After the police took Sun Xianzhou, Teng Hao, and the mother-son pair into the interrogation room, the hall suddenly grew quiet. Those drunk troublemakers from earlier had disappeared without a trace. Ruan Yu stood awkwardly with Teng Yie, so she simply moved a few steps away to stand by the window. Teng Yie quickly followed.
She secretly glanced up at him, only to find him looking at her too.
“Does your arm hurt?” Teng Yie asked.
“No.” Though it hurt quite badly and seemed to be scrapped.
“Let me see.”
Teng Yie reached out directly, grabbed Ruan Yu’s wrist, and pulled her entire arm toward him.
Ruan Yu hissed in pain and tried to pull back, but he held on firmly.
Teng Yie carefully lifted her sleeve. Sure enough, Ruan Yu’s elbow was scraped, with a red mark accompanied by several bruises.
“And this doesn’t hurt?”
“What’s it to you?” Ruan Yu angrily pulled her hand away and said coldly, “We’re not close.”
She remembered clearly that they had been like strangers for nearly half a month now.
For her, that half month felt like half a year.
Teng Yie frowned, about to say something, when Sun Xianzhou and Teng Hao came out.
Because Teng Hao suspected the neighbors of trafficking and imprisoning a young woman, and the mother-son pair refused to admit it, the police decided to take both parties to the scene to verify.
Ruan Yu, worried about Teng Hao, went along.
When they arrived at Hua Fu residential complex, the mother-son pair were resistant the whole way. When the police ordered them to open the door, the woman finally exploded.
“Do you know who my husband is? My husband is Ren Tianhai, CEO of Haike Group. He’s good friends with your bureau chief—they played golf together just last month. If your bureau chief finds out you’re breaking into our house without permission, he’ll make sure you pay for this!”
“Mrs. Ren, we’re just doing our duty. Please cooperate,” the female officer tried to reason.
“Cooperate with what? I’ve said it a thousand times, the girl inside is my daughter. If you don’t believe me, you can call my husband. How could we possibly mistake our daughter?”
The female officer looked helplessly at Teng Hao.
“If she’s your daughter, what’s so hard about confirming it?” Teng Hao said.
“There’s nothing hard about confirming it, but I just don’t want to let you confirm. I think allowing you into our home would be letting you insult and defame me! I…”
“CRASH!”
Another sound of something being smashed came from the second floor, cutting off the woman’s words.
“Look, she’s protesting! She doesn’t agree with what this woman is saying,” Teng Hao looked at the broken window upstairs, his tone certain but somewhat regretful. “She’s asking for help! All those times she was ‘having episodes’ she was crying for help, and none of us realized.”
“You little punk, stop making things up!” The young man who had fought with Teng Hao stepped forward. “I’m telling you, this isn’t over between us!”
“Who’s afraid of who!” Teng Hao lifted his chin. “Come at me again and I’ll knock you down just the same!”
The two almost came to blows again.
Teng Yie quickly pulled Teng Hao behind him.
“CRASH!”
Another muffled crash came from upstairs.
The police also realized something was wrong.
“Mrs. Ren, if you don’t open the door, we’ll have to break in. We won’t be responsible for any property damage then!”
The woman looked at her son.
“Hurry up!” The police officer waved his baton, pointing at the door.
The woman lost her nerve and reluctantly opened the door.
The Ren family’s hall was magnificently decorated, looking even more elaborate than the neighboring Teng residence.
Indeed, only poor people have limited imagination—in wealthy neighborhoods, each house tries to outdo the other in luxury.
On the second floor, the leftmost room was locked.
Under police orders, the woman opened the door.
The room was dark, unlit. The night wind came and went through the broken window, making the room feel even colder and more eerie.
The female officer found the light switch on the wall.
When the lights came on, everyone was stunned by the sight.
The room was in complete disarray—broken glass, shattered ceramics, withered flowers, overturned dinner plates… and the girl in the white dress.
The girl sat slumped against the piano, her hair disheveled, her bare feet covered in blood marks.
Seeing the arrivals, life finally returned to her exhausted face.
“Mmph… mmph…”
“Officers, my daughter has mental problems. I locked her up because I was afraid she might hurt people outside…”
“Stop making things up, taking advantage of her inability to speak,” Teng Hao interrupted the woman, then turned to Ruan Yu. “Do you have paper and a pen in your bag?”
Ruan Yu did—she was used to writing while memorizing vocabulary, so a notebook and pen were necessities.
Teng Hao tore a page from Ruan Yu’s notebook and walked toward the girl in the white dress with the paper and pen.
“You said you can write, so now, write down what you want to say. The police will help you,” the young man knelt on one knee, handing the pen to the girl, and gesturing for her to write on the paper.
The girl looked at Teng Hao, her eyes reddened, and tears instantly flowed out.
Seeing her like this, Teng Hao felt even more guilty. He shouldn’t have focused only on fighting earlier, watching helplessly as she was locked back in the room.
“Alright, don’t cry,” Teng Hao said awkwardly. “Write first, the police are waiting.”
The girl nodded, took the pen from Teng Hao’s hand, and shakily wrote a line of crooked but still graceful characters on the paper.
“They’re holding me captive. I want to find my father, my father is Ren Tianhai.” After writing this, the girl thought for a moment and added a string of numbers after Ren Tianhai’s name—his phone number.
“Look!” Teng Hao held up the paper, showing it to the female officer. “I told you she was being forced!”
Seeing the situation turn against them, the young man who had fought with Teng Hao tried to escape but was tackled with a shoulder throw by the police at the door and pinned to the ground.
“Chenchen!” The woman screamed and rushed over. “Let go of my son! He’s still young, he didn’t mean to! He didn’t do anything! It’s all my fault! All my fault!”
“Handcuff them both and take them back to the station!” The female officer handed the paper to her colleague. “Contact Ren Tianhai.”
All the police in the room sprang into action.
The matter was resolved satisfactorily.
The girl still sat on the ground. Teng Hao went back and helped her up.
Her feet were covered in wounds of varying depths, and the floor was littered with glass shards—she couldn’t walk by herself.
Teng Hao looked uncertainly toward Teng Yie.
Receiving his brother’s glance, Teng Yie tilted his head slightly, his expression seeming to say, “Do I need to teach you this?”
The young man blushed, stiffly reached out, and lifted the girl before him into his arms…
The girl’s name was Ren Yunshen, the only daughter of Haike Group CEO Ren Tianhai.
The woman who had imprisoned Ren Yunshen was named Ye Linzhen, Ren Tianhai’s second wife and Ren Yunshen’s stepmother. Ye Linzhen’s son was named Ren Zhuo. Although Ren Zhuo used the surname Ren, he had no blood relation to Ren Tianhai or Ren Yunshen—he was Ye Linzhen’s son from her previous marriage.
They were a blended family—simply put, a father with his daughter married a mother with her son.
After Ye Linzhen married Ren Tianhai, to please him, she deliberately changed her son’s surname to Ren. She knew Ren Tianhai doted on Ren Yunshen, so she paid special attention to Ren Yunshen. After marriage, she took care of Ren Yunshen’s daily life meticulously as a mother figure, allowing Ren Yunshen to focus on learning piano.
Ren Tianhai trusted Ye Linzhen completely, and Ren Yunshen quite liked this stepmother.
The four lived together for half a year in harmony, without any friction.
Recently, Haike was listed in Hong Kong, and Ren Tianhai began staying in Hong Kong regularly to handle company business. Ren Yunshen, to continue her piano studies, didn’t go with her father but stayed in Liao City alone, living with her stepmother and stepbrother.
With Ren Tianhai away, Ye Linzhen still treated Ren Yunshen very well, taking care of her in every detail. When Ren Yunshen chatted with her father on WeChat each night, she always praised Ye Linzhen. This made Ren Tianhai even more comfortable leaving Ren Yunshen in Ye Linzhen’s care.
Ren Yunshen thought she was so lucky that after losing her birth mother, she could find someone else who truly treated her like a daughter.
But reality proved she was too naive.
Ren Yunshen couldn’t remember exactly when it started, but Ren Zhuo began staying close to her, occasionally touching her hand or waist. At first, she thought it was just brotherly affection and didn’t think anything else of it.
But one night, while she was bathing, she suddenly discovered Ren Zhuo peeping through the frosted bathroom door.
Ren Yunshen was frightened, and connecting this with previous incidents, she became furious. She first thought of Ye Linzhen, believing her to be a reasonable person who would uphold justice for her. However, when she told Ye Linzhen what happened, Ye Linzhen immediately took her son Ren Zhuo’s side, saying Ren Yunshen must be too sensitive and had seen wrong.
With his mother’s backing, Ren Zhuo smugly threatened Ren Yunshen and, when no one was around, tried to molest her again. Ren Yunshen, enraged, wanted to call the police and got into a physical altercation with Ren Zhuo. Their commotion attracted Ye Linzhen.
Ye Linzhen rushed over and, faced with irrefutable evidence, once again protected her son. To prevent Ren Yunshen from calling the police or complaining, mother and son confiscated her phone and locked her in her room. They even used Ren Yunshen’s WeChat account to chat with Ren Tianhai every night, creating the illusion that everything was normal.
Meanwhile, Ren Yunshen spent every day in her room thinking of how to escape.
She couldn’t speak and had no phone—the only thing that could speak for her was her piano. But she couldn’t openly cry for help, so she could only try to attract attention by playing the piano chaotically when Ye Linzhen and her son weren’t home. However, this method had minimal effect.
Once, she played chaotically all night without rest, but it only resulted in a few ignored complaints.
Fortunately, this time she met Teng Hao.