Chapter 7 — The Heiress's Selection of a Husband

Chu Vinh Bach sat in his private office on the third floor of the main mansion, his fingers lightly tapping on the glossy mahogany table, his eyes never leaving the personnel report that had just been presented by his secretary. He had just heard a story from a long-time maid about how a new girl discovered a calculation error in Vinh Khang's financial documents, a seemingly small detail that made him uneasy.

"Miss Thu, what is her background?" He asked directly when Mrs. Xuan was summoned to the office.

"Yes sir, she has all the papers, an acquaintance introduced her, works hard, nothing unusual yet." Mrs. Xuan replied, her voice somewhat reserved in response to Vinh Bach's serious attitude.

"I don't doubt that I'm diligent, but a country girl who claims to have only finished middle school was able to find errors in the complex capital flow allocation table that my younger brother is in charge of. Don't you find it strange?" Vinh Bach growled, his eyes cold. "These days, competitors are willing to put people inside the house to spy on internal information. Do you think that can't happen to our Chu Nguyen family?"

Mrs. Xuan remained silent, not daring to refute but also not completely agreeing with her boss's somewhat excessive speculation. Vinh Bach waved his hand to signal her to step down, then called an acquaintance working in the private investigation field, requesting to verify the entire background of "Do Thi Thu" that Ms. Xuan had received.

Three days later, the investigation report was sent back, but the results made Vinh Bach even more suspicious instead of reassured. Information about the village where she declared her hometown actually existed, and the citizen identification card was also valid on the system, but when the investigation team tried to find acquaintances and old neighbors to further verify her identity, they only received vague answers, and a few people even expressed uncertainty about the existence of a girl named Thu in the village in recent years.

"Shady background, unclear." Vinh Bach slammed his hand on the table and immediately called Ms. Xuan to take Anh Thu to the office to confront him directly.

Mrs. Xuan went down to the kitchen to help look for Anh Thu with a strange expression on her face, no longer maintaining her usual seriousness, but instead a flicker of worry. "Thu, Big Uncle called me to his office urgently. Remember to speak carefully, don't make him angry any more."

Ms. Thu quickly wiped her hands on her apron, her heart pounding all the way following Mrs. Xuan to the third floor. She had anticipated that the act of correcting the previous day's calculation could cause trouble, but she did not expect things to escalate so quickly that an entire private investigation team was mobilized just to verify the background of an ordinary maid. That showed her more clearly than ever the level of caution and power of the family she was trying to infiltrate, and at the same time made her secretly fear that her fake ID and fabricated story about her hometown wouldn't be able to withstand such scrutiny for long.

Standing in front of the office door, she took a deep breath, tried to rearrange her mind, and reminded herself to maintain the role of a simple country girl even though her heart was in turmoil. She thought of her father's notebook, of the old photo she had just found, of Mrs. Lien's last words, and told herself that no matter what happened, she must not reveal even the slightest clue about her true identity.

When Anh Thu entered the room, she immediately felt the tense atmosphere surrounding her. Vinh Bach sat behind the desk, his eyes as sharp as knives looking straight at her, not hiding his suspicion in the slightest.

"What is your real name?" He asked directly, without beating around the bush.

"Yes, my name is Thu, Do Thi Thu." Anh Thu bowed her head, trying to keep her trembling voice naturally like a maid being called up for an unknown reason.

"So why couldn't my investigation team find anyone in your hometown who confirmed you lived there? Do you think I'm so stupid that I wouldn't recognize a fabricated story?" Vinh Bach stood up, walked around the table, and approached her with an overwhelming look.

Anh Thu's heart was pounding, but she understood that if she panicked too much right now, things would get worse. She raised her eyes, trying to maintain the innocent look mixed with a little resentment of a weak person who was wrongly suspected. "Yes, I don't understand what Elder means. I was born in a small, remote village with few people, my parents died early, I live with distant relatives, maybe that's why people don't know me well. I really just want to find a stable job to get by."

"Do you know which rival company is trying to steal Chu Nguyen Group's financial information?" Vinh Bach continued asking, his voice filled with murderous intent. "Who sent you here? Honestly, I can still be lenient, but if you continue to pretend to be naive, don't blame me for not being polite."

"I swear I won't be a spy for anyone!" Anh Thu burst into tears, not purely acting because the real pressure was weighing on her right now. "I'm just a poor country girl. I'm very happy to find a job here. How dare I do such a terrible thing."

Her tears and trembling voice made Vinh Bach pause a bit, but the inherently skeptical nature of a head of a large corporation did not allow him to be easily softened. "Tears don't prove anything. I will give you three days to automatically leave this mansion, assuming I am generous and not pursue further. If after three days you are still here, don't blame me for handing you over to the police to investigate."

"Please Elder, I have nowhere to go." Anh Thu knelt down, not to beg for show, but because she was truly panicked at the risk of having to leave the mansion without finding sufficient evidence to exonerate her father. She still had too many unfinished tasks: she hasn't confirmed Chu Bach Dinh's role, hasn't found witnesses, and did not have enough documents to confront her in front of the whole family.

Vinh Bach looked at her kneeling on the floor. His face remained cold, but in his eyes there was a slight fluctuation that was hard to detect. At that moment, the door to the room opened and Vinh Khang walked in, perhaps having heard part of the confrontation from the hallway.

"Eldest Brother, what's going on?" Vinh Khang asked, his voice was calm but his eyes immediately looked towards Anh Thu who was kneeling on the floor, tears still wet her face.

"I'm handling an internal security matter, you don't need to interfere." Vinh Bach replied curtly, clearly not wanting to be bothered while he was exercising his eldest brother's authority.

Vinh Khang stood still for a moment, his eyes swept across Anh Thu's tear-stained face and stopped at her hands that were clutching the hem of her shirt, trembling uncontrollably. There was something in that panicked look that made him unable to indifferently leave like his eldest brother wanted, even though he couldn't explain why he was so concerned about a maid he had only known for less than a month.

"What did she do wrong to be treated like that?" Vinh Khang approached, his voice still gentle but with a steadfastness that was not easily shaken.

Vinh Bach looked at his younger brother, a bit annoyed at being questioned right in front of outsiders, but also understood that Vinh Khang was not the type of person to easily ignore him when he was determined to intervene in something. "Her background is unclear, the investigation team could not verify the information. He suspected she was a spy planted in his house, so he gave her three days to leave on her own."

The atmosphere in the room suddenly became extremely tense. Anh Thu still knelt on the floor, not daring to raise her head to look directly at the two brothers facing each other. In her heart, she was both scared and hopeful, not knowing which side Chu Vinh Khang, the calmest and most intelligent man among the three brothers, would take in this difficult situation.

She clearly heard her own breathing, heavy and urgent, mixed with the sound of the grandfather clock hanging on the wall ticking slowly as if counting down the time to her fate. If Vinh Bach resolutely chased her away in the next three days, all the effort she had put in over the past month would go up in smoke, and the only door leading to the truth about her father's unjust death would also close forever. She didn't know what other chance she could find to approach the Chu family again if she failed this time, and that thought made the tears on her face even more real, without having to try to act anything more.