Chapter 2: He Thinks I'm Bluffing

The villa was bigger than the Cheng mansion.

I don't know why that was the first thing I noticed. Maybe because for three years, I'd been told that the Chengs lived in the finest house in the city, that I should be grateful to sleep under their roof, that women like me didn't get to live in places like that without earning it on their backs or their knees.

The car pulled through iron gates and up a long, curving drive lined with sycamores. At the end of it sat a house — white stone, floor-to-ceiling windows, a garden that wrapped around both sides and disappeared into what looked like an actual forest. There was a pool. There were fountains. There were more rooms than I could count from the outside.

A row of staff stood waiting at the front steps. When I stepped out of the car, they bowed. All of them. At the same time.

"Good afternoon, Ms. Sun."

I almost looked behind me to see who they were talking to.

"The master bedroom is on the second floor," the head housekeeper said, walking beside me. Older woman, kind face, the type who'd been running rich people's houses for decades. "The nursery is being prepared in the adjoining room. If there's anything you need — anything at all — please don't hesitate."

I nodded. Kept walking.

The bedroom was south-facing. Warm light. Silk sheets that felt like cool water against my fingers. A bathroom the size of my entire room at the Cheng house, with a soaking tub and a vanity that had more lights than a Broadway stage.

I walked straight past all of it to the balcony.

The garden was beautiful. Wind came up carrying the smell of jasmine and fresh-cut grass. Somewhere below, a sprinkler ticked quietly.

The baby moved.

I put my hand on my belly. "Hey," I murmured. "This is home now. Just you and me."

The wind tangled my hair and I didn't fix it.

I stood there until the lawyer knocked and said dinner was ready.

Dinner was ridiculous. More food than I'd seen at any Cheng family banquet — roasted duck, sea bass, two kinds of soup, a salad with ingredients I couldn't name. Two servers stood behind my chair, watching, ready to refill my water before the glass was half empty.

I managed maybe four spoonfuls of congee before I put my spoon down.

"Is the food not to your liking, Ms. Sun?" the housekeeper asked, already half-turning toward the kitchen. "I can have the chef prepare something else—"

"It's fine. I'm just not hungry."

She looked at me the way the lawyer had looked at me in the car — like she was trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces. A woman who'd just inherited fifteen billion dollars, and all she wanted was to sit quietly and eat half a bowl of rice porridge.

I wasn't being dramatic. I genuinely didn't have an appetite.

For three years at the Cheng house, I'd trained myself to eat small. Don't take too much — Margaret would call it greedy. Don't reach across the table — that was low-class. Eat slowly, eat neatly, don't make noise, don't take seconds. Be grateful for what's on your plate and don't you dare ask for more.

Now there was nobody watching.

And I couldn't eat.

Funny how that works.

After dinner, the lawyer tried again to walk me through the asset portfolio. I waved him off.

"Handle it however you think is best. You don't need to explain it to me."

He stared at me. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. He'd probably watched dozens of people inherit fortunes — the ones who screamed, the ones who cried, the ones who immediately asked how fast they could liquidate. He'd never seen someone shrug and say whatever.

"Ms. Sun," he said after a pause, "would you like to know anything about your grandfather?"

I looked at him.

The question I'd been swallowing down since the Maybach pulled away from the Cheng house finally pushed its way out.

"Why didn't he ever come find me?"

The lawyer's expression shifted. Something quiet and sad moved across his face.

"Your mother and Mr. Sun had a falling out many years ago. She left home and never went back." He spoke carefully, like he was handling something breakable. "He spent years looking for both of you. By the time he found you, you were already married. He said... he didn't want to disrupt your life."

Didn't want to disrupt my life.

So while I was choking down insults at Margaret Cheng's dinner table, my billionaire grandfather was out there somewhere, watching from a distance, saying nothing.

And now he was dead. And I had everything. And none of it meant anything, because the one person who'd actually wanted to find me had waited too long.

"Okay," I said.

I didn't cry.

I turned and looked out the window at the dark garden. The jasmine smelled even stronger at night.

ROMAN

Roman's phone woke him at six in the morning.

His assistant's voice was cracking. "Mr. Cheng — the news — have you checked — it's on every channel—"

Roman grabbed his phone and opened the Bloomberg app. Then Reuters. Then every financial news aggregator he had.

The headline hit him like a freight train.

RECLUSIVE BILLIONAIRE'S GRANDDAUGHTER REVEALED: SERENA SUN INHERITS $15 BILLION FORTUNE OVERNIGHT, BECOMES YOUNGEST SELF-MADE FEMALE BILLIONAIRE

The photo was from her college years. Ponytail. No makeup. Two dimples when she smiled. She looked about nineteen, and she was laughing at something off-camera, and Roman had never seen that photo in his life.

He scrolled. The story was everywhere. Financial Times. Wall Street Journal. Forbes had already put together a profile. T*****r was trending. His own colleagues were sharing it.

Vivian's call came in while he was still reading.

"Roman—" Her voice was shaking so hard she could barely get the words out. "Have you seen — Serena, she's really — oh God—"

He hung up on her.

He found Serena's number. The contact name was just Serena Sun. Three years of marriage and he'd never even added a heart emoji, never changed it to Wife or Babe or anything that suggested she mattered to him at all.

He hit dial.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

He tried again.

Same message.

She'd changed her number. She'd erased him.

Roman sat on the edge of his bed, phone in his hand, and stared at the wall.

Yesterday, one sentence from him had been enough to make her sign away her entire marriage without a fight. Yesterday, he'd told her to go, and she'd gone.

Today, he couldn't even get her voicemail.

His mother called. He could hear the panic before she even spoke.

"It's REAL, Roman! All of it! Lincoln Sun — do you know who that is? He was one of the biggest real estate moguls in the country before he went underground thirty years ago! And he's her GRANDFATHER! You need to get her back! RIGHT NOW!"

Roman opened his mouth to say I will.

Nothing came out.

Get her back? How?

Her phone was dead. He didn't know where she lived. He didn't even know — and this thought hit him like a punch in the teeth — what she'd been wearing when she walked out his front door.

He'd watched his eight-months-pregnant wife drag a suitcase out of his house, and he couldn't remember a single detail about her except the sound the door made when it closed.

That afternoon, he tracked down the Maybach's plates and found her address. A gated estate on the west side of the city — the kind of neighborhood where his entire net worth wouldn't cover the property tax.

He parked outside the gate.

A security guard stepped out of the booth. Polite. Professional. Built like a refrigerator.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm here to see Serena Sun." Roman straightened his jacket. Force of habit. "I'm her husband."

The guard looked at him. There was something in his expression — not pity, exactly, but close. Like a man who'd been told exactly what to say and was about to enjoy saying it.

"Ms. Sun has left instructions," the guard said. "No one named Cheng is allowed on the property."

Roman's jaw tightened. "I need to see her. Tell her it's—"

"There's one more thing, sir."

The guard paused. Just long enough to let the silence do its work.

"Ms. Sun also asked me to let you know — she doesn't have a husband."

The iron gate hummed shut.

It didn't slam. It was automatic — smooth, quiet, precise. The kind of gate that closed the same way every time, whether it was keeping out a delivery driver or a man who'd just realized he'd thrown away the most valuable thing he'd ever had.

Roman stood on the wrong side of it, staring at a house he couldn't afford to buy, and for the first time in his life, had absolutely nothing to say.

The wind picked up. Somewhere inside the estate, a light came on in an upstairs window.

He watched it for a long time.

Then he got in his car and drove away.