CHAPTER 85: CHAPTER 85;DID SHE MEET ANYONE SUSPICIOUS

She cooked his meals, ensured the house ran perfectly, and raised Shen Xuan with tender devotion. She spoke softly, never raising her voice, never questioning his decisions.

She smiled at him, though he rarely looked her way. She laughed lightly with Shen Xuan, though her eyes often dimmed when her son ran past her to greet him instead.

And every morning, she would sit by the window with her tea, watching the waking city below with silent longing, for a love she would never receive, for a life beyond these golden walls that would never be hers.

But today... Today she screamed....

She cried.

She had thrashed against him with all the desperate fury of a woman finally breaking under the weight of everything she was forced to endure.

She had looked at him with blistering, naked hatred.

His jaw tightened, the sharp line of his cheekbone hollowed by the cold afternoon light.

What had triggered her?

What exactly had snapped inside her gentle, enduring mind to make her finally fight back?

He lowered the tablet onto his mahogany desk, its glass surface reflecting his tall, shadowed figure.

For a long moment, he stared blankly at the sunlit city beyond the glass. His reflection glared back at him, cold, impassive, expressionless, carved from steel and silent darkness.

A wife locked behind reinforced doors.

A son trembling in terror.

A household rattled to its very foundation.

And yet...

Beneath the cold calculation, beneath the suffocating anger and silent disgust, something else pulsed faintly in his chest, an ache like a festering wound.

Would she ever forgive him for this?

Would she ever look at him again without those eyes of blistering hatred?

His gaze darkened further, obsidian eyes clouded with a cold, murky heaviness as he exhaled slowly, forcing the weakness back into silence.

He picked up the tablet again, scanning the transfer protocols one last time.

But his thumb hovered over the final confirmation button.

His chest constricted with a suffocating heaviness.

No.

Not yet.

If he sent her away now... if he locked her in a sterile white room with padded walls and strangers’ hands pinning her down... if he threw her into the same empty darkness that had consumed her mother...

He would lose her forever.

And he didn’t know why that terrified him so deeply.

With a low, harsh breath, Shen Xiao dropped the tablet onto his desk, the device landing with a muted thud against the polished wood. He turned sharply, the folds of his black suit coat shifting around his tall frame as he pressed the intercom button on his desk phone.

"Cancel the transfer," he ordered coldly, his deep voice echoing through the silent study. "Double her security, increase the sedatives. She stays here."

"Yes, Sir," the head guard’s voice crackled faintly from the speaker.

He ended the call with a flick of his thumb, the line disconnecting into cold silence.

For a long moment, he remained still, the quiet ticking of the antique clock on his shelf filling the room with a brittle, fragile sound.

Then he turned away from the desk and walked to the wide window, his polished shoes clicking with lethal precision against the marble floor.

He gazed down at the sunlit gardens below, where trimmed hedges curved in perfect geometric patterns, each petal and blade of grass trembling gently in the breeze.

He had made his decision.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

Not to a psychiatric ward.

Not out of this mansion.

Not out of his life.

If she was broken... he would keep her broken.

If she hated him... he would keep her close enough to drown in that hatred.

If she wanted freedom... he would ensure she never tasted it again.

Ever.

The heavy door to the private study creaked open before closing with a soft click. Liang Chen stepped inside, his footsteps measured as he approached the large mahogany desk.

Shen Xiao stood before the wall-to-wall window, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the glittering cityscape.

The study was silent, save for the faint ticking of the ornate silver clock on the far wall.

"Sir," Liang Chen said quietly, bowing his head in greeting.

Shen Xiao didn’t respond immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the distant city until he finally spoke, voice low and clipped with restraint.

"She’s never acted like this before. No matter what kind of argument we had... in the ten years we’ve been together, Yueyao has never once screamed at the boy. Never raised her hand to anything."

Shen Xiao stood by the wall-to-wall window, his back facing the room, eyes fixed on the cold shimmer of city lights. His voice was low, unreadable.

Behind him, Liang Chen stepped inside, pausing just past the threshold with a stack of neatly bound folders in hand.

"President Shen," he said, his tone cautious but steady. "I have compiled all the CCTV footage and internal reports from the past two months, as you requested."

Shen Xiao finally turned, his expression unreadable. He crossed the room without a word and took the files from Liang Chen’s hands. The assistant stepped back, folding his arms behind him, eyes lowered in deference.

Shen Xiao returned to his desk, sat down, and flipped open the first folder.

Still after still.

Yueyao was in the garden, sweeping dry leaves beneath a cherry blossom tree. Yueyao was sitting beside Aunt Mei, hands folded on her lap. Yueyao was eating alone at the lounge, polished dining table, eyes downcast, movements mechanical.

Silent. Obedient. Hollow-eyed.

Everything appeared painfully ordinary.

Nothing in her schedule stood out.

So then... what had changed?

"Did she meet anyone suspicious?" he asked wondering if someone could have hypnotized her to act like this because it was never her norm. This was out of nowhere and strange. Did the hospital drug her? Because after the hospital, she has been out of the norm.

How could she hate her son? She loved him dearly, how could that change?

"No one from the outside approached her, just the usual household staff, sir. Her movements have been consistent until the day she attempted to escape."