Chapter 1 — Champion Bodyguard of the Female President

The forty-second floor of Kieu Phat Tower was bathed in pale yellow light at eleven o'clock at night. Outside the glass frame, Saigon was still bright as if it had never known the concept of rest, and the lines of cars on the boulevard below looked like a strip of light flowing continuously. Kieu Tue Lam sat behind a wide mahogany desk, in front of her was a thick stack of financial reports, each page had numbers circled in red with her own pen.

Three months. It had been only three months since she officially took the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kieu Phat Group, taking the place of her father who was lying motionless in the hospital's special care room. Three months, but to Tue Lam, it felt as long as if she had aged ten years.

"You're not back yet?" Do Thuy Linh, her personal assistant, lightly knocked on the glass door frame and walked in, holding a steaming cup of ginger tea. "I thought you were going to sleep here forever."

"There are still a few reports to review before the shareholders' meeting next week." Tue Lam did not raise her head, her fingers still slid along the data line. "The group of small shareholders is being incited by someone, they are demanding a vote of no confidence in the current board of directors. You need to clearly understand who is behind this before they can take action."

Thuy Linh put the cup of tea on the table, her eyes slightly worried. "Miss Lam, I don't want to keep talking about this, but in the past three months, there have been two times you almost encountered danger. Last time someone tampered with the control system of the elevator, this time..."

"I know," Tue Lam interrupted, her voice soft but decisive. "I am worried. But if I stop because of fear, this whole corporation will fall into someone else's hands within a month. Dad has devoted his whole life to this place, I can't let it collapse as soon as he falls."

She stood up, walked to the large glass window, looking down at the city's lights. This is the perspective from which her father often stands every night, holding a cup of tea, telling her about the difficult early days of his career, about how a small processing factory grew into a multi-industry corporation. He still says, every building in this city carries a story, and Kieu Phat's story is a story of perseverance and never giving up.

But now, the storyteller is lying silently on the hospital bed, the entangled tubes and wires replacing the warm voice of the past.

Three months ago, Mr. Kieu Thanh Nghia suddenly collapsed in his office and was diagnosed with a stroke. Doctors say it is the result of years of pressure from work, age, and sleepless nights. Tue Lam believes that, or at least she used to believe it, until strange things started happening soon after — anonymous threats, strange emails asking her to cede her voting rights, and now "random" accidents that keep targeting her.

"Do you think," Thuy Linh said softly, standing next to her looking out at the city, "your story is not as simple as the doctor said?"

Tue Lam was silent for a long time. That question had been lingering in her mind for weeks, but she had never dared to say it out loud, as if just admitting it would make everything more real, more terrifying.

"I don't know," she finally replied. "But I know there is someone who wants this corporation to collapse. And that person is not afraid to use any tricks to achieve their goal."

The memory of that morning three months ago was still clear in her mind. She was on her way to the office when she received a call from her father's personal secretary, with a panicked voice informing her that he had collapsed right at his desk. When she ran into the emergency room, the first image that caught her eye was her father lying motionless on a stretcher, his face pale, breathing weakly through an oxygen mask. The man who always stood straight in the face of all difficulties now looks strangely small.

The doctor said he was lucky to be discovered in time, but the brain damage caused him to fall into a deep coma, not knowing when he would wake up, if he could wake up at all. Tue Lam stood silently next to the hospital bed all night, holding her father's thin hand tightly, feeling every weak heartbeat through her fingertips, trying not to let tears fall in front of the doctors.

The next morning, she had to stand in front of the entire Board of Directors and announce that she would temporarily take on the position of Chairman. She still clearly remembers the eyes of the people around the meeting table that day - there was sympathy, but there were also many judgmental eyes, doubting whether a twenty-six year old girl was capable of taking on a corporation with thousands of employees.

The person who opposes the most harshly is none other than Vice President Luong Khac Viet.

"Miss Lam is too young, too inexperienced to take on this position during such a sensitive period as the present," he said in front of the entire council, his tone seemed worried for the company but behind it was a cold wariness. "I suggest we consider another interim governance option, perhaps an interim executive council staffed by people with long experience."

Tue Lam still clearly remembers the feeling at that time - as if the ground under her feet was shaking, but she stood up straight, looked straight at Mr. Luong Khac Viet and said, her voice not shaking even though her heart was stormy: "My father entrusted me with this position before he fell ill. If you don't trust me, you can wait for the results in the next six months and then reevaluate."

In the vote that day, she narrowly won, thanks to the support of long-time shareholders who had been with her father since the early days. But since then, everything seems to have become a silent, undeclared war. With each passing week, she discovers another unusual sign — a contract leaked to a competitor, a major investor suddenly withdrawing capital for no apparent reason, and now the times when her life is almost in danger.

"Miss Lam," Thuy Linh spoke up, pulling her back to reality, "I think you should rest. Tomorrow you have to go to the hospital to visit your uncle, and then have a meeting with the legal department."

Tue Lam nodded and returned to her desk to collect papers. But as soon as her hand touched the phone to turn off the screen, a message appeared from an unknown number, with no identification name, just a few words that made her whole body cold:

"The more you try to hold on, the more you will lose. Be wise and let go before it's too late."

Her hand trembled slightly. This wasn't the first time she'd received such messages, but this time, there was something in the words that made her feel colder than ever before — as if the sender was very close, following her every step.

"Sister, what's wrong?" Thuy Linh noticed her changed expression and quickly walked over.

Tue Lam silently showed the phone to Thuy Linh. After the assistant read it, her face also turned pale. "You have to report to the police. This is no longer an empty threat."

"I told you twice before," Tue Lam sighed, putting her phone in her bag. "But they couldn't find any clues. The phone numbers were always junk SIM cards, used once and then destroyed. The person behind this is very careful, and seems to have a lot of resources."

She looked out the window again, the city lights sparkling like thousands of eyes watching. In that moment, she suddenly remembered what her father had told her during a rare moment of brief consciousness before falling deeper into a coma. His voice was whispering but his eyes were filled with unusual seriousness.

"If something happens to you... and no one in the company can help... go to the northern mountain, where there is a sect that once owed a lot to your family. I never told you this, because I didn't want you to worry more. But if I'm no longer here to protect you, they will be the only people you can trust."

At that time, Tue Lam only thought her father was delirious from medicine. She brushed that story aside, considering it the meaningless words of a seriously ill person. But now, amid the mounting threats and the constant feeling of insecurity, she began to wonder whether her father, always alert and realistic in every little detail, was really just delirious.

"Thuy Linh," she said softly, her voice low, "do you remember when I told you, when you were a child, you had a close friend? The boy who lived in my villa, the son of the security captain..."

Thuy Linh frowned slightly, trying to remember. "You mentioned it once, a long time ago. You said he disappeared after a fire or something, right?"

Tue Lam nodded, looking distantly at the city lights, as if trying to see across a distance of hundreds of kilometers to see the misty mountain peaks in the North. "Yes. I have never told the whole story to anyone, because it is too painful. But perhaps, it is time for me to rediscover a part of the past that I have tried to forget for the past eighteen years."

That night, after Thuy Linh left, Tue Lam sat alone in the office for a long time, the only bright desk lamp casting her long shadow on the wall. She opened the bottom drawer of her desk, where a small old wooden box was kept, inside were a few souvenirs she had not been able to throw away over the years - a faded red thread bracelet, a few glass marbles, and an old photo of two children standing under an old poinciana tree in the villa's yard, smiling brightly, unaware of what was about to happen in their lives.

She gently touched the silver bracelet on her right wrist, a gift that the boy had given her when she was eight years old, engraved with the image of a tiny cloud. For eighteen years, she had never taken it off, even though she no longer remembered how clearly the face of the person who gave it to her had faded from her mind.

"If there really is a place like Dad said," she whispered to herself, her voice so quiet that only the empty room could hear it, "then perhaps, it's time for me to go find it."

She folded the old photo and put it in a wooden box, but her hand still lingered on the lid of the box for a while longer. Outside, the city still glows as if it has never slept. She pulled out her phone, opened her calendar for the coming week, crossed off appointments one by one until both weekends were empty, then set the phone down on the table, screen face down, as if she had locked one door so she could open another.