The next morning, my lawyer called.

“Su Qing, are you sure?”

“Completely.”

“If we do this publicly, Jiang Chen won’t be able to bury it afterward.”

“That’s the point.”

There was a pause.

Then he asked:

“What exactly do you want?”

I looked through the glass wall of my office.

Ten years ago, I had left Jiang Chen’s house with nothing but a suitcase and 200 yuan.

Now the company whose name was engraved on that glass wall belonged to me.

Not because a rich man had rescued me.

Not because someone had returned what Jiang Chen took.

I built it.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Mine.

“I don’t want his money,” I said.

“I don’t want revenge either.”

My lawyer laughed.

“You’re planning to appear at his annual gala with two children who have his face.”

“That isn’t revenge.”

I looked at the documents on my desk.

“It’s a correction.”

The Jiang Group’s annual gala was three nights later.

It was broadcast live.

Investors, directors, celebrities and business partners filled the ballroom.

Jiang Chen stood beneath enormous lights, accepting congratulations on another record year.

Then the host joked:

“President Jiang, after your interview went viral, half the country wants to introduce their daughters to you.”

Everyone laughed.

Jiang Chen smiled.

“My personal life is not important.”

“What about children?”

That carefully practiced loneliness returned to his face.

“Some things cannot be forced.”

Applause.

Then the ballroom doors opened.

I walked in.

Su Mu was on my right.

Su Nian on my left.

The room went silent in waves.

First because people recognized me.

Then because they saw the children.

And finally because they looked from Su Mu’s face to Jiang Chen’s.

His champagne glass stopped halfway to his lips.

For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Jiang Chen lost control of his expression.

“Su Qing?”

I smiled.

“President Jiang.”

His eyes moved toward the twins.

Su Mu stared back without fear.

Su Nian squeezed my hand.

Jiang Chen went pale.

“How old are they?”

No hello.

No apology.

No question about whether I had survived.

Only that.

“Ten.”

The glass slipped from his hand.

It shattered.

Around us, phones were already rising.

His public relations director hurried forward.

“Please stop recording.”

Too late.

Jiang Chen descended from the stage.

“Who is their father?”

I almost admired his ability to ask a question whose answer was standing on his own face.

“Why?”

His jaw tightened.

“Answer me.”

I looked toward the enormous screen behind him.

Only minutes earlier, it had displayed highlights from his interview.

The caption remained:

PRESIDENT JIANG CHEN: MY GREATEST REGRET IS NEVER HAVING CHILDREN.

I pointed toward it.

“You announced your family history to the entire country.”

Then I looked at him.

“I came to help you correct it.”

His face turned white.

“You were pregnant when we divorced?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I stared at him.

And suddenly I was twenty-four again.

Standing in the rain.

Two crumpled bills at my feet.

Disgust in his eyes.

Disappear from my world forever.

“Because you told me never to appear in front of you again.”

“That was anger.”

“It was an instruction.”

“You should have told me!”

His voice rose.

Su Nian flinched.

Immediately, Su Mu stepped in front of his sister.

That tiny movement silenced me.

My son had learned to protect his sister because there had never been a father there to do it.

Jiang Chen noticed too.

Something in his expression cracked.

He crouched.

“What are your names?”

Su Mu didn’t answer.

Su Nian moved behind me.

Jiang Chen’s eyes reddened.

“I’m…”

“Don’t.”

My voice stopped him.

He looked up.

“You don’t get to introduce yourself as their father because you recognize your own face.”

He slowly stood.

“What do you want?”

There it was.

The language he understood.

Money.

Negotiation.

Settlement.

“How much?”

Several people gasped.

I laughed.

Ten years had passed, and he still thought every wound had a price.

I opened my handbag.

Then I took out an old transparent evidence sleeve.

Inside were two faded red bills.

I had kept them all these years.

I placed them on the table.

“Two hundred yuan.”

Jiang Chen stared at them.

His face emptied.

“You…”

“I never spent them.”

The cameras captured everything.

“You gave them to me when you threw me out. Consider them returned.”

He looked as though I had struck him.

My lawyer stepped forward.

“The documents have already been delivered to your legal department. Mrs. Su is not requesting child support for the previous ten years.”

Jiang Chen looked at me sharply.

“Then why are you here?”

“Because yesterday you said my children didn’t exist.”

“I didn’t know!”

“Exactly.”

I held his gaze.

“You didn’t know whether I had somewhere to sleep. You didn’t know whether I was pregnant. You didn’t know whether I survived.”

My voice never rose.

“You didn’t know because for ten years, you never looked.”

The live broadcast exploded online.

But what happened afterward mattered more.

Jiang Chen demanded DNA testing.

I agreed.

Not for him.

For my children’s legal protection.

The results came back at 99.99 percent.

Biological father.

Jiang Chen arrived at my office with the report in his hand.

He stood there for a long time.

“They’re mine.”

“Biologically.”

His eyes lifted.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk as though that means nothing.”

I leaned back.

“It means something genetically.”

“Su Qing.”

He placed both hands on my desk.

“I lost ten years.”

I stared at him.

“No. They did.”

That stopped him.

“You were an adult. You made choices.”

I pointed toward the report.

“They were children. They lost something without choosing anything.”

His shoulders sank.

For the first time, Jiang Chen had no argument.

Then he asked quietly:

“Can I see them?”

“That depends on them.”

“I’m their father.”

“You’re a stranger with matching DNA.”

His eyes closed.

I wasn’t trying to hurt him.

It was simply true.

Over the next six months, Jiang Chen did something I never expected.

He stopped demanding.

At first, the twins refused to meet him.

He accepted it.

He sent birthday gifts.

I returned the expensive ones.

The next time, he sent Su Mu a book about spacecraft because he had learned my son loved engineering.

For Su Nian, he sent a box of professional drawing pencils.

No diamonds.

No trust funds.

Just pencils.

She kept them.

That was the beginning.

Their first meeting lasted twenty minutes.

Su Mu asked him directly:

“Why did you throw Mom away?”

Jiang Chen went completely still.

I could have intervened.

I didn’t.

He deserved to answer.

“I was cruel.”

My son frowned.

“That’s not a reason.”

“No.”

Jiang Chen swallowed.

“It isn’t.”

He looked at both children.

“I believed things about your mother that I should have questioned. I was angry, proud and convinced that because I had money, I had power over how our marriage ended.”

His voice became rough.

“I was wrong.”

Su Nian asked:

“Did you hate us too?”

Jiang Chen’s eyes filled immediately.

“I didn’t know you existed.”

She thought about that.

“That’s not what I asked.”

He broke then.

Not dramatically.

His head simply lowered.

“No.”

His voice trembled.

“If I had known…”

I interrupted.

“Don’t make promises about a past you can’t prove.”

He nodded.

“You’re right.”

That was the first moment I believed he had changed at all.

Not because he cried.

Because he stopped rewriting history to make himself look better.

A year passed.

The children gradually allowed him into a small part of their lives.

He attended Su Mu’s robotics competition.

He sat in the last row.

He went to Su Nian’s art exhibition.

He bought one painting.

At the normal listed price.

He never called himself Dad unless they did first.

And he never asked me to remarry him.

Until one evening after Su Nian’s birthday.

The children had gone upstairs.

Jiang Chen stood at the door.

“Su Qing.”

“Yes?”

“If I had one more chance…”

“No.”

He smiled bitterly.

“I hadn’t even finished.”

“You don’t need to.”

His eyes reddened.

“I still love you.”

Perhaps he did.

But love arriving after consequences was not automatically redemption.

“I don’t hate you anymore,” I said.

Hope flickered across his face.

I continued:

“But that isn’t the same as loving you.”

The hope disappeared.

I handed him his coat.

“You can become whatever kind of father the children allow you to become.”

I looked into his eyes.

“But you will never be my husband again.”

He nodded slowly.

And left.

Years later, when Su Mu and Su Nian graduated from university, Jiang Chen attended.

So did I.

We sat several seats apart.

No bitterness.

No romance.

No pretending the past had never happened.

When the twins walked across the stage, Jiang Chen cried harder than I did.

Afterward, a reporter recognized him.

“President Jiang, years ago you said your greatest regret was never having children. How do you feel today?”

Jiang Chen looked toward Su Mu and Su Nian.

Then toward me.

He was quiet for several seconds.

Finally, he said:

“I was wrong.”

The reporter waited.

Jiang Chen continued:

“My greatest regret wasn’t that I had no children.”

His voice softened.

“It was that I had them and failed to know them.”

For once, there was no carefully rehearsed melancholy.

No performance.

Just truth.

I turned away before the cameras could catch my expression.

In my wallet, behind an old photograph of the twins as babies, I still kept one of those 200-yuan bills.

Not because I needed to remember Jiang Chen’s cruelty.

I remembered it perfectly well.

I kept it because of what came afterward.

Ten years earlier, a man threw 200 yuan at me and told me to disappear.

He thought he was deciding what my life would be worth without him.

He was wrong.

I used those ten years to raise two children.

To build a career.

To build a home.

To become someone who never again needed another person’s permission to stay or leave.

And when Jiang Chen finally met the two children he once told the world he never had, I didn’t need to destroy his empire.

I only needed to let the truth walk into the room.

It had his eyes.

Twice.