Chapter 83; Chen Ru 3
Chen Ru slowly closed her eyes, trying to force the fragmented memory into something clearer. Her fingers tightened weakly around the edge of the blanket. When she finally answered, her voice was barely audible.
"The left one... It was very faint... near here." She lifted her own wrist slightly, the movement small and trembling. "Like an old burn."
Lu Shaohan’s gaze darkened, though he said nothing. The security officer immediately lowered his head.
"I’ll order an internal review of all residence staff and recent contractors."
"Not just staff," Old Master Lu interrupted, his voice growing colder with each word. "Temporary workers. Medical personnel. Delivery staff. Gardeners. Drivers. Anyone who entered the residence in the last month."
"Yes, Old Master."
The security officer left without another word. Chairman Chen remained beside the bed, his expression grave as he looked toward Old Master Lu. His tone stayed calm, but beneath that calm ran an anger sharp enough to cut through steel.
"Your residence security failed. My daughter almost died under your protection."
Old Master Lu did not refute him. There was nothing to refute. The Lu Residence had failed in the one place it could least afford to—within its own walls, where a pregnant woman under their care had been given something that nearly cost her life and forced her child into the world far too soon. Mrs. Chen wiped her tears quietly and gently brushed the damp hair from her daughter’s forehead, her voice trembling with exhaustion and fear.
"Ru’er, don’t think anymore. Rest."
Chen Ru gave a faint nod, her eyes drifting weakly toward Lu Shaohan even as her strength continued to slip away.
"The baby..."
She still asked about the child. Even after everything that had happened, even as her body fought to remain conscious, a mother’s heart remained a mother’s heart. Lu Shaohan looked at her steadily, his voice carrying across the room with a steadiness that had been absent until now.
"He is stable. He will remain in neonatal care for observation."
Relief flickered briefly across Chen Ru’s face before exhaustion overtook her completely. Her eyelids grew heavy, and within moments the medication pulled her back into sleep, her breathing evening out against the pillows. The room remained quiet. No one moved immediately. No one wished to disturb the fragile peace that had finally settled over her after the strain of speaking.
Then another hurried knock sounded against the door. A different assistant entered, his face unusually tense as he walked directly toward Lu Shaohan and lowered his voice.
"Young Master."
"What is it?"
The assistant hesitated for only a moment before continuing, his words careful. "We found Wang Hui."
The room sharpened at the name. Wang Hui—the cleaning supervisor who had discovered the medication tablets hidden inside the western guest room. The very person whose statement had first placed Su Wan under direct suspicion. Old Master Lu’s eyes narrowed.
"Bring her here."
The assistant’s face changed slightly, a strange unease spreading through the room as Lu Shaohan’s expression cooled.
"What happened?"
The assistant swallowed, his voice dropping even lower. "We found her in the staff quarters. She is dead."
Silence followed, thick and absolute, broken only by the steady beeping of the monitors that now seemed louder than before. Mrs. Chen froze. Chairman Chen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Old Master Lu slowly straightened, his voice cold when he finally spoke.
"Cause of death?"
The assistant’s fingers tightened around the report in his hands. "Preliminary examination suggests suicide."
No one spoke. In families like theirs, suicide rarely meant suicide. And just like that, their only witness—the one person who had placed the medication in Su Wan’s room—had been silenced before she could speak another word. The scar on an unknown servant’s wrist had given them a thread to follow, but someone had already moved to cut away the most direct connection to the evidence that had seemed so perfectly arranged. Lu Shaohan remained still, yet the quiet friction he had carried since the beginning deepened into something colder. A son had been born to him under circumstances that should never have occurred, and now the woman whose name he carried stood at the center of a suspicion that continued to shift and fracture with every new revelation. The truth was not drawing closer. It was revealing how carefully someone had worked to ensure that no one would ever reach it.
The recovery room remained silent after Chen Ru drifted back into sleep, the faint beeping of the monitors the only sound marking the passage of time. Mrs. Chen sat motionless beside the bed, unwilling to leave her daughter’s side even for a moment, her hand resting lightly over Chen Ru’s as though her presence alone could keep the fragile peace from breaking. Outside the glass windows, afternoon sunlight had begun to soften, casting long golden shadows across the hospital floor, yet no one in the room felt the passage of time. Beneath the quiet hospital atmosphere, an invisible storm was already gathering, its pressure building with every new piece of information that refused to align neatly with the picture they had been shown.
A soft knock sounded against the door. One of Lu Shaohan’s men entered hurriedly, his expression tense as he crossed the threshold and stopped before his employer. Lu Shaohan turned toward him without a word, waiting.
"We still haven’t located Madam Lu."
The room grew still at once. Old Master Lu slowly lifted his eyes, the weight of the report settling over the space like a second layer of silence. The security officer lowered his head and continued, his voice kept low out of respect for the woman sleeping nearby.
"We’ve checked the traffic network surrounding the Lu Residence and the primary city routes. No trace."
His words caused several expressions to darken. Chairman Chen remained silent, but the Chen family exchanged glances, the implication clear in their eyes: in situations like this, disappearing rarely looked innocent. The officer continued without being prompted.
"We tracked the taxi that left the Lu Residence this morning. The registration number was partially obscured. We contacted the transport department and reviewed nearby traffic cameras, but no confirmed footage of Madam Lu has been recovered."
The room fell silent once more. Even Old Master Lu’s brows slowly furrowed. The city surveillance system was extensive, its reach designed to make vanishing nearly impossible. Finding a single vehicle should not have been difficult—unless someone had deliberately avoided the cameras or switched vehicles midway through the journey. The officer swallowed before continuing, the next detail even more unsettling than the last.
"Her mobile phone remains active but cannot be accurately located. Calls connect, but no location data is returned."
That was stranger still. It meant the phones had not been switched off, yet they left no trail, like shadows moving through the city without touching the ground. Old Master Lu’s expression grew colder, his voice turning icy when he finally spoke.
"Expand the search. Use private investigators if necessary."
The officer nodded at once, but there was still one last report to deliver. He hesitated, then spoke again, his voice dropping further.
"We’ve also contacted the banks and transport terminals. No transactions or travel records have been found under Madam Lu’s name."
The words landed with quiet finality. For the first time in years, the Lu family’s search network had failed to locate a single person. Chairman Chen’s eyes narrowed faintly as the implications settled. A woman who had disappeared immediately after a medication scandal. A woman whose room had contained matching tablets. A woman no one could find. To outsiders, it looked dangerously close to fleeing. Old Master Lu’s voice cut through the silence like a blade.
"Find her. Before she disappears completely."
Lu Shaohan said nothing. His gaze drifted slowly across the room—first to the sleeping Chen Ru, her face still pale against the pillows after the strain of remembering the scar on the servant’s wrist; then toward the glass that separated them from the neonatal ward where his newborn son lay sleeping, small and fragile, having survived the very danger that had brought them all here; and finally to the dark screen of his phone, where Su Wan’s name remained at the top of his unanswered calls. The more perfectly the evidence aligned against her—the hidden tablets, the unknown servant seen entering her room, her sudden vanishing without trace—the more uneasy he became. A son had been born to him under circumstances that should never have been allowed to happen.