“A certain young lady?”

The warmth drained visibly from Meng Yuxin’s face, leaving it cold and sharp. Over the years, she had kept people watching Shen Yi’s every move — overtly and covertly — and had never once seen him have any contact with a woman.

She hadn’t expected that despite every precaution she’d taken, some scheming woman had still managed to worm her way in. And not only that — she’d moved into his home.

Meng Yuxin was not about to allow any woman to derail her plans. She turned her sharp gaze on Xu Mo. “Finish what you were saying. Who is this woman?”

“There is no woman. That was just something I made up on the spot — an excuse I came up with in a panic.” Xu Mo hurried to deny it.

Meng Yuxin didn’t believe a word of it. She issued a direct command: “Bring that woman out to see me.”

“Miss Meng, if you wish to give orders, you might first consider where exactly you are.” Shen Yi lifted his teacup and took a measured sip, his tone light — but the pressure behind his words was unmistakably a warning.

Meng Yuxin’s attitude remained as imperious as ever. She had her own grounds to stand on. “Shen Yi! How dare you speak to me this way? Don’t forget — what you did to my husband, and how he died because of you! Without my support over all these years, do you think you’d be sitting where you are today?”

Support? Shen Yi found it almost laughable.

The person who had opposed him at every step right until the very last moment was none other than her. And now she had the audacity to claim he wouldn’t be here without her support? He couldn’t fathom how she had the nerve to say such a thing.

Meng Yuxin turned vicious, pressing her attack: “Shen Yi, let me tell you — you are nothing but a filthy little creature with no father and no mother, unwanted by anyone. That we deigned to acknowledge you at all was a gift you should be grateful for. Don’t be ungrateful. You’d better watch yourself — or you might not even know how you end up dying.”

Shen Yi’s expression didn’t shift. He turned the teacup idly between his fingers, his lowered eyelids concealing whatever lay behind them — but the shadow gathering around him was growing darker and heavier by the moment.

Xu Mo was shaking with barely suppressed fury, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles ached. What gave this woman the right to say such things to his boss? Damn her — he desperately wanted to hurl every word right back at her. But he couldn’t. And it wasn’t his place to.

“I was just wondering whose dog had gotten off its leash — wandering into someone else’s home, barking and making a nuisance of itself. So it turns out it was you, you ‘vicious shrew.'”

Rong Qian came down the staircase at that moment, arms folded across her chest, her bearing composed and utterly unhurried. As she reached the end of the sentence, she deliberately drew out and emphasized those last two words — vicious shrew — with pointed precision.

Rong Qian’s entire manner said, very clearly: you think you’re impressive? I’m far more impressive than you.

“It’s you?!”

Meng Yuxin had just turned to see which bold and shameless woman dared speak to her this way — and when she looked up, she recognized the woman she had encountered six years ago in Shen Yi’s apartment. The color shifted in her face on the spot.

Meng Yuxin’s eyes went wide with fury, and she jabbed a finger at Rong Qian as she spat: “You’re the one who seduced my husband — Shen Chi’s mistress!”

Xu Mo was stunned. Wasn’t Shen Chi the boss’s father? Miss Rong was his father’s mistress? Good heavens — the relationships here were utterly tangled!

Xu Mo immediately looked over to gauge Shen Yi’s reaction.

He’d expected his expression to be dark and thunderous — but instead he found Shen Yi with the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. Xu Mo was struck speechless all over again. He was — smiling?

“Mistress? Lady, are you quite right in the head?” Rong Qian regarded her with an expression of genuine doubt regarding her intelligence.

Meng Yuxin drew herself up with haughty self-importance. “Don’t think I don’t know. Shen Chi kept that painting of yours cherished away all these years. You dare say there was nothing between you two?”

“Why Shen Chi kept that painting — isn’t it because it was painted by Yan Qingyao on her deathbed?” Rong Qian turned the question right back at her.

Meng Yuxin was stopped cold. She had considered that possibility — but then why did the woman in the painting look exactly like the one standing before her now?

Rong Qian’s answer was simple. “Because I knew Yan Qingyao. She painted a portrait of me. Is there a problem with that?”

Meng Yuxin was completely silenced.

But she recovered quickly, and something struck her: Yan Qingyao had died more than ten years ago. At that time, this woman would have been a teenager.

Yet when she had encountered this woman six years ago, she looked exactly the same as she did right now — not a single thing about her had changed.

And furthermore, the figure in the painting was no teenage girl — she was the spitting image of the woman standing here today.

Having noticed this, Meng Yuxin now regarded Rong Qian with a gaze that held a trace of something unsettling.

“Where on earth did you come from, woman? And six years ago — where did you disappear to?”

Meng Yuxin recalled the scene she had made at Shen Yi’s apartment six years ago — yet no matter how thoroughly she’d had people investigate afterward, not a trace of this woman could be found. It was as if she didn’t exist at all. Not a single lead.

“Why would I tell you anything? And what gives you the right to know?” Rong Qian’s attitude was openly defiant.

Yao Na had reached her limit. She stood up and turned on Rong Qian with a flurry of questions: “Who do you think you are? What are you doing in my Shen Yi gege’s house? And at your age, no less — I simply do not believe Shen Yi gege would ever like someone like you!”

Her age? Rong Qian let out a cold snort. Let this girl live a few more years — then come meet her again, and she’d find out soon enough who was really the “older” one.

Standing off to one side, Xu Mo’s expression had gone distinctly strange. When he’d heard Rong Qian mention that she knew Yan Qingyao, something had immediately felt off to him.

Which of the things Miss Rong said were true, and which were false? He genuinely couldn’t tell anymore.

Meng Yuxin, finding herself unable to get the better of Rong Qian, redirected her attack toward Shen Yi. “Shen Yi, don’t tell me you would actually stand against the Yao Family for the sake of some woman of unknown origin. Whether it’s family background, or appearance——”

At the word “appearance,” Meng Yuxin paused involuntarily. Fine — she would admit it. The woman was not unattractive.

But from her manner of speech, her behavior, and the way she dressed, it was obvious she wasn’t from any wealthy family.

So Meng Yuxin finished her sentence with full confidence: “In what way does this woman compare to the daughter of the Yao Family?”

Yao Na, having just been praised, stood a little straighter and lifted her chin. She was a daughter of the Yao Family — not someone to be compared with this woman who had apparently crawled out of some impoverished backwater.

Rong Qian rolled her eyes. Were they really playing the “who’s your father” game now?

Though to be fair, in this setting she genuinely had nothing — no official identity, no job, not a single coin to her name, and she was living under someone else’s roof. Anyone would look down on her.

The only problem was that she couldn’t actually reveal her real identity. She might not have the Yao Family’s money — but she was a civil servant employed by a state institution, and her father was a bureau chief at that!

Oh well. She wasn’t going to stoop to competing over any of this. It wasn’t worth it.

Meng Yuxin, seeing that Rong Qian hadn’t offered a rebuttal, took it as confirmation that she’d hit the mark.

This woman was nothing — riding on her looks, without a single thing to her name, incapable of anything, entirely dependent on Shen Yi to survive.

“Shen Yi, if you feel you owe this woman something, I can arrange a sum of money for her. But today, she must leave — and Yao Na will move in.” Meng Yuxin spoke in the tone of someone issuing a command.

And Shen Yi, who had been silent throughout, finally spoke. “And if I say no?”

“You dare? Don’t forget what crime you committed — the fact that you killed your own father——”

“Killed my bloody foot!”

Rong Qian couldn’t hold back. She swore outright, cutting straight across Meng Yuxin’s words. “You keep saying Shen Yi killed Shen Chi — do you even have a functioning brain?”

“Do you not know how Shen Chi died? Natural disaster, illness, the inevitable course of life and death — who can control any of that? He fell ill. He wasn’t going to last three years. That was his fate, and no one could have changed it. If I’m being blunt about it — he brought it on himself.”

“You — you actually dare say such a thing about someone who has passed? Do you have any decency at all?” Meng Yuxin stared at her in disbelief, then turned to Shen Yi. “And you, Shen Yi — she’s saying things like this, insulting your own father to his face, and you’re just going to sit there and take it?”

Xu Mo looked stunned. He too felt that Miss Rong had gone a step too far.

That was the boss’s father, after all. And the belief that he had caused his own father’s death had always been a thorn lodged deep in the boss’s heart — even a passing mention of it in the past had been enough to set him off.

With Miss Rong saying all of this now, surely the boss was going to be furious?

Just as Xu Mo was thinking this, Shen Yi spoke — with absolute calm, two words only.

“Go on.”

Xu Mo’s eyes went wide. Had it really come to this? Was he so devoted to her that even his most fundamental boundaries no longer applied?