He Saved the Heir, Then Won His Heart novel · Chapter 2 of 56

Chapter 2: The Night Market Stall

Xiao Chen steps in when a drunk grabs Shen Yan, tells him to quit and come home, and promises to clear his father. At the flat door Shen Yan's scent floods the hall and he runs into the bathroom and locks it.

"You know my face?" Xiao Chen asked.

Shen Yan pulled his hand out from under Xiao Chen's and wiped it on his apron.

"It was in the news. The accident. They showed a photo of you outside the court." He tried a smile. "People remember a lawyer who got hit by a van."

"I was told it was a drunk driver."

"Oh." Shen Yan looked down at the bowls. "Maybe it was."

He was a bad liar, and Xiao Chen let it go for now.

The stall owner, a heavy old woman with a ladle, shouted from the grill that table four was waiting.

"Two minutes," Shen Yan called back, and bent to pick up a bowl.

He was dizzy.

Xiao Chen saw him sway and reach for the table edge, saw the sweat on his neck, and smelled the orange blossom again, stronger.

"Sit down."

"I can't, I'm on shift until four."

"You are the heir of Shen Group."

Shen Yan's shoulders went stiff.

"I was," he said. "Not anymore. Sir, if you came to write about me, please don't. Old Auntie will lose customers."

"I didn't come to write about you."

"Then why are you here?"

Xiao Chen took a breath. His wolf spirit, quiet for so long, was pacing.

"I did the groundwork on your father's case," he said. "Before the accident I spent four months on his file. Mr. Shen did not take that money."

The dimples vanished.

Shen Yan stared at him, and for the length of a breath nobody in the whole noisy lane existed except the two of them.

"Everyone says the evidence is clean," he said quietly. "Even the lawyer on the news said so."

"The lawyer on the news is the man who arranged my accident."

Shen Yan's mouth opened.

A big hand clamped around his wrist from behind.

"There you are, sweet thing." The man was heavy and drunk, his alpha scent thick with beer. "I've been watching you walk back and forth. Come drink with me. I'll tip you well."

"Sir, please let go, I'm working."

"Just one drink."

The man yanked, and Shen Yan stumbled into his chest.

Xiao Chen had never in his life thrown a punch.

He took the man's hand in both of his, found the thumb, and bent it back until the fingers opened.

The man yelped.

"That is a young man who said no," Xiao Chen said, flat and pleasant, "and I am a licensed lawyer. In the next ten seconds I can have you charged for assault in front of forty witnesses, or you can walk home. Choose."

The man looked round at the circle of staring customers and the old woman holding up her ladle.

He walked.

Shen Yan was still holding Xiao Chen's sleeve with both hands.

"Thank you," he whispered. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yes, I did."

Xiao Chen put his palm over Shen Yan's thin wrist, where the drunk's fingers had left red marks.

The skin was feverish.

The scent between them rose again, sweet and unmistakable, and Shen Yan's pupils went wide.

"Do you take anything for that?" Xiao Chen asked, very low.

"Street tablets. Cheap ones. Since the winter." Shen Yan's voice shook. "They don't help anymore. I feel strange all week. I thought I was getting sick."

"How long have you been on your feet tonight?"

"Since noon."

"And where do you sleep?"

"There's a storeroom behind the stall." He said it quickly. "It's dry. Auntie lets me have it for free if I work extra."

Xiao Chen felt a cold, clean anger settle in his chest.

It was not the anger he felt at Chi Feng. This one was newer, and it had a face.

"Listen to me," he said. "My name is Xiao Chen. I have a flat on Riverside Court with two bedrooms and a lock on the door. I am going to reopen your father's case. I will win it, and I need you alive and in one piece when I do."

"You want me to go home with you?"

"I want you to stop working tonight and not come back."

Shen Yan laughed, quick and bright, and the laugh cracked in the middle.

"Lawyer Xiao, I can't. I owe Auntie two weeks of wages. And I don't know you."

"Then ask her."

The old woman had come up behind them with a plate of skewers, listening openly.

"Boy," she said to Shen Yan. "Go. I've been telling you that for a month. This one smells like trouble but he looks at you right."

She pressed the plate into Xiao Chen's hands.

"You eat first. He eats too. Then you go."

They ate standing at the side of the grill, because Shen Yan would not sit.

He ate fast, watching every skewer as it cleared the plate.

Xiao Chen watched him finish three skewers and did not say anything.

Afterward he took a taxi, and Shen Yan sat in the back with a plastic bag holding everything he owned.

It was one change of clothes, a toothbrush and a steel water bottle.

"My house rules," Xiao Chen said, as the city slid by. "You stay in the flat. You don't work. You don't owe me anything."

"I'll pay it back."

"You will not. I'm not doing this for a bill."

"Then what is it for?"

Xiao Chen looked out of the window at the river.

"Because in six months nobody picked up a phone for either of us," he said. "I'm picking one up."

Shen Yan said nothing, and by the time they reached Riverside Court he had stopped looking at the bag and started looking at Xiao Chen.

The lift took them to the twelfth floor.

Xiao Chen unlocked the door and turned on the light.

Behind him, Shen Yan made a small, broken sound.

He folded over at the doorway with his arms wrapped round his stomach, and a wave of scent poured into the corridor, so sweet and so thick that the stairwell light seemed to flicker.

"Xiao Chen," he said, for the first time without the title. "Something's wrong with me."

He ran past him into the flat, found the bathroom by instinct, and slammed the door.

The lock clicked.

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