The transcript was delivered by mistake.
It was meant to go to Song Qingci's rented basement, but was instead sent to her emergency contact address—three years ago, she had listed Lu Yan's office.
His secretary opened the envelope, saw the name on the transcript, hesitated, and placed it on Lu Yan's desk.
Lu Yan was in a board meeting.
He opened the envelope. The first page was the transcript.
Financial Accounting: A+
Corporate Finance: A+
Investment Analysis: A+
Derivatives Pricing: A+
Quantitative Trading: A+
All A's.
He turned to the second page. A letter of recommendation from the professor.
The letter was from Donovan Black.
"Song Qingci is the best student I have seen in twenty years. Her instincts for the market, her judgment of risk, her sensitivity to numbers far exceed those of her peers. In five years, she will become the most dangerous woman on Wall Street."
The transcript was passed around the boardroom.
Everyone had the same expression—shock.
That stand-in who had been cast out by the Lu family, that woman who had "disappeared" according to the society wives, was now reappearing in their sight in a completely different way.
Lu Yan said nothing. He closed the transcript and put it in his drawer.
After the meeting, he had someone find Song Qingci's address.
Queens. A certain street, no house number. A basement.
He drove there.
The street was narrow, half the streetlights broken, puddles on the ground. He stood by the roadside for a long time, looking at the light filtering through the basement's ventilation grate.
The light was dim, but it was on.
Song Qingci saw him when she came out to take out the trash.
He stood under the streetlight in his tailored suit, utterly out of place in the surrounding decay.
She wore her supermarket uniform—a blue polo shirt a size too big, a name tag reading "S. Song" on her chest. Dish soap foam was embedded under her nails, her hair pinned up with a pencil.
"Song Qingci," he said, his voice much lower than the last time they'd met. "I can help you."
She held her bag of trash, looking at him calmly.
"Mr. Lu, the only way you can help me is to pay what you owe me on time, as stated in the divorce agreement. I don't need anything else."
She called him "Mr. Lu." Not "Lu Yan," not "you." The way a stranger addresses another stranger.
Something shifted in Lu Yan's eyes.
He stepped forward and grabbed her wrist.
"You'd rather live in a place like this than come back?"
His fingers tightened. She could feel the warmth of his palm.
She looked down at his hand, then up at him with a smile.
There was no humility in that smile, no ingratiation. Only a calm he had never seen on her face before.
"Lu Yan, this place is mine. Dirty, messy, full of rats. But there's no stand-in here."
She pulled her hand free, a gentle movement, but resolute.
He stood frozen.
She turned and walked into the basement. The door closed softly.
Lu Yan stood under the streetlight for a long time. He didn't leave until the light from the ventilation grate went out.
Song Qingci returned to the basement and found an envelope wedged in the door.
She opened it.
A notice for a hearing before the NYU Academic Committee.
And an anonymous, typed note:
"Drop out of NYU. Leave Donovan. Or everyone will know your secret—that you used to be Mrs. Lu. Do you think a woman who got ahead by being a stand-in belongs on Wall Street?"
She crumpled the note and threw it in the trash.
Then she sat at her door-plank desk, switched on the lamp, and turned to the chapter she needed to study for tomorrow's exam.
On the wall, her shadow stretched.
Slender. Stubborn.
Under the lamplight, her eyes were sharp as a blade.
She knew a storm was coming.
But she wasn't afraid.