The champagne tasted wrong.
Lin Yue noticed it immediately, a bitter metallic tang beneath the bubbles that shouldn't have been there. She froze mid-sip, the crystal flute hovering before her lips as fairy lights twinkled across the private rooftop terrace of Shanghai's most exclusive hotel. Below, the city stretched out in a sea of neon lights, unaware of the death occurring 60 floors above.
"Happy birthday, darling!" Zhang Wei's smile was perfect. Too perfect. Lin Yue had built a billion-yuan tech empire by reading people, and suddenly, she was reading her fiancé like a balance sheet that didn't add up. "Twenty-eight years old and you've conquered the industry. What's next? The world?"
"The world," Xu Mei chimed in, raising her own glass. Her best friend since university and maid of honor for the wedding next month. "To Lin Yue, may your success never end!"
They drank. Lin Yue pretended to, letting the champagne barely touch her lips. Her vision was already blurring at the edges. How much had been in that first sip? Her hand trembled. The glass slipped from her fingers, shattering across the marble floor.
"Yue!" Zhang Wei rushed forward, catching her as her legs buckled. "Someone call an ambulance!"
But his voice didn't carry and urgency. And his arms, the arms that had held her through a thousand nights, felt like a cage.
"Don't bother," Xu Mei said softly. She hadn't moved from her position by the railing, champagne glass still in hand. "It's a slow-acting poison. She has maybe ten minutes. Ambulance would take fifteen in this traffic."
The world tilted. Lin Yue's brilliant mind, the one that had designed the most advanced AI systems in Asia, that had outmaneuvered corporate sharks struggled to process what she was hearing.
"Mei?" Her voice came out as a whisper. "Wei?"
Zhang Wei lowered her carefully to one of the silk cushioned chairs. His handsome face showed not grief, but relief. "I'm sorry, Yue. I really am. But you were never going to let go. Never going to trust me with real power in the company. Always had to be the brilliant Lin Yue, with everyone else in your shadow."
"We gave you chances," Xu Mei added, walking closer. Her heels clicked against marble with the rhythm of an execution march. "So many chances to share. To delegate. To see us as equals instead of employees."
"You were stealing." The words cost Lin Yue tremendous effort. Her tongue was going numb. "The accounts... I saw... fifty million yuan..."
"Sixty-three million, actually," Zhang Wei corrected, almost apologetically. "We've been skimming for two years. You only noticed last month because we wanted you to notice. The embezzlement investigation is a gift, you see. With you gone, I inherit controlling interest as your fiancé, you never updated your will after the engagement. And Mei gets her CEO position at last."
"Plus," Xu Mei knelt beside the chair, her beautiful face hovering close, "We're in love. Have been for eighteen months. I'm even pregnant. Isn't that wonderful?"
Lin Yue's heart, already struggling with the poison, seemed to stop entirely. Not from the chemical slowly killing her, but from the heartache of that revelation. Eighteen months. She tried to remember when she'd first introduced them at the company gala. Twenty months ago.
"We wanted to wait until after we'd secured everything," Zhang Wei was saying, stroking Xu Mei's hair with tender affection he'd never quite shown Lin Yue. "But you're brilliant, darling. Too brilliant. You would have figured it out eventually, so it was better to act now while you still trust us."
"Trusted," Xu Mei corrected. "Past tense."
Lin Yue's vision was fragmenting now, she could taste blood in her mouth. Her body was shutting down, bit by bit, like a computer powering off.
How had she missed it? She, who could predict market trends six months in advance. She, who had built an empire from a graduate school dorm room. She, who everyone called a genius.
"You look confused," Xu Mei observed. "That's the poison affecting your brain function. Don't worry, it'll be over soon. They'll find you tomorrow morning, tragic suicide. The brilliant CEO couldn't handle the pressure anymore, left a note about the embezzlement investigation driving her to desperation. So sad."
"The note's already written in your handwriting," Zhang Wei added. "Mei's been practicing for months. She's quite talented."
Of course she was. Xu Mei had always been talented. That's why Lin Yue had hired her, promoted her, trusted her with everything.
Loved her like a sister.
Lin Yue tried to speak, but her throat wouldn't cooperate anymore. She wanted to ask why. To understand what she'd done to deserve this. To know if any of it, their friendship, their love, their partnership, had ever been real.
But the darkness was closing in, thick and suffocating as smoke. She could hear Zhang Wei and Xu Mei talking, their voices growing distant as they discussed what to do with her company, her assets, her life's work. They were already dividing up her corpse while she could still hear them.
Her last clear thought was not of revenge. Not of anger. Not even of the injustice of it all.
It was simpler: If I could live again, I would burn you both to ash.
The darkness answered: Would you? Even knowing the price?
Lin Yue wanted to respond, to ask what that meant, but her consciousness was fading faster. She was barely aware of her body shaking from the poison. Of Zhang Wei's annoyed sigh. Of Xu Mei's impatient "How much longer?"
Then she was falling, tumbling through an endless void that felt like drowning in ice and fire simultaneously. Memories flashed past, her first business success, her parents' proud faces at her university graduation, the day she'd met Xu Mei and thought she'd found a true friend, Zhang Wei's proposal on a beach in Bali that she'd believed was romantic.
All of it felt like it was being torn away, page by page from a book that was being burned.
The price, that strange voice whispered again, is that you may never return. That everything you know may change. That you yourself may become something you cannot recognize.
I don't care, Lin Yue's soul screamed into the void. I would pay any price for another chance. For revenge. For justice. For the opportunity to make them suffer as they've made me suffer.
So be it.