“Sorry to trouble you, sir.” Huo Cheng pivoted the conversation without hesitation. “I want to take care of this matter myself.”
Zuo Qiuyuan smiled. He had lived long enough to read men like an open book.
“A small thing,” he said.
In a few words they sealed the fate of a family.
“Master, the operation failed. And—he seems to have discovered our real objective.” The man kneeled, hands trembling.
Across the room, the patriarch lay sprawled on the sofa, half-surrounded by two barely clad women. He planted a kiss on each cheek, received coquettish complaints in return, and flopped back with a satisfied sigh.
“So? Do I have to tell you how to do your job? Keep going!” The patriarch’s mouth opened and, as if on cue, a grape was offered; his teeth nipped at the woman’s finger and she laughed in mock outrage.
“But—” the kneeling man began.
Before he could finish, a smooth foot came down on his forehead. One of the women beside the patriarch had planted herself on the rug and was grinding her toes against his skin like a cat. She was enjoying herself; the man had once been prim and proper in front of her, had dared to refuse her advances before. Now was payback time.
She leaned into the patriarch’s arms and pouted playfully. “How could anyone be so inconsiderate, Master?”
The patriarch’s hands found the warm, bare skin, stroking possessively as he grinned. “None of them are like you, my little confidante.”
“Stop it!” she murmured, blushing, arching so that the man beneath could see everything.
“Master, many of our people were captured!” the kneeling man pleaded, desperation in his voice. If this wasn’t handled, they were all in grave danger.
The patriarch’s face snapped into anger. He ripped the woman off his lap, kicked the man who’d been kneeling, and barked, “None of this is my concern. You lot are useless—how dare you bring this to me!” With that he stood and, losing all interest, signaled for the entourage to leave.
They swept out like a small storm, leaving only the woman to spit and glare at the crumpled man. She kicked him once for good measure. “You ruined my fun,” she hissed, and stalked off in search of the next distraction.
But lust rarely leaves a man parched.
When the invaders rushed the room, Patriarch Mo had been in the midst of his own excesses. The woman had screamed, tumbled from the bed and run, but she didn’t get past the doorway before hands seized her. Soon every member of the Mo household had been rounded up and shoved into the guest hall.
The old patriarch sat on the sofa with his robe in disarray, two people pinning him in place. The maids averted their eyes, averted their faces from the disgrace unfolding before them.
“Who are you? How much do you want? I’ll pay!” Patriarch Mo barked. He recognized their hostility—and their capability. Best to beg and settle now, then take vengeance later, he decided.
No one answered. The men were as if frozen in wait, while in the hall others shouted, wept, pleaded—nothing drew a response.
Any attempt to flee was met by hands hauling them back.
They waited. And then, late, a single figure entered with deliberate calm.
“Remember me, Patriarch Mo?” The man appeared at his side without a sound. The patriarch, still dazed, flinched. His pupils dilated. “It’s you!”
“Still remember me, then,” the newcomer said lightly. He sat casually on the edge of the sofa and surveyed the room with a faint smile. “Set the rest of them somewhere else. I don’t want Huo’s men making you look worse than you already do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Patriarch Mo’s face contorted, suddenly raw with fury. “You only came to take revenge on me, didn’t you? Huo—Huo family, bah!” He spat the name like filth.
The man across from him—Huo Cheng—smiled without heat. “The Huo name may be nothing to you, but your Mo Corporation might not survive this.”
The old man’s snarl froze into a hard, calculating stare. He reached for Huo’s collar, but two burly hands held him back.
“Explain yourself,” he demanded, eyes boring into Huo’s.
Huo patted the collar Huo had just been grabbed by as if smoothing a crease, then lifted his chin lazily. “Literally what it looks like. Don’t you understand?”
“You touch Mo Corporation and I’ll kill you!” Patriarch Mo raged, pulling against his restraints, veins bulging at throat and temple.
“Then I’ll wait,” Huo said, a faint arc of amusement at the corner of his lip. He inclined his hand, and someone stepped forward to set a tablet in his palm.
Huo’s smile widened. He held the device up to the patriarch so everyone could see.
By morning, Mo Corporation’s stock had plummeted—far below its IPO price, a collapse that looked irreversible. The charts and news feeds scrolled across the screen like a death sentence.
“What did you do?” Patriarch Mo’s face turned beet-red. He thrashed, hands clutched at the air, every muscle straining.
Huo retracted the tablet and tacked on that small smile again. “I did what I had to do.”
Patriarch Mo bared his teeth like a trapped beast. He understood the reality in front of him: the lifetime he’d poured into the company, the graft, the alliances—now shredded by the man before him. A laugh tore out of him, hysterical and ugly. Tears blinked in his eyes as he laughed, a sound that was part grief, part fury.
“Ha! I, Mo Niantian, brought down by a pup like you.” He laughed until he sobbed, then—suddenly—sneered. “You’ll fall, too. Sooner or later.”
His chest heaved. He seemed almost satisfied with the thought, closed his eyes, and fell silent.
“No,” Huo replied quietly. “The Huo family isn’t like you.”
Patriarch Mo scoffed, as if Huo had told the greatest joke. “This time I admit defeat. I played dirty—I’ll own that. But you… I despise you.”
Huo didn’t understand the old man’s sudden change of tone. “What do you mean?”
“Of course you pretend to be innocent,” Mo barked. “You expect me to believe you didn’t use tricks during that joint project with the Zuo group?”
“No,” Huo said flatly.
Patriarch Mo snorted contemptuously, then curled into a thin smile. “What a joke. How could you have won that project against me without cheating? I’d been preparing for years—buying favors, corrupting people. You, a greenhorn, beat me fair? Who would believe it?”
Huo rose from the sofa and looked down at him. “Then ask yourself why a greenhorn like me could topple you.”
The smile on Mo’s face froze. For a long, stunned moment he stared, then an ugly light of fear flickered through his eyes. “You’re backed by the Zuo family,” he hissed.
Huo neither denied nor confirmed; he only glanced at him once and turned to leave. He had finished what he’d come for—there was nothing left here that required his presence.