Chapter 7: Ten Million

The Xie family ate lunch in a private dining room on the second floor, at a round table that sat twenty.

Lin Zhi sat at the end of it, between the Second Aunt and an empty chair.

Two of her fingers were bandaged, and she did not look at him.

Across the table her son, the cousin, lifted his glass to Lin Zhi and smiled.

Everyone else had been given a place by rank, and his was the one nearest the kitchen door.

He had come anyway.

In the pocket of his jacket, his phone was recording.

He had started it in the corridor that morning, and he had decided it would stay on for the rest of the marriage.

"So," said the Second Aunt, "you're the husband."

"I am."

"I'd have thought a husband would be taller."

"He's lying down," said Lin Zhi. "I have no way to tell."

Someone coughed into a napkin.

The soup came, a clear amber broth with a single drowned mushroom in each bowl, and Lin Zhi ate his slowly.

He had not been in a restaurant like this since a school trip.

Across the table, Pei Wen was being very quiet and eating too fast.

When the plates were cleared, Xie Guangping tapped his glass with a chopstick.

"Before the tea," he said warmly, "a family matter."

A lawyer stood up from the far end, the same tall man in the grey suit, and set a folder in front of Lin Zhi.

"A trust agreement," said Xie Guangping. "Zhaoran's shares would go into the family trust, for his care."

"It protects him, and it protects the company. All the spouse has to do is consent."

"And I get?" asked Lin Zhi.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Chongxi Husband Is Faking His Coma from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.