I slowly stood up.
Giang Hao frowned.
“What are you laughing at?”
I looked at him for several seconds.
Then I answered in Russian.
Fluent.
Natural.
Without the slightest hesitation.
“I’m laughing because you proposed to another woman in a language you thought your wife couldn’t understand.”
The whiskey glass stopped halfway to his lips.
His face changed.
“What did you say?”
I repeated the sentence.
This time in English.
Then French.
German.
Spanish.
Japanese.
Korean.
And finally Italian.
Eight languages.
With every sentence, the confidence disappeared from his face.
By the time I returned to Chinese, Giang Hao looked as though someone had pulled the floor from beneath him.
“You…”
His voice was hoarse.
“You understand Russian?”
“Every word.”
I smiled faintly.
“Congratulations. Your pronunciation has improved.”
The glass slipped from his hand.
It struck the carpet without breaking.
“You lied to me.”
“No.”
I walked toward the study.
“You never asked.”
He followed me.
“Ten years! We were married for ten years!”
“Yes.”
“And you let me think you couldn’t even speak English?”
I turned around.
“You also let me think you respected our marriage.”
Silence.
That comparison finally shut him up.
I opened the safe.
Inside was a black folder.
Giang Hao’s gaze landed on it.
“What is that?”
“The company you said belongs to you.”
His expression relaxed slightly.
Apparently, he still believed this was the battlefield where he held the advantage.
“Van Tinh, don’t make things difficult. Your parents’ company was already transferred during the restructuring.”
“Yes.”
I placed the first document on the table.
“Transferred.”
His smile returned.
“To me.”
“No.”
I turned the page toward him.
“To Lam Holdings.”
His expression froze.
I placed another document down.
“Lam Holdings is wholly owned by a family trust.”
Another page.
“And I am the sole beneficiary.”
Giang Hao stared at the signatures.
His own name appeared nowhere.
“That’s impossible.”
“Keep reading.”
Ten years earlier, after my parents died, I had inherited fifty-eight percent of the corporation.
When I married Giang Hao, he was talented but had neither capital nor connections.
I appointed him executive president.
Later, to protect the company during an international expansion, the shares were reorganized under several holding entities.
Giang Hao saw his name on management documents.
He saw himself sitting in my father’s office.
He saw employees calling him President Giang.
And eventually, he convinced himself that management meant ownership.
I never corrected him.
At first because I loved him.
Later because I wanted to see how far his arrogance would go.
“So what exactly belongs to me?” he whispered.
I opened the final page.
“Your salary.”
His face went white.
“And the twelve percent of shares awarded through your executive incentive plan.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly.
I continued:
“Provided you do not violate the marital misconduct and corporate ethics clauses.”
His eyes snapped toward me.
“What clause?”
I slid another document across the table.
The agreement he had signed eight years earlier without reading because, in his words:
“Legal paperwork is boring. You handle it.”
His signature sat beneath the clause.
Public conduct damaging the corporation’s controlling family.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Misuse of company resources.
Relationships with direct subordinates or persons receiving corporate benefits.
Giang Hao stopped breathing.
Anna had received a consulting contract three months earlier.
A company apartment.
A driver.
International travel reimbursements.
All approved by him.
I smiled.
“Do you still think tonight was only a joke?”
The emergency board meeting began at nine the following morning.
Giang Hao arrived expecting to control it.
Then he saw me sitting in my father’s old seat.
For ten years, I had avoided headquarters.
Not because I knew nothing about the company.
Because I had managed its overseas investments remotely under my English name.
Vivian Lam.
Giang Hao had mentioned Vivian Lam hundreds of times.
He called her brilliant.
Difficult.
The mysterious shareholder representative who always caught flaws in his expansion plans.
He never knew Vivian Lam slept beside him.
The directors stood when I entered.
Giang Hao did not.
He simply stared.
“You’re Vivian?”
“Yes.”
His face became almost gray.
One director whispered:
“President Giang, you really didn’t know?”
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
The audit was presented.
Anna’s apartment.
Luxury expenses.
Consulting fees without measurable work.
Corporate travel disguised as client development.
Then the anniversary banquet.
An event paid for by the company because Giang Hao had classified it as a “strategic shareholder celebration.”
During that company-funded event, he publicly proposed to Anna.
The board did not find it romantic.
They found it expensive.
And embarrassing.
The vote came twenty minutes later.
Giang Hao was removed as executive president pending investigation.
His incentive shares were suspended.
He stood abruptly.
“You planned this!”
I looked at him calmly.
“No.”
“You proposed to Anna.”
“You approved her expenses.”
“You signed the documents.”
“All I did was finally stop protecting you from what you had done.”
Anna came to see me that afternoon.
The woman who had cried beautifully under the chandeliers now looked furious.
“You already knew Russian.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you applaud?”
“Because the performance deserved an ending.”
Her face tightened.
“Giang Hao loves me.”
“Then congratulations.”
She hesitated.
Apparently she had expected jealousy.
“You really don’t care?”
“No.”
That answer disturbed her more than anger.
Then she asked:
“What happens to my consulting contract?”
There it was.
Not Giang Hao.
The contract.
“It has been terminated pending audit.”
Her face changed.
“And the apartment?”
“Corporate property.”
She left without saying goodbye.
Three weeks later, she and Giang Hao separated.
He discovered that Anna had returned not only because she still had feelings for him.
She had debts.
Her family business was failing.
And Giang Hao had looked like a man who owned an empire.
He did not.
That misunderstanding had fooled both of them.
Our divorce took four months.
Giang Hao fought at first.
Then the evidence made fighting expensive.
He kept the assets legally belonging to him.
I kept mine.
No dramatic destruction.
No revenge disguised as justice.
The company survived.
Thousands of employees kept their jobs.
Giang Hao simply stopped sitting in a chair that had never belonged to him.
Before signing the final agreement, he asked:
“Did you ever love me?”
I looked at him.
“For ten years.”
“Then why hide so much from me?”
I almost laughed.
“I didn’t begin by hiding.”
“When we married, I told you I had studied international finance.”
“You said it was unnecessary for a wife.”
“I mentioned interpreting for my father overseas.”
“You told me to stop talking about old achievements.”
“I offered to join the company.”
“You said your wife didn’t need to work.”
He went silent.
“You didn’t discover a useless woman in your house, Giang Hao.”
I closed the folder.
“You created one in your imagination because that version made you feel bigger.”
His eyes reddened.
“And now?”
“Now you can marry someone who speaks only the languages you approve of.”
He lowered his head.
He signed.
One year later, I represented Lam Holdings at an international economic forum.
The moderator unexpectedly asked whether I preferred English or Mandarin.
I smiled.
“Either is fine.”
Then a German journalist asked a question.
I answered in German.
A French delegate followed.
French.
Then Spanish.
Japanese.
Russian.
By the eighth language, the hall was laughing and applauding.
Not because I had performed a trick.
Because for the first time in ten years, I no longer had to make myself smaller so that the man beside me could feel tall.
That evening, someone sent me an old video from my anniversary banquet.
Giang Hao onstage.
Russian flowing from his lips.
Anna crying.
Me applauding.
I watched it once.
Then deleted it.
Giang Hao had believed that night he humiliated an ignorant housewife who could not understand his confession.
He never realized the greatest humiliation was his own.
For ten years, he lived beside a woman who spoke eight languages—and never learned enough about her to know even one.
And when I finally answered him in all eight,
the empire he thought was his did not disappear.
It simply returned to the woman who had owned it all along.
