CHAPTER 110: CHAPTER 110; PAYING LU ZEYAN A VISIT 8

Lu Zeyan reached for the receiver with a hand that trembled slightly. He pressed it to his ear.

"Yes?"

The roar that came through the phone was like a physical force. Even from across the room, Shuyin could hear it, a man’s voice, older, cultured, absolutely incandescent with fury. The words were clear enough that she could make them out despite the distance.

"...EXPLAIN to me why I’m getting calls from board members asking if we FRAMED AN INNOCENT WOMAN...."

"Uncle, I can explain...." Lu Zeyan tried, but his voice came out weak, and pleading.

Shuyin didn’t think a man could really lower himself like this!

"....stock price is PLUMMETING, our family name is being DRAGGED through social media like trash, and YOU..." The uncle’s voice somehow got louder, angrier, and more cutting. "...YOU are at the center of this catastrophe!"

"It’s not what it looks like...."

"Then what IS it, Zeyan?" The patriarch’s voice dropped to something more dangerous than shouting, cold, precise, each word a knife. "Because what it looks like is that you fabricated evidence to send your fiancée to prison so you could steal her work and marry her sister! That’s what it looks like to the ENTIRE COUNTRY right now! That’s what every news outlet, every social media post, every goddamn person with an internet connection is saying about our family!"

Lu Zeyan’s grip on the phone was white-knuckled, his whole body rigid. "The evidence was legitimate. The courts...."

"The courts convicted her based on evidence that is now being exposed as fraudulent!" His uncle’s voice cracked like thunder. "Evidence that apparently traces crimes back to YOU! Financial documents showing YOUR offshore accounts! Witness testimony that YOU bribed! Do you understand what this means? Do you understand the legal liability? The criminal exposure? The fact that prosecutors might decide to reopen this case and come after you?"

"I can fix this...." Lu Zeyan started, but it sounded hollow even to him.

"You’d better fix it FAST." The patriarch’s voice was cold steel now. "I want you to hold a press conference. Today. This afternoon. You’re going to get in front of cameras and explain this situation, and it had better be CONVINCING, or I will personally...."

There was a pause, and Shuyin could imagine the older man forcing himself to calm down, to think strategically instead of just venting rage.

"....or I will personally remove you from your position and disown you from this family. Do you understand me, Zeyan? This is your one chance to salvage this disaster. Don’t waste it."

"I’ll handle it," Lu Zeyan said through gritted teeth, his jaw so tight it looked painful.

"You have until 2 PM. Get your legal team together. Get PR on damage control. And for god’s sake, figure out who released this information and STOP THEM before they release anything else. If there are more skeletons in your closet, I want them found and burned before they can be exposed."

The line went dead with a click that sounded final, absolute.

Lu Zeyan stood there holding the receiver for a moment longer, staring at nothing, his face a mask of barely controlled desperation. Then he slowly, carefully, set it back in its cradle.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Feng Ting cleared his throat delicately, the sound startling in the quiet. "Sir, what would you like me to do?"

Lu Zeyan took a breath. Then another. Forcing his mind to work, to think, to find a way out of this nightmare.

"Call a press conference." His voice was mechanical, running on autopilot, the trained executive taking over when the panicking human wanted to curl up and die. "This afternoon. 2 PM. All major media outlets. Tell them..." He paused, thinking fast, his brain finally engaging with the problem instead of just drowning in it. "Tell them I’m making a major announcement regarding the Shuyin case and providing new evidence."

"New evidence, sir?" Feng Ting asked carefully.

"We’re going to spin this." Lu Zeyan was recovering now, his mind finding solid ground in the familiar territory of crisis management. This was what he was good at, turning disasters into opportunities, finding angles, crafting narratives. "We’ll say that I’ve been conducting a private investigation. That I always believed she was innocent. That I’ve been gathering proof to overturn her conviction."

He looked at Shuyin, and his expression was a complicated mess of emotions, calculating, desperate, suspicious, and underneath it all, still that thread of attraction that he couldn’t quite suppress even now. "You’re going to stand beside me at that press conference. We’re going to present a united front. Show them that we’re together, that I fought for you, that this is a story of justice finally being served."

Shuyin nodded slowly, letting uncertainty show on her face. Her jade eyes were wide, vulnerable. "Are you sure? I mean, if this makes things worse for you....."

"It won’t," he said with more confidence than he probably felt, but saying it out loud seemed to make him believe it more. "This is controllable. We control the narrative from here on out. No more being reactive, we get ahead of this. We shape the story before the story shapes us."

He turned to Feng Ting, already moving into command mode. "I need the PR team here in fifteen minutes. Legal team in thirty. I want talking points drafted, background materials prepared, and I want research on every person who’s been posting about this online. Find the source of that evidence dump. I want to know who did this and how they got access to sealed documents."

"Yes, sir. Right away." Feng Ting practically fled from the office, probably grateful to have concrete tasks instead of watching his boss have a breakdown in slow motion.

As soon as the door closed, Lu Zeyan slumped against his desk, and the confident mask dropped for just a moment. He looked exhausted, years older than he had been when Shuyin first walked in. The lines around his eyes were deeper, his skin had a grey tinge, and his hands were shaking slightly as they gripped the desk edge.