"Lin Zong, your coffee."
Lin Zixun swivelled his office chair from where it'd been facing the ceiling-to-floor windows. Outside, SH City's night landscape was a breathtaking sea of lights. Bright billboards and neon advertisements that scrolled down the sides of tall skyscrapers were reflected in the dark waters of the large river that cut the city into two.
He made sure that there was no one else in the room besides his long-suffering, trusty secretary, before scooting his seat forward towards his desk like a recalcitrant 10-year-old who was too lazy to stand up and pull the chair over politely.
This building he was currently working in was the HQ of Lin Conglomerate itself. The old man had asked him to take over for his father a while ago since that slightly less old man's health was failing. But Lin Zixun suspected that it was just an excuse to shackle him down to a monotonous life of paper-pushing and bossing other people around.
If he could have his way, he'd far rather be doing other more exciting things. Like trying to convince that little missy to go on a date with him.
It wasn't the right moment though. Not in terms of her personal life and definitely not in terms of what society would think. Lin Zixun might have the reputation of being a shameless flirt but he knew better than to put someone he was truly interested in that position.
But it couldn't hurt to start putting in some effort. Just from their recent meetings alone, he could tell that she was not entirely as harmless as she appeared to be on the surface, could perhaps even be a fox in the disguise of a rabbit.
This just made her more attractive, of course. Just like how he couldn't appreciate a strong sibling, Lin Zizhou seemed to have problems appreciating a strong woman. But that, Lin Zixun surmised, was his dear baby brother's loss.
"Lin Zong, are you still not done reviewing these contracts? I need to send them back to legal ASAP."
There was an exasperated edge to Tian Sunyou's nagging. He was one of fifty-seven young men who had applied for the secretarial position and had topped the list of candidates with his star-studded educational records, having graduated from a top high school and had entered an elite local university as the principal graduate of the sciences. He was almost frighteningly competent, which was a good thing because Lin Zixun, while prestigious in his own right, was anything but.
Sometimes, he thought that Tian Sunyou was wasted as a secretary. But it wasn't like he could just hand over his CEO position and tell Tian Sunyou to have a good life before waltzing out of the conglomerate forever.
Not to mention, if he'd left, he would go from the top of the food chain all the way down to the bottom, where anyone would be able to trample on him. He'd made too many enemies for that.
And he would lose some of his better privileges too, such as being able to pull some strings with hotel managers so that they would make some upgrades here or provide better service there.
Speaking of hotels.
"Call Ah Ye's secretary and tell him not to bother with the Horizon Hotels takeover," he said. He grabbed at the cup of cold brew and took a sip, reaching up to remove the tie that was still making a last-ditch attempt at clinging to his neck. His regular habit was to loosen it by 4:30 pm and lose it altogether by 9:00 pm if he was unlucky enough to still be stuck at work that day.
It was already 10:15 at night. He'd allowed himself to get so distracted thinking about the phone call yesterday that he'd wasted a whole hour of…well, of legal's time. Oops.
Tian Sunyou noted down the fresh set of instructions on his phone. "Will do so immediately. If you could return me the favour, Lin Zong, and also finish your work? Immediately?"
"Got it, got it," Lin Zixun muttered, running a hand through his hair. "No idea where you're rushing off too, frankly, you've been a single dog for as long as I've known you."
"And whose fault is that?" Tian Sunyou replied, his polite demeanour unwavering even as his words turned acidic. "It takes one to know one, sometimes I wonder if Lin Zong deliberately makes me OT because he wants someone else to be in the same lonely position as he is. That would be so much more realistic than me having to believe that I'm stuck in the office until midnight almost every night just because my boss is an incompetent slob."
"Get out." Lin Zixun said while chuckling. After working together for over half a decade, Tian Sunyou was more like a friend than a subordinate.
"Gladly," Tian Sunyou said, shutting the door firmly behind him. No doubt, he was going to go and bug other people now, possibly anyone who didn't reach the KPIs he'd mentally set for them.
Lin Zixun picked up the first contract in his in-tray and tried to focus on it. Lately, the Lin Conglomerate was trying to expand into even more sectors, which was why there was so much sudden interest in forging marriage alliances with other prominent families. These weren't future in-laws, they were prospective business partners.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and considered scolding his grandfather's eighteen generations of ancestors before stopping himself in the nick of time when he remembered they were his ancestors too. Fine.
He picked up his pen and started reading. Two minutes later, just as he was about to build up momentum, his phone vibrated in his pocket.
…well. Fuck. He could forget about going home before 12 again.
But when he saw the name of the caller, he picked up without hesitation.
"Xiongdi!" he said brightly. "How good of you to call, how are things going? Everything all right?"
There was a weighted pause on the other line before a wry voice replied, "If you keep talking like that, I'm terminating my contract and leaving the set immediately."
"Wait, wait," Lin Zixun placated. "Don't do anything rash, we've already discussed this matter at length. If you assist me this one time, I'll negate the half a million yuan you owe me from poker night, remember?"
"I can make that with one photoshoot. I've suddenly decided that it's too much effort to help you."
"…but I also promised that I wouldn't share embarrassing childhood photos of you in braces."
The person on the other line snorted. "I weighed up the pros and cons and decided I don't care, I don't rely on my fans for my career."
"Wah…we're able to talk like a hotshot now, huh?" Lin Zixun grinned as he propped his ankles up on his desk, careful to avoid the printouts on it because he didn't want to give Tian Sunyou one more reason to commit murder. "How about I sweeten the deal for you?"
"Let's hear it."
"What if I…also promise that I'll stop giving your number out to random models when they ask me for mine?"
"Wait, that was you?"
Lin Zixun blinked. "You didn't know? I thought you knew." Oops again. He was making a lot of terrible decisions tonight, he must be overworked. Perhaps it was time to take a break.
"…very good, Xiongdi." Lin Zixun could hear teeth-gritting even through the receiver and he knew this was a bad sign. "You can protect your precious 'young mistress' yourself."
"Ah Chen, wait, wait, haha, I'll owe you a separate favour for that, how's that sound? But don't bail on me now, I have no idea where I'm going to find another actor to infiltrate the set."
There was a clicking noise. He recognised it as a lighter so Mu Chen was probably smoking to calm his nerves. Lin Zixun knew that he rarely did this but Lin Zixun tended to have that effect on people, even ones as patient as his childhood friend of his.
Mu Chen breathed out. "You're sure about her?" he asked at last. "I met her today, she's not simple. The impression she gives me…"
"What about it?"
Another pause. Lin Zixun couldn't tell if it was because Mu Chen didn't know how to describe it or if he was fishing about for a nicer way of phrasing something negative.
"She doesn't feel like a sheltered young mistress would," Mu Chen concluded. "Nothing like the way you used to describe her."
Lin Zixun had noticed too. But unlike Mu Chen, he didn't think it was anything to worry about. "Isn't that good?" he asked, prying off the lid of his drink and finishing it in one gulp. There was ice in the cup and it was made of flimsy plastic, so it was probably a bad idea to try and three-pointer it into the bin across the room. "If I brought home a little meek sheep, my family would slaughter it for dinner."
"Perhaps," Mo Chen said. "Or perhaps her family will get there first."
Lin Zixun's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?" he asked. He knew about the sticky situation Su Qiao was in, of course, but he hadn't been able to find out that much about it despite attempting to pry. Either Su Yongshen had been incredibly careful at covering his tracks or the situation wasn't all that complicated.
Lin Zixun wasn't naive enough to believe it was the latter.
"You don't keep track of your company's employees?" Mo Chen asked, seemingly out of the blue.
"…Xiongdi, cut me some slack? There are only about three thousand of them across multiple countries. Which employee are you referring to?"
Mo Chen scoffed. "Bai Meixin. Sounds familiar?"