CHAPTER 7: The Knife Behind the Mirror
The tower's upper wing was soundless, the air scrubbed too clean—like guilt had been bleached out of the walls.
Jian Zhìhèng moved without noise, his shoes silent against polished marble. The surveillance room pulsed with dim blue light, each monitor humming like a heartbeat too calm. He didn't blink as he replayed the footage.
A kiss.
Not strategic.
Not controlled.
Wild. Desperate. Real.
Miss Red, pressing herself against his embedded agent. And Lín Yàonán—allowing it.
No, not allowing.
Participating.
He paused the screen. Zoomed.
Yàonán's hand had curled at her waist like he belonged there.
Jian stood still for a long time, one hand curled into a fist behind his back. Then he reached forward and keyed a single command into the console. A new feed came up.
Gāo Míngyǎn.
The man was perched in a rooftop nest three blocks from the last known Miss Red sighting. The glint of his scope caught moonlight like a tooth.
Jian's message was short:
"Engage. No contact unless she slips. If Agent Lin hesitates… cut the girl."
In the dim stairwell of an old utility corridor, Yàonán felt the shift before his comm even lit up.
The air changed.
The mission wasn't surveillance anymore.
It was judgment.
Team Black's net had activated silently around Miss Red's known location—a high-rise bar along the southern skyline. The type of place where billionaires traded secrets in low lighting.
Yàonán had been watching from an adjacent building's fire escape. His comm crackled once, then fell into forced silence. He was no longer on the loop.
That meant one thing:
He was the liability now.
Across from him, Shuǒrán stood beneath a flickering neon sign, black coat wrapped tight, hair twisted up in crimson pins. She wasn't here for pleasure.
She was bait.
He could see it in the stillness of her body—the calculated pause of someone who knew the blade was already coming. Her hands were bare. Her shoulders exposed to draw focus. But her eyes? Scanning.
He watched the red laser dot flick once across the stone ledge behind her. Not on her. Not yet.
Gāo Míngyǎn had taken position.
Shuǒrán shifted her weight.
Yàonán moved.
Not toward her. Not away.
Just enough for her eyes to find him.
And they did.
A rooftop away, in the shadows, she looked straight at him. Their gaze locked, held.
He raised both hands. Not in surrender.
In warning.
She didn't flinch.
She didn't run.
But her expression shifted—recognition, then rage, then something far more dangerous.
Understanding.
She had seen what he hadn't said. That he hadn't been the one to call off the kill. That he wasn't there to stop it.
But someone had.
And just as fast, the laser dot vanished.
Far above, Jian watched the monitor feed freeze. An override had triggered—his own system compromised.
His jaw ticked once.
He didn't speak.
He only turned toward the nearest screen, opened a separate feed, and began searching for the breach.
The hand that had almost signed Yàonán's execution now hovered.
Not yet.
Let them all think they'd won.
For now.
Later that night, Shuǒrán sat in the back of a black car, her fingers twitching against her thigh.
Liú Shàoxiǎn was in the front, silent, eyes on the mirror.
"You saw him, didn't you?" he finally asked.
"Yes."
"You think he warned you?"
"I think he didn't pull the trigger."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," she said, voice cold. "It's worse."
Because if he hesitated now, it meant he'd hesitate again.
And next time?
She wouldn't.