settled in her chest — like a throat full of grit she couldn’t swallow.

The look in Jiang Han’s eyes was her answer.

Liang Meng had wanted to “take bold steps forward.” Liang Xing and the old guard at Longquan understood that a direct confrontation wouldn’t stop her.

So rather than fighting it head-on, it was better to let Liang Meng take the riskiest step herself, and then let her crash into the wall on her own.

But what they hadn’t calculated — what they could never have predicted — was that Liang Meng’s eye for people was so sharp she could see through a long-polished idol in an instant.

Liang Xing had anticipated that Zhou Zelong would eventually self-destruct. She just hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly.

Liang Meng had stumbled into a lucky shot and landed a treasure instead.

“You should think carefully about how to handle Longquan’s distributors.”

Jiang Han rose from the table and tapped his knuckle gently on the dining table in front of Liang Meng.

“Every single one of them was once a Zhang Weimin.”

Liang Meng bit down on her chopsticks, blinking slowly, and for a long moment did not swallow.

Tanshan Villa, second floor.

Jiang Han carried a tray and pushed open the door to Liang Xing’s bedroom.

Liang Xing was lounging on the chaise longue, legs crossed, wearing a silk nightgown and scrolling through her phone.

She wasn’t at all surprised by Jiang Han’s arrival.

Jiang Han set the food on the table in Liang Xing’s room and arranged the chopsticks and dishes properly.

Liang Xing had no appetite. Daiwei had called her several times earlier, and had also sent her groveling messages on WeChat.

She still couldn’t figure out how that “evidence” had found its way to her own younger sister’s hands.

Daiwei was a cunning old fox — not someone who worked so carelessly.

Unless… there was only one possibility.

“Hasn’t Master Jiang’s hand reached a little too far?”

Liang Xing took her soup spoon and stirred the hot soup in front of her in a deliberately slow, deliberate manner.

“You manage Sansheng well enough. This particular pond at Longquan — there’s really no need for your involvement.”

In the face of Liang Xing, Jiang Han lost any desire to explain himself, and sprawled himself with great ease onto the chaise longue where Liang Xing had just been sitting.

He wasn’t going to admit it.

Every single thing he did to help Liang Meng — he would never admit to any of it.

Even knowing full well.

“Are you sleeping in my room again tonight?”

Liang Xing’s tone carried the suggestion of showing him out.

Jiang Han stretched out where he lay.

“Don’t we have to keep up appearances for a few days every month! Tonight — I’m still sleeping here.”