When the car stopped at home, Rong Qian woke up at once. She stretched, picked up her high heels, pushed the car door open, and made to step out.

Shen Yi saw this and asked: “You’re not putting your shoes on?”

“Oh — I twisted my ankle. Wearing shoes isn’t comfortable.” Rong Qian said it as though it were nothing, and moved to climb out.

But the moment the words left her mouth, her wrist was seized — firmly, with considerable force — and she was held completely in place.

Rong Qian turned to look at him. In the pale amber glow of the streetlamp, his face was half-lit and half-shadowed by the surrounding dark. In that instant, Rong Qian felt as though she were glimpsing the Shen Yi of before — cold, unyielding, never given to smiling.

“Don’t get out yet. Wait for me.” Shen Yi gave her a soft smile, released her wrist, and stepped out of the car.

Rong Qian blinked. The speed with which his expression changed — it made her wonder, just for a moment, if she had imagined it.

Though, with that contrast fresh in her mind, she suddenly noticed something she hadn’t before. When he wasn’t smiling, there was something in the set of his face — a kind of weary detachment from the world, a quiet authority that didn’t require anger to make itself felt. No wonder Xu Mo was usually so wary of him.

If he was like that when he wasn’t even upset — what did he look like when he was truly angry? Rong Qian tried to picture it and found, to her own surprise, that she couldn’t.

He didn’t seem to have been angry. Not once.

While Rong Qian was still lost in thought, Shen Yi had already come around to her side of the car. Without a single word of preamble, he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her into his arms.

The sudden weightlessness made her instinctively grab onto his shoulders. Rong Qian stared at him, startled. “What — what are you doing?”

“You twisted your ankle. I’m carrying you inside.” Shen Yi’s tone was gentle, yet left absolutely no room for argument.

Rong Qian was completely unprepared for the ease with which he had lifted her — and the sheer effortlessness of it. She was not light, at one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, yet he made it look like nothing. The strength in his arms was clearly formidable.

Being held in this bridal-carry fashion, Rong Qian kept her head lowered the entire way and didn’t dare look up at him.

She couldn’t quite name what this feeling was. It was like a younger sibling she had always looked after had suddenly grown up — grown up enough to look after her in return. Something between relief and being moved.

She couldn’t put it into words. But she couldn’t meet his eyes — that much was true.

Xu Mo and Zhang Jin, walking behind them, exchanged a glance. Knowing smiles spread across both their faces. Wanting to give the two of them space, they quietly made themselves scarce.

“Sit here. I’ll go get the medicine.”

After setting Rong Qian on the sofa, Shen Yi went to rummage through the cabinet for the medicine kit.

Rong Qian looked at the high heels she had been carrying all the way back, then at Shen Yi — kneeling on one knee before an open cabinet, his back to her. She set the shoes down and sat quietly.

“Is it this foot that twisted?”

Shen Yi brought the medicine kit over. Rong Qian watched as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing lean, capable forearms and long fingers with clearly defined knuckles.

He checked her ankle carefully and found that it had swollen somewhat. A slight furrow appeared between his brows. He looked up at her. “It’s a little swollen. We need to wrap some ice in a cloth first and apply it to the injured area for about ten to fifteen minutes.”

“You know a lot about this,” Rong Qian said. She understood the basics herself, but had never been this thorough about it. She’d had minor injuries plenty of times — and as long as there was no blood, she generally just endured them until they passed.

No one had ever looked after her with this kind of painstaking care.

The corner of Shen Yi’s mouth lifted. He looked at her and smiled. “I may know considerably more than you might expect. Would you like to find out?”

Rong Qian raised an eyebrow. She suspected he was making a suggestive remark, but she had no proof.

Sure enough — the composed, refined exterior was just a front. Underneath it all, this was clearly a cunning, scheming fox wearing sheep’s clothing.

“By the way,” she said, “what does Thomas look like?”

Rong Qian was holding the ice-wrapped cloth against her ankle and asked the question with nothing particular in mind.

“I have a photograph. Want to take a look?” Shen Yi laid out all the medications he would need on the table, then stood and went upstairs to his room to retrieve it.

Rong Qian hadn’t even said whether she wanted to see it — and he had already placed it in front of her.

The photograph had been taken covertly. The moment she took it and saw Thomas’s face, her expression changed in an instant. Wasn’t this the man who had run into her at the casino?

She quickly asked Shen Yi: “Is this Thomas?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

Rong Qian stared. “I saw him at the casino!”

“At the casino?” A shadow moved through Shen Yi’s eyes. Thomas had appeared at Yao Zhengxing’s casino?

Rong Qian recounted the details of seeing Thomas at the casino in full. After listening, Shen Yi nodded slowly, thoughtful, and then said: “So, the reason you twisted your ankle — it was because of him.”

“Yes, but is that really the point?”

Shen Yi nodded. “Yes. That is the point.”

“What I’m wondering,” Rong Qian said, a chill creeping into her thoughts, “is whether Thomas was there — did he see you?” Shen Yi, however, didn’t seem troubled by that. As far as he was concerned, the most important thing right now was taking care of her foot.

Unhurriedly, he finished applying medicine to her ankle before finally telling her: “I’ll head back to the casino. You get some sleep.”

“Wait — you’re going now?” Rong Qian reached out on instinct and caught the hem of his jacket.

Shen Yi glanced back at the hand holding his jacket, then slowly raised his eyes. His gaze settled on her face. She was worried — her brow was furrowed.

Shen Yi couldn’t help but reach out and rub the top of her head, soothing her. “Don’t worry. I won’t be going alone. Thomas has shown himself — before he sets his sights on me, I want to get a hold of his whereabouts first.”

Rong Qian understood his reasoning. She was just uneasy. If only she could go with him…

Shen Yi seemed to see exactly what she was thinking. He smiled. “As luck would have it — you’ve twisted your ankle. If you hadn’t, you’d be coming with me, and then I’d be the one who couldn’t rest easy.”

Rong Qian knew she wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it. In the end, she could only urge him, over and over, to be careful above all else.

Before leaving, Shen Yi carried her upstairs to her room and told her to sleep.

Sleep — as if that were possible. She was awake the entire night, waiting for any word from Shen Yi. Around two in the morning, rain began to fall outside.

Rong Qian stood at the window, watching the downpour beyond the glass, her heart heavy with worry. “If only there were a phone,” she murmured, “I could call and check in. The rain is coming down so hard — there’s no way of knowing whether he’s still at the casino or already on his way back.”

She kept vigil through the night. By six in the morning, the sky had just barely begun to lighten — and still Shen Yi hadn’t returned. Not so much as a single call.

“Miss Rong, you’re up this early?”

Fu Bozhong slept early and rose early. Seeing Rong Qian sitting in the main hall at this hour, he greeted her with a smile.

Rong Qian forced the corners of her mouth upward, but couldn’t quite manage a real smile.

She told him about Shen Yi going back to the casino, and Fu Bozhong began to worry in turn. He turned to Rong Qian with urgency. “Miss Rong, don’t fret — I’ll send someone to the casino to check.”

“Manager Fu, don’t panic. I’ve already sent Xu Mo.”

When Shen Yi left, he hadn’t taken Xu Mo with him. Xu Mo had also spent the entire night sick with worry, and had driven off at five o’clock.

“This rain has been falling all night and it’s still coming down now. Could the young master be in some kind of trouble?” The more Fu Bozhong thought about it, the more anxious he became.

The storm had arrived suddenly. Thunder and lightning had torn through the entire night, unsettling everyone’s nerves — and making the already-worried Rong Qian feel all the more on edge.

She was turning over the same thought in her mind: the newspaper report of Shen Yi in danger, his life hanging by a thread — what date had that happened?

Surely it wasn’t this time.

Was it?