“No, not yet. I’m announcing it at the press conference.” Sun Yue was coming out of it a little now that she was being forced to talk business rather than family politics. “It’s going to be one hell of a transfer…” Her voice trailed off. Xiaokai had lost her again. “Why do you think he did it?”

“Why else? To get ownership of the company.” Truth was, Xiaokai might be good at hiding it, but he was furious at Xingyu. It wasn’t just the transfer that was going to be difficult—this sudden decision had thrown everything off course. How were he and Weiran supposed to adjust to this? “He didn’t want the company before, but look at him now. Looks like he became exactly what Liu Baiyan wanted him to be.”

“What Baiyan wanted,” whispered Sun Yue fiercely, “was for the two of you to become the best that you could be.”

“Are you going to claim that he’s a good father? I don’t know if I want to stick around for that.”

Sun Yue didn’t answer him.

“Look,” said Xiaokai, impatient now. “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to handle the press?”

“No, no, the press aren’t an issue yet…”

“Do you want me to prepare a statement, then?”

“Ah…yes, do that. Write that he had a cardiac arrest.”

“Will do. The funeral arrangements?”

“We’ll make it a private affair. Please handle that as well.”

Xiaokai had the feeling that he would be handling everything but the Files for a while. “How does this affect the List?” he asked as his last question. He knew that it was risky, but he also knew that Sun Yue was in a fragile state of mind. Maybe she would give him something useful. Maybe she would give him the Files.

Sun Yue said, “I don’t know.”

OF ALL THINGS, Weiran heard about it on the news. He’d been compiling information on a man named Kang Haichi and trying to ignore the extra information Xiaokai had “helpfully” thrown in there—that he liked voyeurism and sucking people off. Now that he knew how much he really liked Xiaokai, he had to come to terms with the fact that Xiaokai regularly had sex with these people all over again. He had only just barely become used to it. The television was on in the background and he bounced his attention to it whenever he started imagining too many things regarding Xiaokai. He knew what the man looked like when he was getting a blow job, and he didn’t like thinking about how other people saw that same—