Chapter 18: Mingzhu has decided.
There were not many people in the empire with alerts attached to their names and faces. There were two ways to qualify for the list: Valuable or criminal. At the moment, it was hard to decide which Jun Mei-Mei was.
If the question was addressed to her, she would say neither. She was simply an angry woman that was tired of being used and trampled on. At the moment, she was trying to unpack but her daughter Mingzhu was like a puppy high on sugar running around the house.
Mo Jingzhe was the ever indulgent babysitter, following Mingzhu around and allowing her to be as playful and reckless as she wanted. Mei-Mei did not stop her daughter, the excitement was justified. She was feeling the same way because she was slowly edging her way back into her old life.
Her first step was to move into the luxury villa which her brother Jun Mengzhi had given her as a gift on her eighteenth birthday. Over the years, she had sold a lot of her personal assets to support Mo Liang and his mother's expensive taste.
She never touched this house however or the things inside which included gifts her family had given her on that same birthday. In fact, most of the things that she treasured had been hidden away in this house.
Mei-Mei had planned to keep this house for Mingzhu so she never told Mo Liang or his mother about it. If they had known, they would have occupied it or sold it off and pocketed the money.
Who could have known that the house she was given at eighteen would become her refuge ten years later. She drew the white sheet back from the grand piano which had never been touched, a gift from her aunt Su Manchu.
Mingzhu liked piano but her grandmother had complained about the expense and noise denying her the opportunity to learn it at home. Mei-Mei scoffed, from now on, her daughter would not have to go to other people's houses to play it.
Looking around the dusty house, she wondered why she had ever allowed herself to live a hard life, sharing one small bedroom with Mingzhu in smaller villa when she could have been living in her mansion.