Chapter 8 - The Board’s Knives
At six-fifty-five, the private dining room of the Lu Manor was filled with the heavy, masculine smell of expensive cigars and aged whiskey.
Twelve men sat around a oval table made from a single slab of Brazilian rosewood. These were the directors of Dami Technology—men who controlled telecom networks, microchip foundries, and shipping lanes across three continents.
Lu Guowei sat at the far end of the table, whispering rapidly into the ear of an elderly man with a sharp, hawk-like nose: Director Zhao, the head of the audit committee and Lu Zongheng's fiercest opponent on the board.
When the double doors opened and Lu Zongheng walked in with Lin Chen on his arm, the room went entirely quiet.
Lin Chen wore the dark-gray wool dress. Her hair was pulled back into a neat, low knot at the nape of her neck, exposing her long, pale throat and the simple gold band gleaming on her left hand. She didn't carry a designer handbag; she carried herself with the calm, unhurried posture of someone who had nothing to prove and even less to lose.
"Gentlemen," Lu Zongheng announced, his voice carrying effortlessly across the room. "Allow me to introduce my wife, Lin Chen."
Director Zhao cleared his throat, his sharp eyes locking onto Lin Chen like a pair of spectacles searching for a typo.
"A sudden marriage, Zongheng," Zhao said, his voice raspy from forty years of smoking. "The market doesn't like surprises. The company's stock dropped two point four percent this afternoon on rumors that you were missing from the executive council."
"The stock dropped because my uncle leaked a false story to the Financial Daily," Lu Zongheng replied coldly, sitting down at the head of the table and pulling out the chair beside him for Lin Chen. "A story that will be retracted by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, along with an announcement of our Q3 revenue figures."
Lu Guowei stood up, his face flushed with wine and anger.
"It doesn't change the fact that your marriage is an obvious legal maneuver!" Guowei barked, pointing a finger at Lin Chen. "Director Zhao, this woman's family has no assets, no background, no standing! Her father was a factory hand! Her uncle is currently under investigation for—"
"My uncle is under investigation because your legal team offered him fifty thousand yuan to sign a false affidavit against my mother," Lin Chen cut in.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it was so clear, so precise, that Lu Guowei's mouth remained open in mid-sentence like a landed fish.
She looked around the table, meeting the eyes of every billionaire in the room one by one.
"Director Zhao," she continued, her voice steady. "My father was a lathe operator at the Second Factory. In 2011, when your microchip assembly line in Suzhou had a main-gear failure that three German engineers couldn't fix, my father worked thirty-six hours without sleep to turn a replacement spindle by hand. He saved your quarter's production targets."
Director Zhao froze, his cigar hovering two inches from his mouth. "Lin Shan? You are Lin Shan's daughter?"
"I am," Lin Chen said. "He died with six hundred yuan in his savings account because he refused to charge your company triple for an emergency repair. He told me that a man's word is worth more than the steel he turns."
She looked back at Lu Guowei, whose face had gone from red to an ashen, sickly gray.
"So if you want to discuss 'standing' and 'family honor,' Mr. Lu," Lin Chen added softly, "let's compare my father's bank account with your offshore entities in the Cayman Islands."
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The silence in the room was absolute.
Beside her, Lu Zongheng didn't say a word. But under the table, where no one else could see, his hand reached out and covered her knee, his grip firm, warm, and filled with a fierce, silent pride.
