Chapter 11 — Tears in the Frost

To avoid having to encounter Tống Khả Di again on the forty-second floor — where she began to visit more often in the name of discussing investment cooperation — Thư Nhã asked to be temporarily transferred to work in the old records room of the board of directors, a small room hidden on the thirty-eighth floor, where all of the group's legal documents and contracts from more than a decade ago were stored.

She used the excuse of needing to review the storage system to serve the year-end internal audit, but in reality, she simply wanted a quiet space, away from the prying eyes and whispers out there, to have time to think thoroughly about her decision, a decision that she knew would affect the rest of her and the child's life.

The storage room is covered with the dust of time, old metal filing cabinets are lined up in long rows, each drawer is numbered by year. Thư Nhã spent the whole morning cleaning and rearranging yellowed files. Simple manual work helped her temporarily forget the turmoil in her heart.

Pale sunlight penetrated through the small window covered with dust, shining in sparkling streaks in the quiet air of the room, where it seemed like time had stopped compared to the hustle and bustle of life outside. She felt her heart soften a bit in this space, away from the judging eyes and whispers that had constantly surrounded her these past few days.

Near noon, when pulling out a drawer marking the year of a financial event three years ago - the year Mr. Lang had a heart attack, the year she signed a marriage contract with Bách Việt - she accidentally dropped a thick, worn leather-bound file on the floor. The pages inside were scattered everywhere, and when she bent down to pick it up, her eyes accidentally stopped on a document page with a title that made her heart pound: "Internal memo - Plan to stabilize Việt Thịnh's governance structure after the financial leak incident."

She sat down on the floor, her trembling hands flipping through each document page, her eyes quickly skimming over each line of solemnly typed words, accompanied by the signature and confirmation seal of the corporate legal department from three years ago, feeling like she was opening a door leading into a past that she had never been allowed to know.

*

The document clearly states that just a few hours after Mr. Lang was hospitalized for a heart attack, an emergency meeting between the Lang family and the Song family took place, in which the Song family proposed a "solution to stabilize shareholder confidence" through a merger between Bách Việt and Tống Khả Di.

But what shocked Thư Nhã the most was not that detail - she had vaguely guessed it somewhat from what Khả Di had hinted at - but a handwritten note in the margin of the document page, a familiar handwriting that she immediately recognized as Bách Việt's: "The merger plan cannot be accepted. An alternative plan needs to be found within forty-eight hours. There are suitable personnel - trustworthy enough, brave enough to protect this secret for a long time."

And on the next page, a carefully typed draft proposal, dated just one day after that emergency meeting, with the title: "Proposed contract marriage plan — Proposing party: Lăng Bách Việt. Proposed party: Kiều Thư Nhã."

Thư Nhã sat silently on the cold floor, her hands clasped tightly around the file, her mind reeling, unable to accept the information she had just read. For the past three years, she has always believed that she was just a random choice, someone called in at an urgent time for convenience - Bách Việt himself let her understand that, never corrected or explained anything else. But this document, with the words "Recommending party: Bách Việt Mausoleum", tells a completely different story.

He was never forced to choose her as a last resort. He proactively proposed to her, clearly stating the reason "reliable enough, brave enough" - words that showed that this was a calculated, carefully considered decision, not a random choice in a panic.

*

She continued flipping through the remaining pages of the document, looking for any more clues that could better explain the true motive behind Bách Việt's decision. But most of the remaining content is just the dry legal terms of the marriage contract, without any other personal notes.

Only the last page, almost tucked into the back cover of the file, was a small note, with more hasty handwriting, seemingly written in a private moment rather than an official document: "She does not deserve to suffer the consequences of other people's calculations. But this is the only way he can protect her, protect the company, without turning her into a victim of a real marriage forced by someone like Khả Di."

Thư Nhã read and reread that line many times, tears began to roll down her cheeks without her even realizing it. She didn't fully understand the meaning behind that sentence — "protect her" from what, why did she mention "turning her into a victim" — but clearly, behind Bách Việt's cold and calculated decision three years ago, there was something much more complicated than she had ever imagined.

She closed the documents, hugged them tightly to her chest, and sat silently in the middle of the dusty storage room, her mind filled with hundreds of thoughts. If Bách Việt had proactively chosen her, had taken the time to consider carefully instead of simply jumping at a convenient solution in a panic, then why had he never told her this truth for the past three years? Why did he let her believe that he was just a meaningless pawn, a random choice without any special meaning?

She tried to remember every moment in the past three years, every time Bách Việt accidentally showed a small concern and then quickly retreated as if afraid of being discovered. Now, when paired with the newly found documents, those disparate pieces began to form a completely different picture from what she had believed for so long.

*

She left the storage room when it was dark, and she carefully put the documents in her own bag, leaving no trace that it had been discovered. On the way back to the apartment, her mind was still reeling with hundreds of unanswered questions. Every step she took through the familiar hallway of the building now suddenly became strange, as if she was looking back at the entire past three years with completely different eyes.

She remembered Tống Khả Di's words at the office a few days ago: "Three years ago, after the company was in crisis, he needed a marriage on paper to reassure shareholders." That statement, now when compared with the newly found documents, seems to be only half true. It's true that there was a crisis, it's true that marriage was used to reassure shareholders, but the real motive behind choosing her, over anyone else, was still a mystery she couldn't fully explain.

And the question that haunted her the most, the question that made her unable to sleep that night as she lay next to the sleeping Bách Việt, was: was the crisis three years ago directly related to Tống Khả Di herself or her family? And if that was true, then the return of that woman now, with the Hằng Phát Investment Fund targeting Việt Thịnh, was it simply a coincidence, or a continuation of a conspiracy that began a long time ago, a conspiracy that she, without her knowledge, accidentally became part of the solution?

Thư Nhã looked up at the ceiling in the dark, clutching the documents still hidden under her pillow, telling herself that tomorrow, she would begin to learn the truth, whether or not it would cause her to face even more painful things. She glanced at Bách Việt sleeping next to her. His face in sleep looked strangely peaceful, different from the tension he had always carried throughout recent days, and she wondered if behind that peaceful appearance, he was hiding many more things that she had never known.