He Saved the Heir, Then Won His Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 56
Chapter 1: The Lawyer of the Year
Xiao Chen wakes six months late to see Chi Feng accept an award for jailing Mr. Shen. He walks into the celebration, lets Chi Feng believe he remembers nothing, and follows a tabloid photo to Lantern Lane, where a waiter drops his tray at the sight of him.
On the ward television, Chi Feng stood on a stage holding a glass trophy and thanking the city for trusting him.
The caption under his smile said: Lawyer of the Year. The Shen Group fraud case.
Xiao Chen lay very still and read it twice.
The last thing he remembered was a pair of headlights on Bridge Road and a text from Chi Feng that said: Wait there, I'm coming.
The calendar on the wall said October.
The accident had been in April.
"Oh, you're awake." The night nurse dropped her clipboard. "Don't sit up. You've been under for six months."
"Where is my phone?" His voice came out cracked and small.
"Your things went to your firm, Mr. Chi's office. He signed for everything."
"I don't work for Mr. Chi. Nobody had the right to sign for my things."
She looked at him and decided not to argue with a man who had just come back from the dead.
"Who visited me?"
"Mr. Chi's assistant came twice, to sign forms," she said, thinking. "And a boy came every Sunday."
"What boy?"
"Young. Thin. He smelled like frying oil. He never gave his name, and he always left at the bell."
She nodded at the bedside table.
A dented steel thermos stood there with a yellow duck sticker on the side.
"He left that on his last visit. The staff said not to touch it."
Xiao Chen decided it had come from a runner at Chi Feng's office, sent to keep up appearances.
On the television, Chi Feng was still smiling.
Xiao Chen looked at the smile for a long time and felt his wolf spirit go very quiet.
It was the quiet that came before he walked into a courtroom.
He signed himself out against advice at ten past eleven.
The nurse found him a hospital coat and a pair of slippers, and a taxi driver took him to the Grand Meridian hotel without asking why a man in slippers had cash.
The celebration dinner was in the ballroom.
Photographers lined the stairs, and a banner over the doors said: Chi & Partners.
He had picked that font himself, three years ago, on a night Chi Feng said they would build something together.
Chi Feng was at the top of the stairs with a glass in his hand.
He saw Xiao Chen and every muscle in his face stopped.
It lasted less than a heartbeat. Then his arms opened wide.
"Xiao Chen!" The cameras swung round. "Thank heaven. We prayed for you every day."
He crossed the landing and pulled Xiao Chen into a hug, in front of the flashes.
His alpha scent was heavy with cologne and underneath it was sour.
"Don't say anything tonight," Chi Feng murmured against his ear. "The doctors told me you'd be confused. Go back and rest. I'll handle everything, I always do."
Xiao Chen let himself be held.
"I feel strange," he said, loud enough for the nearest reporter. "I can't remember much. I remember a car."
Chi Feng's hand tightened on his shoulder.
A reporter leaned in and asked who the man in the slippers was.
"A friend of the firm," Chi Feng said, and laughed.
Three years of unsigned work, and that was the title he got.
"A drunk driver. Bridge Road. The police never found him."
"And the Shen case?"
"Closed." Chi Feng drew back and smoothed his lapel. "Your notes were incomplete, so I finished them myself. Mr. Shen was sentenced to ten years. The family has moved on."
"And the family's son?"
"The boy?" Chi Feng laughed softly. "Gone. Nobody knows where. It's better for him."
Xiao Chen smiled.
It was the smile he used on opposing counsel when the judge left the room.
"Congratulations," he said. "You earned it."
Chi Feng's shoulders came down.
He believed it. He had always believed that Xiao Chen would stay quiet if he was asked kindly.
Xiao Chen thought: six months of my life, and ten years of Mr. Shen's.
He thought it once and put it away where he kept things he would use later.
So he let Chi Feng believe the coma had wiped him clean.
At the bottom of the stairs, the doorman sat on a stool with a folded tabloid on his knee.
The front page had a blurry photo of a young man in an apron carrying a tray of skewers.
The headline said: FROM HEIR TO WAITER. Where is the Shen fortune's missing son?
Under the picture, in small type, was a place.
Lantern Lane Night Market. Red Lantern Skewers.
"May I?" Xiao Chen asked.
The doorman handed it over without looking up.
He walked the whole way in the hospital slippers.
Lantern Lane was a ribbon of paper lamps and charcoal smoke, and the smell of cumin and burning sugar hit him all at once after six months of hospital air.
Red Lantern Skewers was at the far end, a folding table, a grill and a plastic awning.
A slight young man was clearing bowls from the nearest table, laughing at something a customer had said.
He had soft dark hair and round eyes, and a dimple that showed even when he was tired.
He was too thin, and his apron had a burn mark on the pocket.
Nothing about him said he had grown up in the biggest house on Cedar Hill.
Xiao Chen stopped in front of him.
"Excuse me. Are you Shen Yan?"
The young man turned with a tray stacked high with bowls.
He looked up.
His whole face went white.
The tray tilted and the bowls began to slide.
Xiao Chen's hand shot out and caught the rim, and the young man's fingers closed over his, hot and shaking.
A faint, sweet scent of orange blossom rose between them, buried under a bitter layer of cheap medicine.
Xiao Chen's wolf spirit lifted its head for the first time in six months.
"Lawyer Xiao," the waiter whispered.
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