Bai Mingzhu's smile was a delicate, fragile thing—a porcelain mask held together by sheer willpower. Her eyes flickered toward the sleek sedan, her heart hammering a frantic, discordant rhythm against her ribs.
"Marlene, dear," Mingzhu began, her voice smooth but laced with a subtle, sharp undercurrent. "Where is your father?"
Marlene's laughter died down, her eyes widening. She opened her mouth to chirp a reply, but the heavy door of the sedan groaned open before she could utter a syllable.
A man stepped out into the crisp afternoon air, moving with the measured, predatory grace of a seasoned hunter. He leaned heavily upon a cane carved from polished mahogany and silver, the metallic tip clicking sharply against the gravel.
He was fifty-five years old, but time had been kind to him; his features were etched with the sharp, aristocratic lines of a man who had never known failure. His hair was a perfectly maintained shade of chestnut brown, and his eyes—a startling, cold blue—swept over the Rothenberg estate as if he were already calculating the cost of the land beneath his boots.
Bai Mingzhu blinked, her mind racing. Gerhard Rosenhain. still same, as cold as ever, The question burned in her throat. The alliance between their houses had been stagnant for years, a cold-war stalemate maintained by thousands of miles of distance. His sudden migration from the heart of Austria to the sprawl of Beijing was not a social call. It was a tactical maneuver.
She forced herself to move, her silk skirts whispering against the stone as she bridged the gap.
"Daddy was inside the car," Marlene chirped, oblivious to the sudden drop in temperature between the adults. "I was just too excited to wait! I needed to see Zuckerchen immediately!"
Gerhard offered a thin, mirthless smile that didn't reach his glacial eyes. He tipped his head slightly, a gesture that was polite in form but dismissive in spirit.
"How are you, Madam Bai?" he greeted, his voice a low, resonant baritone.
Mingzhu composed herself, her mask sliding back into place with practiced ease. She extended a hand, her poise regaining its usual icy perfection. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gerhard. One has to wonder what brings you so far from the Austrian alps without a formal word of notice."
"Family business," Gerhard replied vaguely, his gaze drifting toward the imposing structure of the villa. "And, of course, the promise of old ties."
Marlene, tired of the pleasantries, grabbed Mingzhu's elbow, her grip firm and demanding. She leaned in, her eyes shining with a frantic, girlish impatience.
"Auntie, come on! I can't wait a second longer!" Marlene pleaded, tugging at the matriarch's arm. "I want to see Zuckerchen! Please, can we go in?"
Mingzhu's smile grew tight, a nervous tic manifesting at the corner of her eye. She glanced back at the villa—at the fortress that housed not just her son, but a fragile, broken boy she was desperate to keep hidden from the Rosenhain reach.
"Ah, yes," Mingzhu lied, her tone dripping with saccharine sweetness. "Of course, darling. My son will be... delighted."
Internally, she was screaming. She knew how much Bai Qi despised these forced reunions. She knew the fury that bubbled beneath his cold exterior—a fury that now focused entirely on the East Wing, not on the ghosts of a childhood romance.
"I want to see the look on his face," Marlene giggled, twirling around in a circle, her blonde hair catching the fading sunlight. "He will be so, so happy. It's been years, Auntie! He must have missed me terribly."
"Yes," Mingzhu whispered, her gaze averting as she looked toward the towering gates.
"Truly."
The heavy, iron-wrought gates of the Rothenberg estate groaned in protest, swinging open with a slow, mechanical precision. The servants stood in a rigid phalanx, bowing with such depth that their faces were hidden entirely from view.
They crossed the threshold.
The courtyard was a landscape of meticulously curated beauty, but Marlene saw none of it. She walked through the grand entryway as if she were in a trance, her focus narrow and fixated solely on the main hall. She was hunting for Bai Qi, her heart blooming with the delusional, singular purpose of a woman who believed she still held the master key to his life.
Bai Mingzhu trailed slightly behind, her mind a chaotic storm of calculations.
Oh, Bai Qi, she thought, a cold sweat breaking out across her spine. Please be there. Please handle this. Do not let me be dragged into the wreckage you are about to create.
She knew the state of her son. She knew that the "Zuckerchen" Marlene remembered had died months ago, replaced by a man who now moved through his own home with the hollow, terrifying focus of a guardian keeping watch over a tomb.
"The villa is even more beautiful than I remember," Gerhard remarked, his eyes lingering on the architectural details—the sprawling fountains, the geometric precision of the hedges. "It possesses a certain... permanence."
"This beautiful villa endures as a testament to genuine devotion and love, qualities that continue to define its timeless beauty."
They reached the front steps, the marble glowing like ivory under the soft ambient lighting. Marlene was practically vibrating with anticipation.
Meanwhile The air in the grand foyer did not just grow thin; it shattered.
Bai Qi descended the grand staircase with the calculated elegance of a monarch taking his throne. He was a vision of disciplined, monochromatic perfection—his charcoal suit tailored to razor-sharp precision, his face a flawless, impenetrable mask of polite indifference. He was the Ice Monarch, a man whose heart was currently a locked vault buried miles beneath the floorboards.
At the base of the stairs, the door stood wide open by servants.
Marlene Rosenhain didn't walk; she launched herself. A whirlwind of pastel silks and frantic energy, she bypassed the startled servants.
"Zuckerchen!" she chirped, the nickname echoing off the high, vaulted ceilings like a jarring, high-pitched bell.
Bai Qi froze. His carefully constructed poise buckled for a micro-second as she collided with his torso, her arms wrapping around him with an intimate, unbridled fervor. The impact forced a sharp, involuntary gasp from his lungs.
"Zuckerchan!" she squealed, pulling back just enough to tilt her head up, her eyes wide, glassy, and swimming with a terrifyingly pure, naive adoration.
Bai Qi's gaze flickered. He looked past her blonde curls to the foot of the stairs, where Bai Mingzhu stood. Her expression was a masterclass in controlled panic—her eyes were wide, signaling him with the desperate, frantic intensity of a woman witnessing a car crash in slow motion: Play along. Do not break the illusion. Act surprised.
Bai Qi forced his muscles to relax. He reached up, his hands hovering momentarily before resting on Marlene's shoulders, applying just enough pressure to maintain a polite, public distance.
"Marlene," he said, his voice a low, steady baritone that betrayed nothing of the churning ocean beneath his skin. "How… how did you get here?"
"It was a surprise, Zuckerchan!" she beamed, her face radiating a blissful, suffocating happiness. She reached out, her fingers dancing lightly over the lapel of his jacket. "I just couldn't wait any longer. And look at you… you've grown so tall!"
Even with her 174 cm frame bolstered by sharp, high-fashion heels, she was forced to crane her neck upward to meet his gaze. At 194 cm, Bai Qi stood over her, a towering, imposing figure of lethal grace.
She clung to him again, pressing her face against the solid wall of his chest. "I missed you so much, Zuckerchan. Every single day."
Bai Qi's jaw muscles twitched. A vein pulsed visibly at his temple. He looked over her shoulder, his eyes locking onto Gerhard and his mother.
"Marlene," Bai Qi prompted, his voice strained. "Your father is standing right there. Could you please… restrain yourself?"
She turned her head to look behind her, expecting validation. She found none. Bai Mingzhu had turned her back entirely, her shoulders trembling with a mix of suppressed hysteria and existential dread. Gerhard Rosenhain was staring fixedly at a collection of Ming Dynasty vases, his face an unreadable mask of stoic, paternal indulgence.
Marlene blinked, her brow furrowing. "Why are you both looking away? Daddy? Auntie?"
She pivoted back to Bai Qi, her face lighting up with a sudden, devastatingly innocent realization. She clapped her hands together, a bright, giggling sound that seemed to mock the tension in the room.
"Oh! I understand!" she laughed, her eyes dancing. "You're all being shy! Isn't it proper for a sister to hug her big brother?"
Silence.
Bai Qi stood paralyzed, his arms still rigid at his sides. He looked at his mother as if she had just grown a second head, and he looked at Gerhard as if the man had just announced the end of the world.
Bai Mingzhu slowly turned around. Her face was a landscape of frozen, incomprehensible shock.
"Brother…?" she whispered, the word hanging in the air like a jagged shard of glass.
The hilarity of the misunderstanding was so profound, so absurdly misplaced, that for a moment, reality seemed to blur. Marlene, in her sheltered, rose-tinted, nostalgic delusion, had somehow rewritten the entire narrative of their lives. She wasn't an unwanted fiancée; she was a sister.
Bai Qi felt his composure finally snap. He looked at Gerhard, who was now clearing his throat with a sound that sounded suspiciously like a man trying to suppress a fit of hysterical, world-ending laughter.
"Marlene," Bai Qi began, his voice dangerously soft, "what exactly did you say?"
"A sister!" she repeated, oblivious to the fact that she had just detonated a social nuclear bomb. "We were childhood best friends, we made the charms together, we were always inseparable. Of course, that makes us siblings in spirit! Isn't it wonderful?"
Bai Mingzhu let out a sound—half-gasp, half-sob—that might have been a laugh, had it not been colored by the terror of a woman realizing her son was about to snap.
"Brother," Bai Qi repeated to himself, his voice a hollow, chilling echo. He turned his gaze.
The word brother hung in the air, a bizarre, fragile ornament on a Christmas tree of chaos.
Bai Qi felt a sudden, bittersweet ache bloom in his chest. A faint, tired smile touched his lips—not the cold, predatory smirk he showed his rivals, but a ghost of genuine history. He remembered Marlene. She had always been this way: relentless, oblivious, and fiercely, suffocatingly protective. She lived in a version of reality where the edges were always rounded, and the hard truths were simply ignored.
"Marlene," Bai Qi began, his voice softening, though his eyes remained guarded. "Tell me… why did you really want to surprise me?"
"I heard," she started, her voice dropping to a whisper, her eyes full of a clumsy, unrefined empathy. She hesitated, her lip trembling as if she were about to deliver a eulogy. "I heard that your fiancée… she left you."
The room went deathly quiet.
Bai Qi's eyes widened, then went perfectly, dangerously still. The memory of the Qing Yue engagement surfaced.
"Marlene," Bai Qi began, his tone warningly level.
"I just couldn't stand it!" she interrupted, fueled by her own manufactured sorrow. "Everything happened so suddenly! I saw the reports, I heard the News."
She leaned in, her gaze searching his face for cracks. "Do you feel sad, Zuckerchan? I'm so sorry if it hurts your feelings. But don't worry… your little sister is here now. I will make you laugh again."
She moved closer, her scent—an over-sweet, floral perfume—wafting into his senses, a stark contrast to the clean, woodsy aroma he had donned for himself. She peered into his eyes, and her breath hitched.
"Look at you," she murmured, her voice laced with tragic awe. "Auntie said you looked so heartbroken when she left. I can see the red veins in your eyes, Zuckerchan. You've been weeping for her, haven't you?"
Bai Qi felt a muscle in his jaw snap. The 'red veins' she saw weren't from heartbreak; they were from the sheer, burning exhaustion of keeping a vigil over a dying boy in the East Wing. They were the physical toll of his rage and his fear.
"It's okay," Marlene promised, her hand patting his chest with a terrifyingly firm, maternal rhythm. "I've already decided. I will find a good match for you. A real one. One who won't leave you alone."
Bai Qi's heart delivered a violent, sickening thud against his ribs.
No.