Chapter 26 — Post-Divorce Rebound: Claiming My Daughter and Starting Over

The night had passed in a blur of near-total insomnia. By the following morning, after ensuring that little Nuan Nuan was well cared for, I reached out to a freelance illustrator I had collaborated with in the past—a person I held in high regard and trusted implicitly—to watch over the child for a couple of hours. Once that was settled, I made my way to the address Shen Yuming had provided.

It was a secluded tea house, tucked away at the very end of a narrow, quiet alley in the old district. The lane was lined with towering sycamore trees, their branches interlacing overhead like a canopy. The signage was incredibly discreet, barely visible to the casual passerby. Inside, the decor leaned toward an elegant, classical aesthetic, fostering a sense of profound privacy. Guided by a soft-spoken attendant, I navigated the winding corridors until I reached the innermost private room.

Shen Yuming had arrived ahead of me. Several thick document folders lay scattered on the table before him, and his brows were knit together in a tight, troubled line. To my surprise, I was not his only guest. A woman in her thirties, dressed in a sharp, comfortable pantsuit, sat across from him. She possessed a brisk, decisive air. As I entered, she paused her focus on her phone and looked up. Her eyes, sharp and discerning, swept over me in a single, practiced glance. It was an evaluative look, yet somehow, it did not feel invasive.

"Ms. Diep," Shen Yuming said by way of introduction, gesturing toward her. "This is To Tinh. She is my partner. She possesses vast experience in the field of information gathering and analysis."

To Tinh offered a small, curt nod—a greeting that dispensed with all unnecessary formalities. She skipped the pleasantries and went straight to the heart of the matter.

"Ms. Diep, I will be brief," she began, her voice steady and professional. "Following the leads you provided regarding Lam Vy Vy, we have discovered something quite unsettling. Her background is clean—unnervingly so. It is as if someone had scrubbed her history with meticulous care. But in this line of work, the cleaner the record, the more suspicious it becomes."

She slid a tablet across the table toward me. The screen displayed a series of grainy images, clearly stills captured from security footage.

"After a great deal of effort, we managed to reconstruct her movements during the three months leading up to her arrival at the Co household—essentially four years ago. During that window, she was seen frequently visiting a private clinic on the west side of the city, which has since shuttered, and a medical consulting firm in a neighboring city, which eventually had its license revoked for regulatory violations."

In the photos, I saw a version of Lam Vy Vy from years ago. She was dressed in plain, unremarkable clothing, a stark contrast to the refined, delicate persona she adopted after moving in with the Co family. In every frame, she was hunched over, walking with urgent, hurried steps, constantly surrounded by a shifting array of different people.

To Tinh spoke with a calm, clinical detachment, yet every word she uttered sent a chill racing down my spine.

"On the surface, both the clinic and the consulting firm operated under the guise of legitimate business," she explained. "But in reality, there is a strong probability they were involved in underground black-market transactions—illegal embryo implantation and illicit surrogacy."

"Embryo implantation? Surrogacy?" I felt my breath hitch. I immediately turned toward Shen Yuming. He offered a slight, grave nod, his expression heavy with the weight of the implications.

"These are only the preliminary lines of investigation," he cautioned, his voice low. "Nothing has been fully verified yet."

But if Lam Vy Vy was truly linked to those facilities, then her entrance into the Co household and the origins of those three children were far more sinister than mere infidelity or the arrival of a secret mistress. A wild, horrifying thought, impossible to suppress, began to take root in my mind.

"Are you suggesting..." I started, my voice trembling. "That Tu Hien, Tu Hao, and Tu Thuy were not conceived naturally? Perhaps... they aren't even biologically related to Co Dinh Tham and Lam Vy Vy at all?"

I could not bring myself to finish the sentence; the weight of the speculation felt suffocating.

"We suspect," To Tinh continued, stepping in to finish the thought for me, "that Lam Vy Vy may have utilized illegal means to acquire embryos that met Co Dinh Tham's specific 'requirements.' She then carried them herself, using that as her bargaining chip to infiltrate the Co family and bind Co Dinh Tham to her permanently."