The girl pointed to the short-haired woman with glasses in the photo.
“When I first came to live with you, she came over to do homework. I accidentally broke her fountain pen, but she wasn’t mad. She even folded a paper airplane for me to play with, using a sheet from her composition notebook.”
Tiểu Nhã gently stroked the photograph in silence. “She was so gentle and kind. What was her name again?”
“Lý Huệ,” I replied softly.
Tiểu Nhã nodded and set the photograph down. Just then, the door opened, and Deputy General Manager Vương walked in.
“President Tô, there are some documents that need your urgent signature. Could you take a look…”
While I signed the papers, Tiểu Nhã sat beside me. Her phone rang; an audio recording had been sent to her email.
She listened for a moment, then her expression turned grave.
“Aunt Tô, listen to this.”
The recording was a conversation between James and Tô Tinh Tinh.
James: “Are you crazy? Why did you go to your mother’s company and make a scene? Now the whole world is investigating me, and all those stories have been dug up again.”
Tô Tinh Tinh: “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t think things would turn out like this… But don’t worry, those stories are all false. I believe you’re innocent.”
James (after a brief silence): “I know, but you don’t understand. I have a few enemies back home. At first, they didn’t know I’d returned. Now look—the online crowd is digging into everything like crazy. They’ll find me soon.”
Tô Tinh Tinh: “What do we do now? Should we go abroad?”
James (angrily): “Easy for you to say! Going abroad takes money! I told you, my accounts are frozen. They won’t be unfrozen unless I can put new money in! I only came back with you because you said you could get money from your mother. And now? You’ve ruined everything!”
Tô Tinh Tinh (sniffling): “Don’t worry. I know how to get a lot of money.”
Tô Tinh Tinh lowered her voice, and the audio became very muffled at that point.
A moment later, James shouted, “Are you crazy?!”
As soon as he finished speaking, someone pounded on the door outside, accompanied by a rough shout: “James?! I know you’re in there. Quit hiding!”
Then came a commotion and the sound of hurried footsteps. The recording ended.
Deputy General Manager Vương asked Tiểu Nhã curiously, “How did you get this recording?”
Tiểu Nhã hesitated before answering, “When Tô Tinh Tinh made a scene and got into a fight with me today, I attached a listening device to her clothes.”
An ordinary person might have been taken in by that explanation, but Deputy General Manager Vương was an old hand. He immediately noticed something off about Tiểu Nhã’s demeanor.
“That doesn’t sound right.” He studied Tiểu Nhã, then turned to me. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something fishy going on here?”
“Also, who was the person pounding on the door in the recording?”
“Probably a debt collector. Didn’t James say he had a lot of enemies back home?”
Deputy General Manager Vương narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Is that so? Then why does that voice sound so much like Tiểu Thái from our company’s security department?”
Tiểu Nhã turned pale and looked at me. I smiled.
“All right, Tiểu Nhã, tell Uncle Vương the truth. He’s not an outsider.”
06
Half a month later, I received an urgent phone call.
Tô Tinh Tinh’s cold voice came through the phone. “Mom, if you still want that two-faced snake to live, bring $20 million in cash here.”
My voice was so frantic it nearly broke. “Tô Tinh Tinh, what are you going to do? Tiểu Nhã is only eighteen—”
The call abruptly disconnected. I immediately sent people to investigate, and the news came back quickly.
Recently, Tiểu Nhã had passed her driving test and hired an instructor to practice driving on the road.
But the GPS tracker on Tiểu Nhã’s phone showed that just half an hour later, her car had veered off its original route and headed straight for the suburbs.
The instructor had left false personal information with the driving school. It went without saying that he was one of James’s “actors.”
James shouldn’t have taken such a risk, but he had no choice. Lately, people had been showing up one after another to cause trouble for him.
James had always conned people out of their money and made them fall for him. To cultivate the image of a rich, handsome man, he’d borrowed a lot of money to rent villas and luxury cars. When he couldn’t keep it up back home anymore, he went abroad.
He must have agreed to return this time because he thought a delicious windfall had dropped into his lap—why pass it up? Tô Tinh Tinh was the only child in her family, with no siblings to compete with for the inheritance, so he could take everything with ease. She was too naive and easy to manipulate.
But after he came back, nothing went as smoothly as he’d hoped. Seeing things turn for the worse, James must have feared that if he didn’t get out now, he’d lose his chance altogether. That was why he was risking everything to grab a large sum of money and flee.
I did as Tô Tinh Tinh demanded and drove alone to the suburbs.
In an old, abandoned warehouse, I saw a group of men and women. They were all James’s accomplices.
In each of James’s scams, some people played “business partners,” others acted as “butlers and bodyguards,” and still others were “ex-girlfriends who had hurt him deeply.”
They helped James make his act convincing, and in return, they made a fortune. Some of the women he swindled stayed silent for fear of being branded “stupid gold diggers,” while others now lay forever beneath the earth, their lives ending in despair.
Tô Tinh Tinh stood beside James. Beside her was a tall man in a hood, holding Tiểu Nhã at knifepoint.
When Tiểu Nhã saw me arrive, she burst into tears, but didn’t dare cry out. She only sobbed quietly. I set down the suitcase. “I brought the money. Let her go.”
James glanced at the suitcase. “You’re telling me $20 million fits in a little suitcase like that?”
I replied coldly, “Do you know what $20 million in cash looks like? How could I gather that much money in such a short time?”
The woman standing beside James had long, curly hair and vivid red lipstick. I’d seen her on the news. In James’s schemes, she always played the “ex-girlfriend who conned him out of money and kept coming back to extort him.”
Just then, she smoothed her hair and frowned. “That’s not what you told me, honey.”
The big men around them were unhappy, too, and muttered a reminder: “There are a lot of us here.”
So many of us are taking this risk, and you’ve only brought a few tens of millions. That’s nowhere near enough to split between us.
James frowned and grabbed Tô Tinh Tinh by the hair. “What’s going on? You told me your mother could come up with 20 million in cash!”
“She can…” Tô Tinh Tinh sobbed in pain. “My mom definitely has the money!”
James was nearly out of patience. He raised his hand to hit her, but Tô Tinh Tinh cried, “Don’t hit me! Let me talk to my mom!”
Still crying, Tô Tinh Tinh dropped to her knees and crawled toward me. “Mom, you have 20 million. How can you not be willing to spend it to save Tiểu Nhã? Or in your heart, am I still your only daughter…”
Disgusted, I backed away one step at a time. “Don’t come any closer. I don’t consider you my daughter.”
Tô Tinh Tinh kept crying as she crawled toward me. “Please, Mom, I’m begging you. Please let us be together…”
I backed away, and Tô Tinh Tinh came closer. By the time James realized something was wrong, dozens of yards separated me from them.
Police sirens blared, followed by an officer shouting from outside, “Don’t move!”
James instinctively glanced to the side and saw the police had arrived. But he still had a hostage, so he could buy himself some time—
When he turned around, he froze.
While Tô Tinh Tinh cried loudly to draw everyone’s attention, the tall man had moved Tiểu Nhã farther away. The curly-haired woman tried to rush over and stop him, but he kicked her sprawling.
The man took off his hood and ran toward us, protecting Tiểu Nhã.
“Ms. Tô.”
I nodded to him. He was the “driving instructor” Tô Tinh Tinh had hired to kidnap Tiểu Nhã, but he had another identity: he was Deputy General Manager Vương’s nephew.
James was completely stunned. As the police restrained him, he looked up at us, his eyes filled with confusion.
“Tô Tinh Tinh…”
Tô Tinh Tinh stood there, trembling as if she’d just run a marathon. Tiểu Nhã went over and took her hand, trying to warm it. I came over, too, and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t be scared. I’m here with you,” I whispered. “I’m proud of you.”
James stared wide-eyed at the three of us, mother and daughters, his gaze full of disbelief.
“Tô Tinh Tinh…” Only now did he realize the truth. “You’ve been lying to me from the very beginning…”
Tô Tinh Tinh looked down at James. The eyes that had once been full of infatuation with him were now cold.
“Why?!” James struggled like a madman, and the two officers could barely hold him.
I looked coldly at the arrogant man who had used his charm to spread misery and commit crimes. This had to be the first time a woman had brought him down.
Tô Tinh Tinh showed no fear. She looked at James and said softly, “Do you remember Lý Huệ?”
James faltered.
It was a long time before he finally remembered that name.
I watched his handsome face slowly turn pale, all color draining from it.
He understood the truth.