Three days later,
following the address the job posting had sent her, An Nhien made her way to
the Lam house. She had applied for the position, and been hired.
The Lam villa stood on a
hillside on the northern edge of Dong Cang: sprawling, cold, and silent as a
building where no one lived.
When An Nhien stepped into
the living room, Khai Minh was seated in a chair, one hand resting on the head
of his cane, his expression unreadable in its calm. The moment she saw him, she
flinched. She meant to slip out fast, before he noticed she was there, but
she’d barely turned, hadn’t even taken a step, when Dong’s face rose up in her
mind.
Her brother needed money to
stay in treatment. Her father had just been fired by this very bastard. This
was a chance for her whole family, and the pay was high. If she walked out,
there’d be no money at all.
“Hello.”
An Nhien got the greeting
out. Khai Minh’s brows drew together faintly.
It’s the girl from the
hospital, he thought. But he gave no
sign that he’d recognized her. He wanted to test just how honest she was.
“Have you ever met me
before?”
The question had barely
landed before Khai Minh assumed she wouldn’t dare admit it.
“Yes. We’ve met. Three days
ago, at the hospital.”
Khai Minh went quiet for a
beat, then asked her point-blank.
“That day, you told me I
had no right over other people’s lives. And today you’ve come begging for a
job?”
“I came here to work, not
to beg you for anything.”
“You really think you’ll be
working as an assistant?”
“They told me the job is
helping with daily needs, reading documents, and going with you when needed.”
“Here, the title doesn’t
matter. I want water, you bring it. I call, you appear. I ask for silence, you
know to keep your mouth shut. Put simply… you’re here to be a servant.”
An Nhien’s hands curled
into fists.
She wanted to turn and walk
out, wanted to say that being poor didn’t mean letting someone else humiliate
her, but the image of her father on his knees in that corridor, and Dong’s
panic, were still fresh before her eyes.
“Fine. I’ll do whatever you
want, as long as you pay me square. You’ll honor the contract, won’t you?”
“I hire a servant, of
course I pay. My family doesn’t lack for money.”
“Good. And if you fire me
on a whim, the promised support still gets paid out through the end of the
month.”
Khai Minh raised an
eyebrow. He hadn’t expected her to stay composed enough to read the fine print.
“Are you bargaining
with me?”
“I’m protecting what’s
mine. You don’t have to respect me, but the contract has to be clear.”
Nearby, the lawyer Bach
cleared his throat, as if smothering a smile.
Khai Minh tapped a
fingertip.
“Fine. Add the clause. From
now on, you call me young master.”
Her throat tightened, but
she lifted her chin.
“Yes, young master.”
Her first days in the
villa made An Nhien understand why the staff turned over so often.
Khai Minh had memorized the
exact position of every object down to a hand’s breadth. The water glass had to
sit to the right of his chair, handle turned toward him. The door was to be
left half-open so he could sense the draft. The curtains were never drawn fully
shut, because even without seeing, he could feel the light shift. His food had
to be just warm enough, and when the document-reading software was running, no
one was allowed to make a sound.
On the second day, An Nhien
set the glass slightly off its usual spot. He caught it at once.
“You’ve put it in the wrong
place.”
“It’s only a few
centimeters. You can still reach it.”
“I don’t want to have to
grope around in my own home.”
“All right. I’ll remember.”
“That’s one.”
An Nhien turned back.
“What did you just say?”
“I’m counting your
mistakes. After three, you’re gone.”
“There’s no three-strikes
clause in the contract.”
“Then you’re welcome to
test whether I can throw you out anyway.”
On the third day, the towel
on the armrest slipped off. An Nhien bent to pick it up and, without meaning
to, came close enough that Khai Minh jerked his arm back, the tip of his cane
cracking against a chair leg.
“What do you think you’re
doing?”
“Picking up the towel.”
“That’s two.”
“Don’t be unreasonable. I
never even touched you.”
“I don’t like people coming
close without warning me first.”
“Then you could’ve said so
from the start, instead of turning everything into my fault.”
Khai Minh turned his face
away.
“Here, you’re the servant,
not my master.”
An Nhien flushed red with
anger. But then she looked at his unfocused eyes, and it struck her that his
reaction just now hadn’t only been irritation.
Khai Minh had been afraid.
The fear had flashed up fast, then been buried under that cold shell, like a
man forever braced to fight back, even when the person drawing near meant him
no harm.
“You can relax. From now
on, I’ll warn you every time I need to come close.”
Khai Minh stiffened.
“Don’t pity me.”
“I never said I pitied
you.”
“Your breathing changed.”
“You can hear even that?”
“I hear more than you
think.”
“Then you should also hear
that I’m trying to do my job, not trying to hurt you.”
Khai Minh didn’t answer.
But from that day on, he never brought up the second strike again.
In the evenings, An
Nhien often read the documents aloud to him instead of leaving the software to
drone through them.
At first she only read the
words, asking nothing. But one time, she hit a report on equipment costs that
ran abnormally high, and she stopped.
“The figure in this line is
nearly double the market quote.”
“You know the price of
medical equipment?”
“I studied nursing. I ran a
supply storeroom during my internship. A monitor like this can’t possibly cost
that much.”
“Keep reading.”
“You’re not going to look
into it?”
“I will look into it. Keep
reading, so I know how many more items like this there are.”
That night, Khai Minh
listened to the entire report, over a hundred pages of it. The next morning,
two staff from the procurement department were suspended for inflating prices.
An Nhien got no thanks. But
Dong’s lunch was quietly upgraded to a better nutritional plan, on doctor’s
orders. She never learned whose command it had been.
One Thursday evening, Mai
Ngoc summoned An Nhien to her private room in the east wing.
She wore a cream-colored
dress, her face gentle, her voice soft and low.
“You’re Tran Huu Loc’s
daughter, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I heard about your father
losing his job, and your little brother needing to be hospitalized. Your
family’s situation weighs on me terribly.”
“The decision to fire him
was Khai Minh’s. But you’re the one running the hospital. If you think it’s
wrong, you can undo it.”
Mai Ngoc looked at her, the
smile stiffening for an instant before it slid smoothly back into softness.
“I can bring your father
back to work. I can also arrange for your brother to be moved up the priority
list for specialized treatment.”
An Nhien didn’t rush to
feel grateful. She looked at the envelope Mai Ngoc had just laid on the table,
and unease crept up inside her.
“In exchange for what?”
“You go everywhere with
Khai Minh, all day. I only want to know who he meets, what documents he reads,
and what he’s planning before his birthday. You report back to me, nothing
added, nothing left out.”
“You say you’re worried
about him. But you want me to spy on him.”
“Khai Minh no longer trusts
his family. Some people are using him to pressure the hospital. I’m his aunt,
his blood. I have to know what he’s doing so I can protect him.”
“Then why not just ask him
directly?”
“If he’d answer, I wouldn’t
need you.”
Mai Ngoc pushed the
envelope toward her.
An Nhien hated its
thickness, hated that simply taking that money meant Dong could have enough
medicine for weeks. She understood that Mai Ngoc’s words weren’t entirely true.
But the poor are sometimes never offered a choice between right and wrong;
they’re cornered into choosing between having and losing.
“You’ll bring my father
back to work?”
“The decision will be
signed tomorrow.”
“And Dong’s treatment
schedule?”
“I’ll deal with the
psychiatric department myself.”
An Nhien picked up the
envelope. Her hand hung heavy, as if what sat inside it wasn’t money at all,
but the piece of her self-respect that had just been laid on the scales.
Enjoying 'The Blind Heir's Spy'? 🤍 This story is updated daily for free! If you love Emma and Liam's journey and want to support the author, you can buy me a coffee here: buymeacoffee.com/WhirlwindRomance . Every little coffee keeps the story alive. Thank you so much! ✨