Chapter 12: Cedar Hill

The old secretary lived on the fourth floor of a building with no lift.

He opened the door before they knocked.

He was a thin man in his sixties with white hair and a cardigan buttoned wrong.

He looked at Shen Yan for a long time.

Then he put both hands over his face and wept.

"Young master," he said. "Young master. They told me you had left the city."

"I didn't leave, Uncle." Shen Yan took his arm. "I was working at a stall. I'm all right."

"You are thin."

"I'm being fed."

The old man looked at Xiao Chen with sharp, red-rimmed eyes.

He had kept accounts for thirty years.

"And this is the lawyer who was in the papers," he said. "The one who was hit by the van."

"Xiao Chen."

"I know who you are. Your signature is on the first appeal brief. Your name was removed from the final one."

Xiao Chen's face did not change.

"Yes," he said. "Someone else took it off."

"Then come in. I have been waiting six months for someone to ask me a question."

They sat at a small table with three cups of tea.

The old man laid a bunch of brass keys beside them.

"I took these when they cleared my desk," he said. "The house keys. The study."

He tapped the smallest one.

"And the medicine cabinet in the east wing. Madam locked it and told the staff it was for the old master's heart."

"Mr. Shen's heart is fine," Shen Yan said.

"His heart was always fine. The cabinet was never his."

Xiao Chen set the keys in a handkerchief and pocketed them.

Then he took Shen Yan's school exercise book out of his own bag.

He turned to the page headed with a long column of small numbers.

Taxi. Doctor. Sweater. Two weeks of food.

He tore it out along the stitching.

Shen Yan gasped. "That's my ledger."

"That page is closed."

"You can't just."

"I can. I have a licence."

He folded it once and put it in the boy's palm.

"Burn it, keep it, frame it. You owe me nothing. I owe you at least twenty-four Sundays."

Shen Yan's whole face flushed.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Saved the Heir, Then Won His Heart from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.