“Eat something first, President Jiang.” Assistant Qian set the meal on the table.
Jiang Yihua had just sobered up and had little appetite. He ate a few bites, then drank a bowl of freshly prepared hangover soup. The warmth eased his fatigue and brought out a light sweat, making his insides feel considerably more comfortable.
“Where did you get this soup?”
Assistant Qian replied, “Assistant Qiu wrote down the recipe herself. She says it’s an imperial recipe passed down through her family for several generations.”
“Not bad.” Jiang Yihua savored the flavor, then turned to Assistant Qiu. “Later, go find Xiao Sun and have him buy the exclusive rights to this recipe for the family kitchen. Tell him to name his price.”
Having spent years in a wealthy household, Assistant Qiu naturally understood that this was a special reward from Mr. Jiang.
“Thank you, sir. But under the new rules, large household expenditures like this are now handled by Sister Zhou.”
It was a minor matter, and Jiang Yihua didn’t care much about it. “Fine. You can negotiate among yourselves.”
Assistant Qiu was pleased. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll make sure we agree on a fair price.”
After dinner, Jiang Yihua went back to making phone calls about the lawsuit. Qin Man had already been found. Even if she stubbornly refused to return, the court summons would still cross the ocean and reach her on schedule.
Just as Jiang Chuling was beginning to feel sleepy, Jiang Yihua received a phone call. A moment later, he shot up from his chair.
“Really?”
Everyone bustling around the office immediately stopped what they were doing and looked toward President Jiang.
“All right, all right! Hahaha, that’s wonderful!”
“Good, no problem. We already have the hacker in contact. All right, coordinate the handover. How long until we can get it? Fine, work according to your own schedule.”
After hanging up, Jiang Yihua could hardly wait to share the good news with everyone. But then…
He called Assistant Qiu out onto the balcony.
“Old Wei found the original data from the overwritten surveillance footage at the Swiss company! Now we just have to wait for the technicians to restore it!”
The night before, the decision to fly to Switzerland had been made at the last minute. With no suitable direct flight available, Assistant Wei had been forced to take a connecting route.
It had taken him twenty hours to reach Switzerland. At three in the afternoon Swiss time—nine at night in Beijing—he arrived at the company, explained the situation to the person in charge, and promised him a suitable reward. At last, he obtained the original data extracted from their database.
Now they only had to wait for the technicians to restore it, and they would have the surveillance footage.
“Really?” Assistant Qiu exclaimed in delight.
If they could obtain the surveillance footage—evidence as solid as iron—then all the other evidence would hardly matter.
But when she saw the worry still etched across Mr. Jiang’s face, Assistant Qiu asked, “Is there something wrong?”
Jiang Yihua sighed. “Back then, Old Master didn’t trust the household staff. He also didn’t want them to know about the surveillance and deliberately behave differently, so he found a foreign company to install hidden cameras. He wanted to monitor everyone in secret.”
Assistant Qiu understood.
It was like how the emperors of her era had distrusted every civil and military official and secretly established an investigative bureau to scrutinize everyone in the capital. It was the ultimate, almost pathological desire for control possessed by those in power—the pleasure of knowing every hidden secret.
Of course, Old Master Jiang was no emperor, so his condition was somewhat milder. Apart from him, several of his sons, daughters-in-law, assistants, and other aides knew about the cameras as well.
Assistant Qiu pondered. “If we don’t make the footage public, it’ll be difficult to convince the public.”
But if they did make it public, what would the uninformed servants and nannies at the estate think?
Would Old Master abandon this secret surveillance system?
“Tsk!” Jiang Yihua put his hands on his hips in frustration. “With evidence this powerful, there’s no way I can keep it to myself without releasing it, can I?”
They had already come this far, yet there was still another obstacle in their way.
Assistant Qiu thought for a moment. “I have an idea.”
He hurriedly asked, “What is it?”
“Isn’t it perfectly normal to install a surveillance camera outside the study?” Assistant Qiu took out her phone and opened the employees’ internal app. “All we need to do is edit a purchase record in the back end, setting the date to sometime half a year or a year ago. Then tonight, we quietly install a fake model.”
There were very few servants or nannies who wandered around the study, a restricted area of the house. The cleaning was handled personally by Assistant Sun and his people.
Moreover, the ceiling of the first-floor hallway was intricately designed. Anyone who had worked there for more than a decade would have little reason to look up deliberately, making it difficult for them to tell whether the camera had been installed that night or months earlier.
In literature, there was a specific rhetorical device for this: temporal narrative deception.
That way, even if the nanny responsible for cleaning the third-floor study found out, she wouldn’t be too resentful. The camera had supposedly been installed long ago; she simply hadn’t noticed it herself.
They could also give Old Master a reasonable explanation.
Jiang Yihua couldn’t possibly give up the evidence that would prove his innocence. He sighed. “I suppose that’s the only way.”
At worst, he would have to endure a scolding from Old Master.
The matter was naturally handed over to Assistant Sun, who would also take care of altering the historical purchase records in the system.
Jiang Yihua returned to the office and told everyone a polished version of what had happened. The moment they heard it, everyone was reinvigorated.
Assistant Wei had recovered the surveillance footage. What more was there to say?
This battle was clearly theirs to win.
“Everyone’s worked hard today. It’s already so late, so go home and get some rest.” Jiang Yihua looked around at them. “We still have a tough battle to fight tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir!”
Having finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel, everyone was in high spirits. They packed up and left work with their chests puffed out and their heads held high.
“Wait, Assistant Qian.” Just before leaving, Assistant Qiu called out to him.
“What is it?”
“Remember to relay this to our colleagues in South Korea. Tell Qin Man that confessing earns leniency, while resisting brings the full force of the law.”
Assistant Qian slapped his forehead. “Look at me. I got so excited by the good news that I forgot. I’ll contact them right away!”
After speaking with their colleagues, the people on the Korean side demonstrated a thorough understanding of both carrot and stick. Their combination of threats and inducements successfully broke through Qin Man’s psychological defenses.
Now that they had irrefutable surveillance footage, resisting would be futile. Qin Man decided she might as well confess as soon as possible. At least they had promised not to reclaim the money they had given her family.
Good news came one piece after another, and for the first time in two nights, Jiang Yihua was able to sleep soundly.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the house, the husband and wife from the third branch sat facing each other in the study.
“Have you reached her?” Jiang Yicheng asked.
Ning Zhi shook her head. “Her phone hasn’t been reachable since this afternoon.”
Jiang Yicheng rubbed his temples. “Have everyone pull out immediately and clean up any loose ends.”
Half a day was more than enough time for his elder brother’s people to track Qin Man down, even if she had fled to South Korea.
“Understood. I’ve already given the orders.” Ning Zhi put down her phone.
“Idiot!” Jiang Yicheng couldn’t help cursing. “It was obviously a trap designed to lure her out. How could she still dare log into the account?”
Ning Zhi finished making the call to halt the operation. “It already happened. Cursing her won’t change anything.”
For a while, the husband and wife sat in the study, staring at each other in silence.
