Li Tian stood in the middle of his father's private study, the scent of aged wood and ink thick in the air. The scandal had hit hard, a media wildfire burning through headlines and market trust. Most would have been scrambling to control the narrative—but Tian wasn't most. He moved through the study slowly, hands brushing across leather-bound ledgers, sealed drawers, and old photographs. Something in him refused to sit still. The fire outside was a distraction. The real answers were buried in this room.
A locked drawer in the bottom of the desk caught his attention. It was one he hadn't seen opened since he was a boy. After a few quiet minutes with a paperclip and a little force, the lock gave way. Inside, among business documents and long-forgotten correspondence, he found an envelope sealed in wax.
It was addressed to no one.
Inside the envelope was a photograph.
Han Yulan. His mother.
She looked radiant. Younger than he remembered her, wearing a soft blue cheongsam and standing in front of a flowering courtyard. Her smile hadn't changed. But what made Tian's blood run cold wasn't her expression—it was the date written on the back in his father's unmistakable handwriting.
April 15, 2010.
A year after her official death.
He sat down slowly, the photo in his hand. He remembered the funeral. The mourners. The black dress shirt he hated. The press statement about her passing from illness. But if this picture was real—and he knew it was—then the timeline was a lie.
She hadn't died in 2009.
She hadn't died at all.
That night, Tian couldn't sleep. The photo burned in his mind like an unanswered question. At dawn, he made a decision.
He would go to the Marvel family's old summer estate—the place where his mother had once tended the rose garden and where, according to records, she had been buried.
The estate stood on the outskirts of Suzhou, untouched by time. Nature had crept in through the cracks of marble walkways and past iron gates, but the grounds still held their ghostly elegance. Tian stepped through the threshold and followed the stone path to the private cemetery behind the main house.
There it was.
Han Yulan. Beloved Wife and Mother. 1968–2009.
Tian stared at the gravestone, unmoving. Wind whispered through the trees, cold despite the morning sun.
He called in a private team of workers within the hour.
The coffin was exhumed carefully, respectfully. No cameras. No press. Just Tian standing by as the final layer of earth was cleared away.
When the casket opened, a silence fell that not even the wind dared break.
It was empty.
Not a body. Not a trace. Nothing.
A lie wrapped in marble.
Tian didn't speak during the drive back into the city. His mind moved like a machine, calculating possibilities, dissecting memories. He thought of the funeral. The sealed casket. The way his father never cried. The way no one had ever let him say goodbye.
He went straight to one man—Zhang Shuren. The family's long-time groundskeeper. He had worked at the Marvel estate for over thirty years, serving Tian's father, and his grandfather before that.
Tian found Zhang alone, sipping tea in his modest courtyard in the old district. The old man's hands trembled as he rose.
"Master Tian."
"I saw the grave," Tian said.
Zhang's eyes lowered. "You shouldn't have gone there."
"Why is it empty?"
The old man didn't answer.
Tian stepped forward. "Did she die, or not?"
Zhang's shoulders sagged. He sat down slowly, tea forgotten.
"She never died," he said, voice cracking. "She disappeared."
Tian's chest went still.
"It was a spring morning," Zhang went on. "She left in a car with two men. I never saw her again. Your father said she was going away for a while. But months passed, and one day he told us… to prepare for her funeral."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was under oath. He made me swear to protect the family. He said it was for your sake."
"My sake?" Tian spat. "Or his control?"
Zhang looked up with eyes full of regret. "She loved you. That much, I know. But there were things happening then… things above my place. Secrets. Deals. People in suits who didn't belong."
Tian pressed the photograph onto the table. "When was this taken?"
Zhang looked at it and blinked hard. "That's… That was the last day I saw her. That courtyard was at the Wuxi villa. She asked me to take her picture before she left."
"You never wondered what happened to her?"
"I wondered every day. But asking questions in this family… comes with a price."
Tian didn't sleep that night, either.
He scanned the photo, enhanced it, searched its digital signature, traced the weather pattern to match the timestamp. It was real. And so was the vanishing.
But there was more to this.
He went back to his father's study the next day, this time scanning files and old contacts. He found a number—one that had appeared twice in encrypted corporate records from 2010. It was tied to an offshore shell company and a brief transfer of funds.
The recipient?
A women's health clinic in Switzerland. One that catered to high-profile clients looking to disappear.
It wasn't proof. Not yet. But it was a trail.
Tian now knew one thing for certain.
His mother was never dead.
She had been hidden.
And someone powerful—maybe even his own father—had made that happen.
Not for grief.
Not for legacy.
But for war.
And if she was alive… there was a reason he was never meant to find he