He straightened his tie in the mirror. Pulled up half his hair and tied it. He still wasn’t used to seeing himself like this. In the days since he’d first had to wear that suit, he’d gone back to his usual clothing, but now that he was back in an expensive suit and looking at himself in the mirror, it felt like he was seeing a ghost. Not someone who had died, necessarily, but someone who had been dormant—someone he’d been able to push back and down for so long, and now it was coming up. He knew it was necessary, but the fact that everything his father had turned him into was now visible made his stomach turn.

He’d been able to hide it for a long time with Zhang Weiran. When they’d met abroad, he’d been able to keep that normal innocent foreign student persona he’d formed with practice. But after that faded—would Weiran still trust him? He was the only real friend that Xingyu had ever had. If he lost that because of this…

Weiran would say it was worth it. If Xingyu thought about it too, he would also say that it was worth it. But afterward, when everything was done, after Weiran had seen the monster he was without all the masks to hide it, would he stay?

“Not important,” he said.

There was a knock on the door.

“Yes?”

“Are you ready? You should be leaving soon.”

It was one of the family’s servants. Of course his father wouldn’t come get Xingyu himself.

“Yes, I’ll be right out.”

He vaguely remembered coming to the Chen’s estate a few times before when he was younger; the two families Liu and Chen were close as far as these big corporate families went. He wasn’t sure why he’d never seen them make a deal, but he was fairly certain Chen must be part of it all, or at least he was aware of it. To be honest, anybody who had any amount of power in this city probably had something to do with the List or knew about it—anyone who they could trust, who stood against the List…well, they were probably ‘dealt’ with. Just like the Zhu family had been, who had gone from prominent to dead in a matter of weeks. The Chen family was still alive and well and thriving—there was only one conclusion there.