No one spoke for several seconds.
Then Director Zhao cleared his throat.
“Miss Giang, recovering all the shares in Mr. Co’s name may not be that simple.”
“I know.”
Giang Niem Van opened the second folder.
“That is why the legal department arrived at six this morning.”
The conference-room doors opened.
Three attorneys entered.
Mr. Giang stared at his daughter.
Only then did he realize she had not come here because of heartbreak.
She had come prepared for war.
For seven years, Co Thua Huyen had been presented publicly as the future son-in-law of the Giang family.
He had entered Giang Thi Group with nothing more than a management degree and the engagement agreement.
The company gave him connections.
The Giang family gave him capital.
And Niem Van had personally helped him establish three subsidiaries.
Yet somewhere along the way, everyone began calling him a self-made business genius.
Even he had started believing it.
The lead attorney placed several documents on the table.
“Most of Mr. Co’s shares are restricted incentive shares connected to his executive position. If his appointment is terminated under the misconduct and conflict-of-interest provisions, the company has repurchase rights.”
A director frowned.
“What conflict of interest?”
Niem Van opened another file.
“Lam Thi Thi.”
Bank transfers.
Consulting contracts.
Expense reimbursements.
A luxury apartment rented through a subsidiary.
Business-class tickets.
Designer purchases disguised as client-relations expenses.
The room became colder with every page.
Niem Van had searched until dawn.
The betrayal in her bedroom had only opened the door.
Behind it was something much larger.
Co Thua Huyen had been using company resources to maintain his secret relationship.
Her father slammed his palm onto the table.
“Terminate him immediately.”
This time Niem Van didn’t stop him.
At nine twenty, Co Thua Huyen finally arrived.
He was still wearing yesterday’s shirt beneath his coat.
“Niem Van!”
Security tried to stop him, but he pushed into the conference room.
Then he saw the lawyers.
His steps slowed.
“What are you doing?”
Niem Van closed her folder.
“Working.”
“Our engagement ceremony begins in four hours.”
“No.”
His face stiffened.
“I told you I’d explain.”
“And I told the board our engagement is canceled.”
For the first time, panic appeared in his eyes.
“You can’t cancel everything because of one mistake.”
Niem Van almost smiled.
“One mistake?”
She pushed the expense records toward him.
“Which one?”
His face changed.
The apartment?
The transfers?
The trips?
Or seven years of deception?
“You investigated me?”
“No.”
She stood.
“I investigated my company.”
His jaw tightened.
“Giang Niem Van, don’t mix our personal relationship with business.”
“You already did.”
She tapped the documents.
“When you used Giang Thi money to support your private relationship, you mixed them for me.”
He had no answer.
Then Lam Thi Thi arrived.
She looked as though she had been crying all morning.
“Niem Van, please.”
Every person in the room turned toward her.
She stopped.
Niem Van looked at the necklace around her neck.
Her necklace.
“Take that off.”
Thi Thi instinctively covered it.
“Thua Huyen gave it to me.”
“I designed it.”
Thi Thi went pale.
Niem Van continued calmly.
“The initials engraved inside are G.N.V. and C.T.H.”
Co Thua Huyen’s eyes snapped toward Thi Thi.
Apparently, she had never told him she knew exactly what she was wearing.
Niem Van laughed softly.
“Keep it.”
Everyone looked surprised.
“I don’t want anything back after someone else has mistaken it for theirs.”
Thi Thi’s face burned.
Co Thua Huyen followed Niem Van into the corridor.
He caught her wrist.
She immediately pulled free.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Niem Van, I admit I was wrong.”
“Good.”
“But seven years can’t disappear overnight.”
“They didn’t.”
She looked directly at him.
“They disappeared one lie at a time.”
He became desperate.
“My relationship with Thi Thi wasn’t what she said.”
Niem Van paused.
“What does that mean?”
He hesitated.
And that hesitation told her there was another secret.
Finally he said:
“We weren’t together continuously for seven years.”
She laughed.
“You think that improves things?”
“No.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“It ended years ago. Then started again.”
“How many times?”
Silence.
“Three?”
He said nothing.
“Five?”
His eyes dropped.
Niem Van suddenly understood.
Every time he’d become distant.
Every business trip Thi Thi had mysteriously joined.
Every argument after which he claimed he needed space.
There had never been one betrayal.
There had been a pattern.
“Enough.”
“Niem Van—”
“The only explanation I needed was whether last night was an accident.”
She looked at him.
“Now I know it wasn’t.”
By noon, the engagement venue had been canceled.
Guests received formal notices.
At one o’clock, Niem Van returned home.
Her wedding jewelry remained untouched.
The engagement dress hung beside the mirror.
She removed it from its garment bag.
Then called an assistant.
“Donate it.”
Her father stood at the doorway.
“You don’t have to act strong in front of me.”
For the first time that day, her expression cracked.
“Dad.”
He walked forward and hugged her.
Only then did she cry.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
She simply rested her forehead against her father’s shoulder while seven years left her in silence.
Three months later, Co Thua Huyen had lost his executive position.
The disputed company expenses were repaid.
His incentive shares were handled according to the shareholder agreements.
Lam Thi Thi resigned before the internal investigation concluded.
But Niem Van refused to let the scandal consume her life.
She took the position everyone had once assumed Co Thua Huyen would eventually hold.
Executive vice president.
At her first strategy meeting, one older director objected.
“Miss Giang has never independently led a major expansion.”
Niem Van opened the presentation.
“Then today is a good day to start.”
Eighteen months later, the expansion became Giang Thi’s fastest-growing medical technology division.
People stopped introducing her as Co Thua Huyen’s former fiancée.
They started calling him her former fiancé.
The difference amused her.
Two years later, Co Thua Huyen appeared outside her office.
He looked thinner.
Less arrogant.
“I heard you’re going to Singapore.”
“For negotiations.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
He remained there.
Finally, he said:
“Thi Thi and I separated.”
Niem Van continued signing documents.
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“We never married.”
Her pen stopped.
Not because she cared.
Because she finally understood something.
“You thought I believed you betrayed me because you loved her.”
He looked at her.
“Didn’t you?”
“No.”
She closed the folder.
“I left because you were capable of lying to me for seven years.”
His face became pale.
“Whether you married her afterward was never important.”
He whispered:
“I loved you.”
Niem Van looked at him for a long time.
Perhaps that was even true.
People were capable of loving someone and still treating them terribly.
That was what made betrayal complicated.
“I believe you.”
Hope flashed across his face.
Then she continued:
“But your love was never enough to make you honest.”
The hope disappeared.
She walked past him.
He didn’t follow.
Another three years passed.
Niem Van became president of Giang Thi’s international division.
At thirty-five, she led the acquisition of a rehabilitation technology company that transformed the group’s medical portfolio.
During the celebration dinner, her father raised his glass.
“To Niem Van.”
She smiled.
“Dad, you’re embarrassing me.”
“Let me.”
Everyone laughed.
Her father looked around the room.
“Years ago, I thought my greatest responsibility was finding someone capable enough to stand beside my daughter.”
He looked at her.
“I was wrong.”
Niem Van’s eyes softened.
“My responsibility was making sure nobody ever convinced her she needed someone else to stand in her place.”
She lifted her glass.
This time, she drank.
That night, while clearing old files from her home study, Niem Van found the engagement photograph.
She and Co Thua Huyen stood beneath white flowers.
He was looking at the camera.
She was looking at him.
She almost threw it away.
Then she noticed something written on the back.
A date.
And underneath it, in her own handwriting:
After the wedding, I will resign from Giang Thi and help Thua Huyen build his own company.
Niem Van stared at those words.
She had completely forgotten.
If she hadn’t opened that bedroom door, she would have surrendered her position after marriage.
She would have handed him contacts.
Capital.
Years of experience.
Perhaps eventually everyone would have remembered Co Thua Huyen as the brilliant entrepreneur and Giang Niem Van simply as his wife.
Her betrayal had hurt.
But the life she had nearly given away frightened her more.
She tore the note from the photograph.
Not angrily.
Just carefully.
Then dropped both pieces into the trash.
Years later, at a business forum, a young reporter asked her:
“President Giang, people often say your canceled engagement changed your life. Do you agree?”
Niem Van considered the question.
“No.”
The reporter seemed surprised.
“Why not?”
“Discovering the truth changed one day.”
She smiled.
“What changed my life was what I did the morning after.”
She had walked into a boardroom wearing black.
She had canceled a wedding.
Recovered control of her work.
And refused to let seven wasted years demand an eighth.
That night, Co Thua Huyen had believed he was losing a fiancée.
He hadn’t understood.
The woman walking away from him was also the woman who had helped build the future he thought belonged to him.
And by the time he understood her value, Giang Niem Van no longer needed him to understand it.
She already did.
