The day the fund was forcibly liquidated, rare snow blanketed Shanghai.
I stood at the gates of the Tai Ping Lake villa with two-year-old Zhijiang in my arms, watching the auction team slap red seals on everything we owned.
Snowflakes caught on his lashes. He blinked up at me:
"Mommy, are we poor now?"
I crouched, kissed his cold forehead, smiled sharper than the winter wind:
"Baby, Mommy is the most valuable thing in the world.
Money comes and goes.
But this blade—" I tapped the centre of my chest— "never dulls."
That night I took him to the abandoned rooftop of Bund 18.
Wind howled. A thin skin of ice glazed the river.
I set him down, made him stand straight, then pulled out three documents.
One I let the wind rip from my fingers and carry into the Huangpu.
One I burned, ashes swirling like black snow.
The last one I signed with steady strokes and pressed into his tiny hand.
"Zhijiang,
today Mommy zeroes out every share, every fund, every yesterday.
From now on we start clean.
Remember:
the purest valuation
always comes after zero."
He couldn't read yet, but his eyes, black as midnight, told me he understood.
Because when he looked up,
the cruelty in them was already a perfect copy of mine.
I took his hand.
We walked away.
Snow fell harder, erasing our footprints one by one.
The Huangpu kept flowing,
but for the first time
its water couldn't reach my eyes.