I step through the steel door and exhale. The scent hits me—not the sour sting of paint and glue, no formaldehyde clinging to the air like a warning. Just clean lacquer, dry concrete, and a faint trace of cedar from the new paneling. It smells expensive. It smells safe.

  The mezzanine gleams. Velvet booths stand unwrapped, waiting. The lighting rig hums softly, like it’s already memorizing the rhythm of the night. The floors are solid. The acoustics—tight. No echo. No bleed. Just control.

  One week. That's all it took. Heavenly Earthborn is nearly reborn—another warehouse, another address, still buried in Chaoyang District. I wanted to move districts. Start fresh. But my father was firm: Where you fall is where you rise.

  I run my fingers along the bar—black marble, seamless, cold. Cut from Italian quarries, flown in without delay. In this country of infrastructure mania, speed and quality are just a matter of budget. When money speaks, concrete listens.

  The marble catches the light like black water—still, deep, and dangerous. A week ago, I was arrested, beaten, humiliated. Blamed for jeopardizing Antz Financial’s IPO. And it all started at this bar—or the one that stood in its place.

  I swore I’d never come back. But my father said: Suck it up. Where you fall, you rise.

  On the far wall, the old stencil remains: State-Operated Seventh Textile Factory. I told them to leave it. Let the ghosts stay. They remember things. They know how to keep secrets.

  Then I feel it—hair rising on my neck. She’s here.

  She strides in, long and confident. Her presence shifts the air. I cannot fathom how someone so beautiful can radiate something so dangerous. After what happened, she terrifies me more than anyone. My father thinks it was her doing. No proof. Just whispers. They say she has operatives everywhere—Ruolin, the Head of Homicide, bears her mark.

  “Snow, dear,” she says, voice soft, almost maternal. “How are you holding up?”

  “Fine,” I nod, keeping my pace toward the lounge, practically running away from her.

  “I heard about the incident. Awful. Trust me. They won’t be able to pin it on you,” she says, passing me with ease, her tone warm, reassuring.

  We walk down the dimly lit corridor, passing two women in black blazers—unmistakably Jianhua's bodyguards.

  “I’ve already been exonerated,” I reply calmly. “Looks like a suicide.”

  “That’s good.” She stops at the lounge door, turns, and smiles—kindly, convincingly. “Just know you can always count on me.”

  She pushes the resistance door open like it weighs nothing.

  Inside, the light is soft—engineered to flatter, to make an ordinary girl look like a movie star. Deep leather sofas circle a round walnut table. A bottle of Japanese whisky sits unopened beside a tray of untouched cigarettes. The air smells like money and restraint.

  Four people are already here.

  Jianhua sits facing the door, posture perfect, like he owns the place. He does—50%, my father's first joint project with him. His face remains too handsome for my comfort. I loved him once, or thought I did. But his words drove me to Heavenly Earthborn that night. It was clearly a trap. The only question is whether he designed it.

  “Am I supposed to negotiate with a child?” Jianhua says, voice sharp. It echoes what he spat at me that afternoon: I don’t fuck children.

  “Would you rather deal with the master, or the hired hand?” I reply, cold. Anger simmers beneath my skin.

  “Let’s focus,” Lyra cuts in, voice smooth and maternal, like a mother separating squabbling children. “We’re all busy. Let’s get this done.”

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I glance the room. Bao Fang sits to Jianhua’s left, arms folded. To Jianhua's right, is a tall foreign woman—Evangeline, I assume—legs crossed, expression unreadable. Beside her, an older Caucasian man, silent, watching.

  I take the seat next to Bao Fang. Lyra slides in beside Jianhua.

  “Now that everyone’s here,” Bao Fang begins, “Jianhua, what do you want?”

  “Fifteen percent of Antz Financial,” Jianhua says, waving his hand like a monarch. “In exchange for two percent of Hightower Coin and five percent of Sanguine Institute.”

  That’s what I’ve always admired about him. No matter who’s in the room, he commands it.

  “That’s absurd. I don’t even own fifteen percent,” Bao Fang protests.

  “It’s for me and Lyra both,” Jianhua replies, calm, unbothered.

  “Seven,” Bao Fang counters. “And five percent of Hightower Coin—for me.”

  “Fifteen. Two and a half.”

  “If you’re not serious, there’s no point in meeting.” Bao Fang grabs his coat, ready to walk.

  Jianhua laughs. “I have all the time in the world. But if Antz misses this bull market, you’ll lose more than fifteen percent value.”

  Bao Fang hesitates, then sits back down. Like he’s been punched in the gut.

  The bull market’s been roaring for a year and a half. The Shanghai Composite has doubled since 2013. The idea it might end feels ludicrous.

  But Bao Fang looks rattled. What does he know that I don’t?

  “We’re in this for the long game,” he says, recovering. “Bull markets don’t just vanish overnight.”

  “From January, retail investors have poured in 1.3 trillion yuan,” Jianhua says. “Institutional investors? Barely 80 billion. This market is built on retail money. How much more do you think they have?”

  “There’s always the next bull market,” I plug in, trying to steady the room.

  Lyra scoffs. “Dear, you make me laugh. How long can your P2P scam survive? Six months? A year? Can an IPO in a bear market save it?”

  It’s her. A voice inside me screams. She knows. That data was on my computer—only the police should’ve had access.

  "To my father, Antz is just another business."

  What if Antz collapses? It's all investors' money anyway. There is always another venture to make more.

  "But do you really want to be the one responsible for so many influential people losing so much?" I ask Lyra.

  For the first time, I meet Lyra's gaze straight on. She blinks, surprised by my resolve.

  Dad was right again: Adversity builds character.

  “And you’re asking too much,” Bao Fang jumps in, seizing the moment. “We need consensus. Vision Fund, JP Morgan—how do you plan to convince them?”

  “Thirteen percent,” Jianhua says. “Final offer.”

  Bao Fang frowns. “Issuing that many new shares would cause serious dilution. I don’t see how it works.”

  “Issue eight. My father and I will sell you four,” I say, cutting in.

  “Fine,” Lyra says, before Jianhua can respond. “That four percent has no lock-up. I need liquidity—I don’t have that kind of cash in the Republic.”

  “Deal,” Bao Fang says, then adds, almost as an after thought, “And three percent of Hightower Coin.”

  Jianhua looks at Evangeline. She pauses, then nods.

  “Deal,” Jianhua says, always the one to close the room.

  /*The term retail investors refers to stock-holding accounts with total assets—stocks and cash combined—under 10 million yuan. This definition comes from Mingyuan Wang, a researcher at the Beijing Institute for Reform and Development, who published a landmark analysis on titled:

  Even if a Bull Market Comes, It Will Be Hard for Small and Medium Retail Investors to Make Money.

  Drawing from 16 statistical yearbooks of the Shanghai Stock Exchange spanning 2007 to 2023, Wang paints a sobering picture of investor inequality in A-Shares capital markets.

  By the end of 2022, A-Shares stock market had 46.38 million active accounts. Of these, only 124,900 belonged to institutional investors. The remaining 46.26 million—a staggering 99.74%—were held by individuals. When filtering out those with over 10 million yuan in total account assets, more than 44 million accounts remain. These are the true retail investors—the small players in a market dominated by giants.

  Now consider this:

  Between 2008 and 2022, the total market capitalization of listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange soared from 2.8 trillion yuan to 50 trillion—a 17-fold increase.

  And yet, the total value of stocks held by retail investors didn’t rise. It fell—from 650 billion yuan in 2010 to just 325.2 billion yuan in 2022. Their value was halved, even as the market exploded.

  The contradiction is stark. Despite the paltry 325.2 billion yuan in final holdings, the funds that retail investors poured into the market were measured in the trillions. During the bull run from end of 2014 to June 2015 alone, their net capital inflow exceeded 1.3 trillion yuan. And institutional investors? They added just 80 billion.

  The data tells a brutal truth:

  Retail investors are the lifeblood of A-Shares stock market—but they bleed the most.*/