Chapter 4

"Serena, are you here at the company to pick up your things today?"

Chloe at the front desk sounded a little nervous, and her eyes drifted toward the office area inside.

"Yeah, I’m here to pick up my personal belongings."

Ethan’s company was in Building B of the tech park, taking up the entire third floor. I had helped him choose that office building back then and negotiated the lease down. I bought the plants at the front desk, and I blended the scent for the fragrance system at the end of the hallway.

But today, as soon as I pushed the door open, I smelled gardenia.

The diffuser stones in the hallway had been changed to a new scent.

I did not stop and walked straight to Ethan’s office.

The door was not closed. Nothing much had changed on the desk, and the bottom drawer was where I kept my things—a leather-bound notebook, A5 size, with a brown vegetable-tanned leather cover and corners worn pale.

My mother’s handwritten formulas. The complete compositions of thirty-seven perfumes, all her notes, scent trial records, and raw material ratios were inside. When she passed away, she left nothing else, only this.

The drawer was empty.

The notebook was gone.

I looked back at the workstations outside. At the desk directly facing Ethan’s office, the surface was covered with pink storage boxes and a laptop with a glittery case.

My mother’s formula notebook was on that desk.

It was pressed under a takeout container and an unfinished cup of Coke.

A large brown water stain spread across the leather cover, and when I flipped open two pages, the brown stain had soaked through the paper, blurring half of my mother’s fountain pen writing.

She had used my mother’s relic as a coaster.

"Hey, Mrs. Shaw—"

Lily had returned at some point, holding two new cups of Coke, and when she saw me standing in front of her workstation, her steps slowed by half a beat.

"Mr. Shaw asked me to organize this notebook." She put down the Coke, speaking as if she were explaining something completely natural. "Some of the formula data inside needs to be entered into the system."

"This is my personal property."

"But Mr. Shaw said these formulas are the company’s core assets—"

I reached out to pull the notebook away.

She moved back, and the chair wheels slid, her elbow knocking over the cup on the desk.

Freshly brewed hot coffee.

Boiling liquid poured over the back of my outstretched right hand.

Pain. It felt like someone had pressed a piece of red-hot iron against my skin.

The back of my hand swelled quickly, first turning red, then blistering, with clear blisters bulging one after another over my knuckles.

My right hand. Perfumery required grinding, test strips, and turning the wrist to sense how a scent lingered. Everything depended on this hand.

Lily screamed, but she was not looking at my hand—she was looking at the coffee stain splashed on her own thigh.

Ethan rushed out of the office.

He ran past me.

He ran to Lily’s side, crouched down, and checked her leg. "Did you get burned? Let me see."

Then he turned his head and looked at me, frowning as if I had caused trouble. "You knew she’s clumsy. Why did you fight her over some stupid notebook?"

Some stupid notebook.

I clenched that leather notebook, now soaked and ruined by Coke, in my right hand. The blisters on the back of my hand burst under the pressure, and clear fluid ran down between my fingers, mixing with the brown Coke stains.

"Ethan," I said, "the eight hundred thousand you used to start your business came from this stupid notebook."

His expression finally cracked.

"Don’t send me the password anymore. Even you feel dirty to me now."

I left with the notebook clenched in my hand. In the elevator, my hand began trembling uncontrollably, the pain so intense that my fingertips spasmed.

Chloe ran after me and handed me a bottle of water, looking at my hand like she wanted to say something but hesitated. "Serena… should I call a car for you? Burns need treatment right away."

"Help me call a car to the hospital."

"Okay." She paused for two seconds, then said quietly, "Serena, Lily… Mr. Shaw didn’t ask her to organize that notebook. She took it herself. Last week, she even took photos of the formulas inside and sent them to an outside supplier."

My fingers tightened around the notebook another degree.

I could no longer feel the pain.

"Thank you for telling me, Chloe."

She bit her lower lip and nodded hard, looking like she was about to cry.

The car arrived. Before getting in, I looked back at the third-floor window, and the office lights were still on.

"Let’s go."