At nine the next morning, Qin Group’s emergency board meeting began.

I wasn’t there.

That alone apparently caused more panic than if I had walked in demanding Ethan’s resignation.

Grace placed a tablet in front of me.

“Three calls from Chairman Qin.”

“Decline them.”

“Two from Victoria.”

“Block her.”

“And Ethan has called seventeen times.”

I looked at the screen.

“Only seventeen?”

Grace almost smiled.

In my first life, I would have answered the first call.

This time, I opened the investment committee documents.

My family fund owned fifteen percent of Qin Group, but the shares weren’t the real problem.

The real problem was everything surrounding them.

Two expansion projects carried letters of support from companies I controlled.

A pending acquisition assumed our participation.

And Ethan’s new technology subsidiary expected me to provide additional financing next month.

I had spent years building a bridge beneath his feet.

All I had to do was stop extending it.

“Proceed exactly according to contract,” I told Grace.

“No retaliation. No deliberate losses. No manipulation.”

She nodded.

“We simply stop giving privileges that were based on the marriage?”

“Exactly.”

At 10:14, Ethan finally appeared at my office.

His tie was gone.

His eyes were bloodshot.

“Tessa.”

I continued reading.

He shut the door.

“You embarrassed both families last night.”

I looked up.

Interesting.

Not “I embarrassed you.”

Both families.

Even after being reborn, some things remained painfully predictable.

“You abandoned our engagement ceremony.”

“Nina called me terrified.”

“The elevator was open.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t check.”

His jaw tightened.

“She has panic attacks.”

“And six hundred guests watched her calmly texting while you ran through the hotel.”

“Tessa, what do you want me to say?”

“Nothing.”

That seemed to anger him more.

“I made a mistake.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re ending a ten-year relationship over one mistake?”

I leaned back.

There it was.

The sentence I remembered from my first life.

Back then, I had cried when he said it.

Today I simply asked:

“Which mistake?”

He frowned.

“Last night.”

“Leaving the engagement?”

Silence.

“Believing Nina without checking?”

Silence.

“Humiliating me publicly?”

“Tessa—”

“Or spending the last four years treating me as the woman who would always remain after you finished rescuing her?”

His face changed.

For the first time, uncertainty appeared.

Then he noticed the documents.

“What are those?”

“Investment reviews.”

He walked closer.

I closed the folder.

His expression hardened.

“You’re using Qin Group to punish me?”

“No.”

I looked directly at him.

“I’m stopping myself from rewarding you.”

He had no answer.

His phone rang.

Nina.

Neither of us needed to see the name.

I smiled.

“Your emergency is calling.”

He rejected it.

That surprised me.

But not enough.

“Tessa, tell me what I have to do.”

In my first life, those words would have been everything I wanted.

Now they sounded cheap.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“You’re free, Ethan.”

I stood.

“You can answer Nina every time she calls.”

“You can run to every elevator.”

“You can spend every birthday, holiday and board meeting rescuing her.”

I walked around the desk.

“But you’ll do it without using me as the woman waiting at home.”

His face went pale.

I opened the door.

“Our relationship is finished.”

He didn’t move.

Then I added quietly:

“And don’t come here without an appointment again.”

That afternoon, Qin Group’s shares barely moved.

Exactly as I intended.

But internally, the consequences began.

The acquisition committee postponed its vote.

One lender requested clarification regarding a guarantee that was no longer expected.

Two directors asked whether my fund still supported Ethan’s expansion strategy.

I gave everyone the same answer:

“We remain shareholders. Investment decisions will be evaluated commercially.”

Nothing more.

No revenge.

No scandal.

Just boundaries.

By evening, Chairman Qin finally came personally.

Unlike Ethan, he requested an appointment.

I accepted.

The seventy-two-year-old man entered my office with his cane and sat opposite me.

“You’ve changed.”

I smiled.

“Maybe I finally learned.”

He studied me for several seconds.

“Last night wasn’t enough to make you this calm.”

My fingers paused.

Chairman Qin had always been dangerous because he noticed what others ignored.

“I was publicly abandoned.”

“No.”

He shook his head.

“You looked at Ethan like you’d already mourned him.”

My heart tightened.

Then he placed an envelope on my desk.

“I came to return something.”

Inside was the pink diamond ring.

“I already returned this.”

“To the Qin family.”

“Yes.”

He pushed it toward me.

“I bought it personally. Therefore, I decide where it goes.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Then sell it.”

I almost laughed.

The old man leaned forward.

“But don’t return your property merely because my grandson was too foolish to deserve the woman wearing it.”

Before I could answer, Grace entered.

Her expression was unusual.

“Miss Tessa, there’s a problem.”

“What happened?”

She handed me her tablet.

A financial news account had published photographs.

Nina leaving a private hospital.

Ethan beside her.

The headline implied she was pregnant.

I felt nothing.

But Chairman Qin’s face became terrifyingly cold.

Then Grace whispered:

“That’s not the problem.”

She opened another file.

“The hospital photograph is old.”

“How old?”

“Four years.”

I frowned.

“Why release it now?”

Grace hesitated.

“Because someone is building a narrative that you canceled the engagement after discovering Ethan had a child with Nina.”

I laughed softly.

So this was her move.

Turn herself into the victim.

Turn me into the jealous heiress.

Predictable.

“Release nothing,” I said.

Grace blinked.

“Nothing?”

“Let them talk.”

Chairman Qin watched me carefully.

I continued:

“False stories become useful when the person spreading them grows confident.”

That night, Nina posted a statement.

She never mentioned me by name.

She didn’t need to.

She wrote about “years of silent love,” “a child who never had the chance to be born,” and “a relationship destroyed by family pressure.”

Public sympathy immediately shifted toward her.

Ethan called.

I ignored him.

Then Grace called from downstairs.

Her voice was tense.

“Tessa, someone is here.”

“Who?”

She didn’t answer immediately.

“A man.”

I frowned.

“He says he needs to speak with you privately.”

“Name?”

Another pause.

“He refused to give one.”

“Then send him away.”

“Tessa…”

Grace’s voice changed.

“He showed me something.”

A photograph arrived on my phone.

For several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.

A silver watch.

Rust damaged the clasp.

A deep scratch crossed its face.

I knew that watch.

I had identified it three years ago.

It was the only thing recovered after the accident that killed me in my first life.

No.

Not mine.

The accident that had supposedly killed my older brother—the person whose shares had eventually passed to me and made my fifteen-percent position possible.

I stood so quickly my chair struck the wall.

“Where is he?”

“Reception.”

I ran downstairs.

A tall man stood with his back toward me.

He turned when he heard my footsteps.

I didn’t recognize his face.

But he said something no stranger could possibly know.

“Tessa, before your brother disappeared, he asked me to investigate Nina Xu.”

My entire body went cold.

“Why?”

The man reached inside his coat and removed a sealed folder.

“Because Nina wasn’t trying to marry Ethan.”

He placed it in my hands.

“She was trying to enter the Qin family through him.”

I opened the folder.

The first page contained a photograph taken eleven years earlier.

Nina was standing beside Victoria.

They weren’t strangers.

They weren’t even acquaintances.

Victoria had one arm around Nina’s shoulders.

On the back was a handwritten sentence:

For my daughter, when the Qin family finally belongs to us.