On the escalator at London Heathrow Airport, Lin Aotian pulled at his wrinkled sweatshirt hood. This was his first time flying alone in 20 years, and the luggage handle still had the broken label stuck on it - it was a couple's suitcase that Su Qing gave him when they were in college. The dark blue canvas surface was worn white, and the zipper head had long been replaced with a metal dragon-shaped pendant bought at the night market.
"Sir, your boarding pass." The check-in lady's British accent woke him up from his distraction. He searched his pockets and remembered that the boarding pass was still tucked into the curled "Das Kapital" - Su Qing always said that he was pretending, but now it has really become a talisman hidden at the bottom of the suitcase. When going through security, the fragments of the jade bracelet in his pocket hurt his palm, and the metal detector suddenly beeped. The way he fumbled to take it out made the security inspector laugh.
London in the rainstorm is like a gray handkerchief soaked in water. Lin Aotian stood downstairs of Su Qing's apartment, looking at the lighted windows on the third floor, and suddenly remembered that three years ago in Shanghai, he also stood downstairs of her company, waiting for her to work overtime until the early morning. The message she sent this morning was saved in his mobile phone: "Zhou Mingxuan said he has something for your mother to give you." The picture was the iron window of the detention center's visiting room, and a cracked blue and white porcelain vase was placed on the windowsill - exactly the same as the one he bought at the auction that year.
"Ding -" The elevator door opened on the third floor, and the smell of rotten wood mixed with the smell of rain hit my face. Lin Aotian raised his hand and knocked on the door, his knuckles knocking out a rapid rhythm on the peeling paint door. The moment the door opened, the freesia perfume on Su Qing's body came out, diluting the musty smell in the corridor. She was wearing faded coral fleece pajamas, and gauze was wrapped around her wrist - it was the place where she was scratched by the broken bracelet in the London melee.
"Why are you here?" Su Qing's voice was full of surprise, but she didn't move away. Lin Aotian saw a pair of men's slippers at the entrance, dark gray, size 42 - exactly the same as his.
"Where's Zhou Mingxuan?" He heard his dry voice, his eyes swept across the messy sofa bed in the living room. A sweatshirt with "Cambridge Economics Society" printed on it was draped over the quilt, and the collar was worn to a shine.
"He's out on bail." Su Qing turned and walked towards the kitchen, the coffee machine made a "gurgling" sound, "He said... before your mother fell from the building, she asked someone to send a wooden box to the Zhou family's old house."
Lin Aotian's breathing suddenly stagnated. Three months before his mother fell from the building, he was framed by his second uncle for embezzlement of public funds. At that time, Zhou Jianbang was still an elder who would pat him on the shoulder and say "Don't be afraid, uncle believes you." He followed Su Qing into the kitchen. There was an obvious repair mark on the tile floor. Thinking of her stitches in the London hospital, she smiled and said, "It's much less than the stitches you had when you fought."
"Is the wooden box with Zhou Mingxuan?" He stared at the gauze on her wrist, and suddenly reached out to hold her fingertips. The touch was cold, just like the temperature of his mother before she died. Su Qing pulled her hand away suddenly, and the steam from the coffee machine sprayed on the back of his hand, leaving a red mark.
"Aotian, you are now the patriarch of the Donghai Lin family." Her voice trembled, but her eyes were fixed on the wrinkles on his sweatshirt, "And I... am just a woman who is called 'backhanded'. Even Zhou Mingxuan knows that you shouldn't give up the rules of the clan for me."
Outside the kitchen window, a cruise ship on the Thames blew its horn. Lin Aotian looked at Su Qing's hair falling when she turned around, and suddenly remembered that when she was in college, she was sleeping on the table in the library, and the ends of her hair were stained with the freesia he secretly pinned on. He pulled off the dragon-patterned jade pendant from his neck and stuffed it into her hand: "Rules are dead, but people are alive. When you blocked the knife for me, did you ever think about clan or not?"
The dragon pattern on the jade pendant hurt Su Qing's palm. She remembered the way Lin Aotian used his body to protect her during the London gunfight, which was the same as the boy in the alley who was beaten with blood on his face but still protected her. The kitchen timer suddenly rang, and she knocked over the coffee machine in a panic. The brown liquid meandered on the countertop, which looked very much like the cracks on her mother's tombstone.
"I'll go to Zhou Mingxuan." When Lin Aotian turned around, the phone in his sweatshirt pocket vibrated. Chen Mo sent an urgent email: "The elders of Zhou Group and the remnants of Xingyao Capital are planning to impeach the board of directors." He stared at the equity structure chart on the screen and suddenly laughed - it turned out that Lin Aotian, who was making waves in the business circle, wanted to do most at this moment, to get his mother's wooden box from Zhou Mingxuan before the rainstorm.
In an old warehouse near Cambridge, Zhou Mingxuan leaned against a rusty container, his fingertips stroking the dragon carvings on the wooden box. Hearing footsteps, he looked up and smiled, with the same business acumen as Zhou Jianbang in his eyes: "Lin Aotian, you are here as expected."
The lights in the warehouse flickered, illuminating the men in black standing behind him. Lin Aotian noticed the ruby embroidery on their cuffs - they were his second uncle's personal bodyguards back then. The wooden box lay on the ground, the lid half open, revealing the yellowed logbook inside, and the four big characters "Donghai Xueli" on the cover hurt his eyes.
"Want this?" Zhou Mingxuan kicked the wooden box, and half a page of the diary slid out. On it was a map of the route of the Strait of Malacca, and each port was marked with a small "Ao" character. "Take 10% of the shares of Huading Group in exchange, or..." He suddenly pointed at Su Qing, "Let her go back to Zhou Group with me and be my fiancée."
Su Qing dug her nails into her palms, staring at the emerald light that appeared on the edge of the wooden box - it was the same ice crack as the broken bracelet on her wrist. Lin Aotian looked at the sneer on Zhou Mingxuan's mouth, and suddenly remembered what Zhou Jianbang said on the hospital bed: "Mingxuan, this child, has been unable to distinguish between want and need since he was a child."
"Okay, I promise you." Lin Aotian's voice made Su Qing look up suddenly, but he winked at her, squatted down and picked up the wooden box, "But before signing..." He suddenly pulled out the pistol hidden in his sleeve, and the sound of the safety catch was particularly clear in the warehouse, "You should see this."
Zhou Mingxuan's smile froze on his face. The tablet that Lin Aotian threw over was playing the surveillance footage of him and Tang Wei in the Xingyao Capital office - the former stuffed the forged shipping documents into the latter's handbag. Suddenly, a police siren sounded outside the warehouse. The man in black turned around and tried to escape, but was pinned to the ground by the London police who rushed in.
"How did you..." Zhou Mingxuan's voice trembled. Lin Aotian stroked the dragon pattern on the wooden box and thought of the photo Su Qing sent at the airport: the Buddhist beads on Zhou Mingxuan's wrist were exactly the same as the amulet he had prayed for him three years ago.
"Because you are wearing the Buddhist beads I gave you, but you want to harm the person I love." His voice was very light, but it was like ice hitting the ground, "Zhou Mingxuan, some feelings are more valuable than equity."
In the apartment in the early morning, Su Qing sat on the bed and looked through her mother's logbook. A photo fell out from the yellowed pages: 20 years ago at the Malacca Port, his mother was holding the young him, and behind him was a cargo ship with a dragon pattern on the hull. Lin Aotian leaned against the door frame, looking at the freesia hairpin in her hair, and suddenly felt that the embarrassment at the moment was more real than any business negotiation.
"Aotian, the diary says..." Su Qing's voice was choked with sobs, "Your mother didn't plan to marry your father because she found out she was pregnant with me?"
The heavy rain outside the window stopped at some point. Lin Aotian walked into the bedroom, his fingertips brushed across the gauze on her wrist: "Silly, that was a fake paternity test by my second uncle." He suddenly chuckled and took out a small box from his pocket, "On the day of the Zhou Group's shareholders' meeting, I actually went to a jewelry store."
Su Qing opened the box, and inside was a repaired jade bracelet, with the broken part inlaid with gold wire into a dragon shape, exactly the same as the fragments she saw in London. Lin Aotian put it on her, and it felt warm, just like the warmth of her mother's birthday gift to her.
"Does it hurt?" He looked at her red eyes and suddenly remembered his mother's words before she died: "A real dragon will not make the people he cares about cry."
Su Qing shook her head and stroked the gold thread on the bracelet with her fingertips: "It doesn't hurt, just like the way you wore a sweatshirt at the shareholders' meeting. Although it was embarrassing, it made me feel..." She suddenly threw herself into his arms, her voice muffled in the sweatshirt, "I feel that you are finally no longer a symbol in the family tree, but the Lin Aotian who would fight for me back then."
The morning light shone in through the gaps in the curtains, reflecting the golden dragon pattern on the jade bracelet. Lin Aotian looked at the blue and white porcelain vase on the bedside and suddenly realized that the so-called dragon business journey was never a lonely flight, but a way to hold the hand of the one you love in the shallows and face the rainstorm and the clear sky together.
The phone vibrated on the bedside table. Chen Mo sent a message: "The impeachment case of Zhou Group has been settled. Zhou Jianbang and the elders will publicly support you. In addition..." At the end of the message was a photo. In the ancestral hall of the old house, the old man was turning to the latest page of the Donghai Lin family's genealogy. Next to the name "Lin Aotian", a pattern of freesia was newly engraved.
Su Qing came over to see it and suddenly laughed out loud: "It turns out that the clan will also hold grudges and actually engrave my name into a flower."
Lin Aotian looked at the stars in her eyes and suddenly felt that even if the dragon was trapped in the shallows, what would it matter? As long as there is such a person around him who can make him forget the mission in the family tree in the rainstorm and remember that he is first a mortal who can feel pain, laugh, and be impulsive, then all the power struggles and struggles have the warmest footnotes.