Chapter 1

1: 1

The day I flew out to close a partnership deal, my best friend sent me a photo of my father with his arm around a young woman, her belly heavily pregnant.

"Babe, your dad's moral compass has taken a nosedive. Watch out or he'll hand you a little brother to fight over the inheritance!"

I glanced at it and didn't even bother to open the photo.

Everything the family owned was my mother's premarital property, and it had all been notarized.

My father had married into the family. His food and clothes, everything, depended on the money I brought in. What could his illegitimate kid possibly get?

If he were smart, he'd have that woman keep her head down and stay quiet.

But I never expected her to march into my company after I got back, belly out, ready to put me in my place.

"A little girl like you, what right do you have running a company this big? All of this is going to be my son's someday. Step aside, now!"

I said nothing. I looked at my father, waiting for him to speak.

But gone was the humble, doting man I knew. He produced a share-transfer document.

"Iris Fox, you're a woman. You'll marry eventually. You're really not suited to be out in the world, in the public eye."

"Look at your mother. It was all that time in the spotlight that put her flat on her back, gravely ill. You mustn't follow in her footsteps!"

"Sign the transfer. Think of it as a gift for your unborn brother. He'll take care of you in your old age and see you off when the time comes."

I let out a cold laugh and tore the agreement to pieces.

And the very next day I called an emergency board meeting and announced that he was stripped of every position he held.

How should I put it.

Like my mother said.

Some men simply have no sense of their place. Give them no lesson and they'll climb right up your nose.

Since he'd never once learned to be a proper son-in-law in this family, he could take his illegitimate child back to the countryside and farm.

...

My father married into our family.

So the moment my mother was diagnosed with cancer, the first thing she did was transfer everything in her name over to me.

Apart from the dead-end salary he drew every month, my father couldn't touch a single asset.

Back then I didn't quite understand.

"Mom, Dad's been good to you all these years. Giving him nothing at all, isn't that a bit much?"

My mother let out a cold laugh.

"Too much?"

"Iris, you listen to me. Go soft on a man and you'll pay dearly for it."

"You see how meek your father is now, bringing me tea, waiting on me hand and foot, doting on you like a little princess. You think that's love?"

"No. It's self-interest."

"Your father hides deeper than anyone, and he's more calculating than anyone."

"Think back. I was just out in the countryside inspecting a plot of land the Fox family had bought. Your father found his chance and threw himself in front of my car, offering himself up as a son-in-law, begging me to take him with me."

"Your mother is plain-looking, and I needed someone to improve the gene pool. I figured his family had no power, no connections, easy to keep in line. So I agreed."

"But later I looked into it, and I found out that long before the company bought that land, your father had already had people digging around, finding out which company was buying, who held the power behind it, when I would arrive..."

"He's always been ambitious. All these years he's been quietly cozying up to certain shareholders. If your mother hadn't kept the shares locked down tight and hadn't been able to hold him down, do you think you'd still be his only daughter by now?"

She coughed a few times, without meaning to.

I gripped her hand, tense.

"Mom, I'll go get the doctor right now."

"No need."

She squeezed my hand back and went on.

"Iris, my good girl. You've been gifted since you were small, quicker at business than I ever was. Handing you the company, I have no worries. But your father, him I can't be easy about. My health is worse by the day, and he's bound to give in to his nature, find a new woman, have a son, carry on the family line."

"If that day really comes, don't ever go soft. With people who have no sense of their place, softness only lets them climb up your nose. Do you understand?"

Two years ago, I nodded and gave her my word.

After I took over the company, I followed my mother's plan, sweeping out the parasites and expanding the business as I went.

Two years of work, and the company really did triple. My heart grew harder too.

It was only my father. In those two years, I never once saw him step out of line.

For a while I wondered whether my mother had simply been prejudiced against him.

Until my best friend sent that photo of him with a young, heavily pregnant woman.

Then I knew what my mother had said was true.

My father really had been pretending. Pretending to love her, all these years.

Now my mother was only gravely ill and comatose, and already he couldn't hold himself back.

Not only had he found a second spring, but with a woman more than a decade younger than him.

And a secret illegitimate child on top of that.

Still, I didn't take it much to heart.

Everything I owned now was my mother's premarital property. He'd married in. So what if he had an illegitimate child? He couldn't take a thing of mine.

The most he could split was his twenty-thousand-a-month salary.

And I wouldn't be giving him any money or property either.

If he had any sense, he'd take that woman and the illegitimate child in her belly, keep his head down, and stay out of my sight.