The words hung in the dusty, chaotic air of the kitchen, a grenade with the pin pulled.
"...the granddaughter of the man who owned the chili sauce company."
For a moment, Yu Zhen's mind went completely blank.
It was too much.
A scandal.
A public investigation by a powerful critic.
A fundamental disagreement with the man she was falling in love with.
And now, this.
A ghost from his past, walking into the present.
Her past.
No.
Not now.
I can't deal with this right now.
"Tell her I'm busy," she said to Jin, her voice a low, dismissive command. "Tell her to make an appointment. Tell her to go away."
"I tried, Chef," Jin stammered, wringing his hands, his face a mask of pure panic. "She won't leave. She's... she's crying."
The word landed like a punch to the gut.
Crying.
This wasn't a reporter looking for a quote.
This wasn't a rival looking for an advantage.
This was a person.
A person with real pain.
Pain that Chao Wei Jun had caused.
And that pain was now sitting in her dining room.
This is a test.
The thought was a cold, clear whisper in the chaos of her mind.
The universe was testing her.
Was she the woman who hid behind a PR strategy, who controlled the narrative, who managed the damage?
Or was she the woman who faced the truth, no matter how ugly?
The woman whose integrity was not just a brand, but a fundamental part of her soul?
"Where is he?" she asked Mei Ling, her voice a low, dangerous murmur.
"In the Jade Chamber," Mei Ling replied, her eyes wide with a dawning understanding of what was about to happen. "Still in his war council meeting."
"Keep him there," Yu Zhen commanded. "Do not let him know who is here. Do whatever it takes. Create a diversion. Set another, smaller fire. I don't care. Just buy me some time."
"Zhen, what are you doing?" Mei Ling asked, her voice a worried whisper.
"I'm choosing a strategy," Yu Zhen said, her eyes hard as steel. "Mine."
She turned to Jin.
"Seat her," she said. "In the corner booth. Bring her tea. And tell her Chef Lin will be with her in a moment."
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Mei Ling and Jin staring after her, their faces a mixture of terror and awe.
She was walking directly into the fire.
Alone.
The woman sitting in the corner booth was small, her shoulders slumped, her hands wrapped around a teacup as if it were a lifeline.
She looked to be about Yu Zhen's age, maybe a little younger.
She was dressed simply, in a worn but clean jacket and jeans.
Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
But there was a fire in those eyes.
A deep, burning ember of grief and a defiant, unbreakable pride.
This was not a victim looking for a handout.
This was a survivor looking for justice.
Yu Zhen felt a pang of recognition so sharp it almost made her stumble.
She saw a reflection of herself in this woman.
Another woman who had built her life around a family legacy, around the soul of food.
Yu Zhen walked to the table and slid into the booth opposite her.
The woman looked up, startled.
"Chef Lin," she said, her voice a little shaky, but clear. "Thank you for seeing me."
"You are Chen Li Mei," Yu Zhen stated, not as a question, but as an acknowledgment.
The woman nodded, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. "You know who I am."
"I read the story," Yu Zhen said quietly. "About your family. About the chili sauce."
The name of the sauce was "Grandfather's Fire."
A fresh wave of pain washed over Li Mei's face at the mention of it.
"It wasn't just a sauce," Li Mei said, her voice thick with an emotion she was struggling to control. "It was... everything. It was my grandfather's dream. It was my father's life's work. It was the smell of my childhood. It was the taste of home."
She took a shaky breath, her knuckles white around the teacup.
"And he took it," she whispered, the words a raw, bleeding thing. "Chao Wei Jun. He didn't just buy our company. He destroyed it. He destroyed us."
Yu Zhen just listened, her heart a cold, heavy stone in her chest.
She didn't offer any excuses.
She didn't try to defend him.
She just bore witness to this woman's pain.
"I read the news this morning," Li Mei continued, her eyes blazing with a new, righteous anger. "About you. About your partnership with him. The headline... 'The Dragon's New Chef'."
She laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that held no humor.
"Do you have any idea what that's like?" she asked, her voice rising. "To see the man who destroyed your family's legacy now being celebrated for partnering with a chef of your caliber? To see him using your integrity, your art, to wash the blood off his hands?"
Every word was a perfectly aimed arrow, piercing through the last of Yu Zhen's defenses.
"He's using you, Chef Lin," Li Mei said, leaning forward, her eyes pleading. "Just like he used us. He will take your name, your soul, everything that makes you special, and he will turn it into a product. A commodity. And when he's done, when he's squeezed every last drop of value out of you, he will discard you and move on to the next 'asset'."
Asset.
The word, in this woman's mouth, was a condemnation.
It was no longer just impersonal corporate jargon.
It was a slur.
A brand that marked all the people he had used and destroyed.
"I came here today because I had to," Li Mei said, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "I had to look you in the eye and warn you. I respect your work. I respect what you've built. Don't let him turn it into another ghost. Don't let him do to you what he did to my family."
She was no longer crying.
Her eyes were dry, burning with the fire of a righteous, desperate truth.
And in that fire, Yu Zhen saw her own reflection.
She saw the woman she had been just a few weeks ago, the woman who had stood in her private dining room and declared that her art was not for sale.
What had happened to that woman?
Where had she gone?
Had she been so blinded by a handsome face, a tragic backstory, and a few soul-shattering kisses that she had forgotten who she was?
The truth was a bitter, indigestible pill.
She had been seduced.
Not just by a man, but by an idea.
The idea of a partnership.
The idea of not being alone.
The idea that his power could be her power.
But what was that power built on?
It was built on this.
On the pain in this woman's eyes.
On the wreckage of her family's dream.
And in that moment, a cold, hard clarity settled over her.
She knew what she had to do.
It was not about choosing between him and her restaurant.
It was about choosing what kind of person she wanted to be.
"Tell me everything," Yu Zhen said, her voice a low, steady thing.
And Li Mei did.
For the next hour, she poured out the whole story.
Not the sanitized version from the newspaper articles, but the raw, ugly, human truth.
She spoke of her grandfather, a proud, stubborn old man who had built his business with his own two hands, who believed in quality and tradition above all else.
She spoke of Chao Wei Jun's initial offer, how charming and persuasive he had been, how he had spoken of "honoring their legacy" while planning its destruction.
She spoke of the siege.
The slow, systematic, and utterly soul-crushing campaign to destroy them.
The phone calls from distributors, their voices filled with apology and fear, as they broke contracts they'd had for decades.
The sudden, inexplicable negative reviews online, all using the same strange, corporate-sounding phrases.
The financial pressure, the mounting debts, the sleepless nights spent worrying about their employees, their family.
And she spoke of the final, devastating blow.
The day her grandfather had to sign the papers, selling his life's work, his family's name, for a fraction of its worth, just to avoid complete ruin.
"He died six months later," Li Mei said, her voice a flat, dead thing. "The doctors said it was his heart. But we knew. He died of a broken spirit."
She finally broke down, the tears she had been holding back for so long streaming down her face.
"He didn't just take our business, Chef Lin," she sobbed. "He took our history. He took our pride. He took my grandfather."
Yu Zhen reached across the table and took the other woman's hand.
It was cold and trembling.
"I am so sorry," Yu Zhen whispered, the words a pathetic, inadequate offering in the face of such profound grief.
"Don't be sorry," Li Mei said, looking up, her eyes blazing with a sudden, fierce strength. "Be angry. And be smart. Don't let him do this to anyone else."
As Li Mei was speaking, Yu Zhen was typing on her phone under the table.
She was not taking notes.
She was doing her own research.
She was cross-referencing the names of the distributors Li Mei mentioned with her own supplier lists.
She was searching for the shell corporation that had launched the rival chili sauce.
She was using the skills he had inadvertently taught her—the need for data, for proof, for understanding the hidden architecture of a deal—and she was using them against him.
And what she found made her blood run cold.
The shell corporation that had destroyed "Grandfather's Fire" was a subsidiary of a larger holding company.
A holding company that was also the primary investor in the logistics firm that had "mysteriously" failed to deliver her bluefin tuna just a few days ago.
The distributor who had been the first to drop Li Mei's family was the same distributor who had called her about the "customs issue" with her wagyu beef.
It was all connected.
A web.
A vast, intricate, and invisible web of influence and control.
Her supply chain "accidents" hadn't been accidents at all.
They had been a test.
A demonstration.
A quiet, flexing of the muscles of his empire, showing her exactly what he was capable of.
He hadn't been protecting her from a random crisis.
He had been protecting her from a crisis he himself had manufactured.
The realization was a physical blow, knocking the air from her lungs.
This was not a man who was trying to be better.
This was a master puppeteer, and she had been dancing on his strings all along.
The vulnerability.
The confessions.
The kisses.
The "partnership."
It was all a lie.
The most sophisticated, most devastating manipulation of all.
He hadn't just wanted to acquire her business.
He had wanted to acquire her trust, her heart, her very soul.
And he had almost succeeded.
She didn't know how long she sat there, staring at the screen of her phone, the ugly, undeniable truth laid bare in a series of corporate flowcharts.
The world had narrowed to a single, sharp point of absolute, ice-cold fury.
She was so lost in her own internal storm that she didn't notice the shift in the atmosphere of the dining room.
She didn't notice the sudden, hushed silence.
She didn't notice the figure approaching their table until he was standing right there.
Chao Wei Jun.
He had a file in his hand, his face a mask of grim, focused determination.
He clearly hadn't seen who she was with.
He had just seen her, and had come to report on the progress of their "damage control."
"Okay," he began, his voice a low, urgent murmur. "I think I have a solution. It's aggressive, but I think it can work. We—"
He stopped.
His eyes finally focused on the woman sitting opposite her.
He saw the tear-streaked face.
The red-rimmed, accusing eyes.
And the recognition that dawned on his face was a slow, dawning horror.
He looked from Li Mei to Yu Zhen, and in that single, silent glance, he saw it all.
He saw that she knew.
Not just about the chili sauce company.
But about the web.
About the manufactured crisis.
About the true, terrifying depth of his manipulation.
The three of them were frozen in a tableau of silent, catastrophic revelation.
The ghost of his past.
The woman he was trying to conquer.
And the man who had just been caught in the beautiful, intricate, and utterly soulless web of his own making.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
And in that silence, Yu Zhen knew, with a devastating, absolute certainty, that this was the end.
Not just of their partnership.
But of everything.