CHAPTER 107: CHAPTER 107; PAYING LU ZEYAN A VISIT 5

What neither of them knew, what Lu Zeyan couldn’t possibly know, was that the narrative was already being rewritten without his input or approval.

Ah-Ling had been busy.

Lu Yuze’s assistant had spent his morning doing what he did best: digging up dirt and setting it on fire. The man was a digital arsonist, and he’d just torched Lu Zeyan’s entire life.

The fabricated evidence. The bribed witnesses. The financial records didn’t add up when you looked at them carefully.

The suspiciously convenient timing of Grandmother Lin’s death, right before a wedding where she might have changed her will. The offshore accounts where the embezzled money actually went, accounts that traced straight back to Lu Zeyan through a maze of shell corporations and false names, not to Shuyin at all.

Ah-Ling had put it all together into one devastating digital package and released it into the wild like a virus designed to destroy reputations. Posted it anonymously across multiple platforms, forums, social media, and file-sharing sites. Sent it to investigative journalists who lived for stories about powerful families getting away with murder, who’d built entire careers on exposing corruption. Uploaded it to legal forums where attorneys would tear it apart with the precision of surgeons.

Within hours, the narrative had flipped completely.

Social media wasn’t condemning Shuyin anymore. They were outraged at her conviction, furious that an innocent woman had spent a few weeks in prison. Legal experts were calling it a miscarriage of justice, one of the worst they’d seen in years. Journalists were writing scathing think pieces about how the rich could manipulate the legal system like it was a toy, how money could buy false testimony and buried evidence.

The Lu family name, specifically Lu Zeyan’s branch of it, was getting dragged through the mud with savage efficiency.

And the Lin family? Shuyin’s relatives who’d testified against her at trial, who’d publicly disowned her to save face and protect their own reputations? They were facing their own reckoning as people connected the dots between their testimony and the suspicious financial transactions from Lu Zeyan’s accounts to theirs.

But Lu Zeyan, standing in his office making plans, had no idea. The bomb had only dropped an hour ago. It would take time to reach him, time for his people to realize how catastrophically bad this was, time for the full implications to sink in.

Time Shuyin was using to dig in deeper, to entrench herself in his life before he realized the ground beneath him was quicksand.

"After we do the press thing, I need somewhere to live," she said, bringing him back to the present moment. Her voice went hesitant, almost apologetic. "I don’t have anything, Zeyan. The prison gave me back the clothes I was arrested in and that’s it. No money, no ID beyond my release papers, nowhere to sleep tonight when darkness falls."

She paused, then added carefully, "And I need a job. I can’t just leech off you, that would look terrible to everyone watching. Like I’m using you, like this is all just opportunistic. I need to rebuild my own life, my own career, show people I’m independent."

Lu Zeyan turned from the window, nodding with the air of someone solving a problem. "I can set something up in the company. A consulting position maybe, something with a title that sounds impressive. Something that uses your skills but keeps you low-profile at first while we fix your reputation."

"Actually," Shuyin cut in gently, her voice carrying a note of hesitation, "I need more than one job. I need... three more positions."

His eyebrows shot up, surprise breaking through his calculating expression. "Three? Why would you need....."

"Not for me." She jumped in quickly, cutting off his suspicion before it could fully form. "For my friends. Three women I met in BreakWater Ridge. They got released the same time I did, walked out those gates with me, and just like me, they’ve got nothing. No family willing to take them back, no money saved up, no support system whatsoever."

Her voice went pleading, taking on an earnest quality that was hard to resist. "They kept me alive in there, Zeyan. When I was sick, when I was poisoned and dying, they protected me from the other inmates. They’re the only reason I’m standing here right now instead of dead in an unmarked grave. I can’t just abandon them like everyone abandoned me. Please."

Lu Zeyan looked skeptical, his business instincts warring with the image he was trying to project. "You want me to hire three ex-cons? That’s...."

"They weren’t violent," Shuyin said fast, words tumbling out before he could finish his objection. "One got convicted of fraud, but it was her husband’s crimes, she just signed papers without reading them because she trusted him. One was political, took the fall for someone more important to protect her family. The third just witnessed something she shouldn’t have and refused to lie about it in court."

All lies, obviously. All three women had done what they needed to do to survive in a world that didn’t care about their circumstances. But they were loyal to Kailani now, the entity that had saved them from despair and promised them security and purpose in exchange for service.

They’d be perfect for what she needed.

"It would look amazing," Shuyin pressed, seeing him wavering. "Shows you’re not just helping me out of personal obligation, but actively working to reform the system, to help wrongly convicted women rebuild their shattered lives. It’s incredible PR, the kind that makes you look like a visionary."

She could see him turning it over in his mind, examining the angles. Help one woman? That was a personal obligation, potentially messy, too emotional. Help multiple women? That was philanthropy. Social consciousness. Progressive thinking. The kind of thing that played beautifully in the media and won awards.

"What kind of jobs are we talking about?"

"Nothing fancy or high-profile. Administrative stuff mostly. Office management, document filing, that sort of thing. Places where they can be useful but not super visible to the public eye." Shuyin kept her tone reasonable, modest, asking for scraps rather than demanding a feast. "They’re smart, Zeyan. Capable and hardworking. They just need a chance to prove themselves."