I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Midnight
Xu Zhengyuan did not knock that night.
Late that night the shutter simply lifted, because he had been given a key on Monday and had not yet used it.
Mu Qing was at table four with the lamp on and a pot of tea gone cold.
He had been waiting since the evening, and had told himself that he was not.
Xu stood in the doorway with the rain behind him.
He had not changed.
His tie was gone again, and his coat hung open, and there was ink on one cuff from signing something.
"It's done," he said. "The board. All of it. They've taken him away."
"I know. The secretary rang this afternoon. He said you were magnificent."
"He's biased," said Xu.
"He also said you used my name."
"I used my own." Xu's mouth worked. "I said I'd marry you if you let me ask. In front of nine directors."
"You said that in a boardroom?"
"I'm asking now," said Xu. "I haven't got to the part where I ask. I'm still in the part where I stand here."
Mu Qing rose.
He saw it then, in the light from the lamp.
The man in the doorway was shaking, hard and steadily, from the shoulders down.
"Zhengyuan," he said. "Come here."
"No. Let me say it from here, or I won't."
"Say it."
"He said you took the money." Xu was looking at the floor.
"Jiahui. At the window. He said, ask your mother what the cook did with three million."
"And for one moment, Qing, one, I stood in my own boardroom and I thought, what if."
Mu Qing said nothing.
"I know it isn't true. I knew it was a lie when he said it."
"I knew it before I had finished thinking it." His voice cracked.
"But I thought it, and I will never get that second back, and I hate myself so much I can hardly speak."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Ran Away With His Child are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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