Mai Ngoc’s hand jerked.
The seal dropped to the table and rolled to a stop in front of Quang Vu.
She spun around and saw
Khai Minh standing in the aisle, one hand still oozing blood. An Nhien was
right behind him, hair windblown into a tangle, and the lawyer Bach already had
a stack of documents open in his hands.
“Minh, why are you here?”
Khai Minh gave a cold
little laugh.
“You had them lock the villa
gate, strip the bodyguards of their authority, and forbid me from leaving. And
now you ask why I’m here?”
“I was only worried you’d
get worked up and do something dangerous.”
“Dangerous for me, or
dangerous for this contract?”
Mai Ngoc went pale. Do Quang
Vu rose, his voice still smooth.
“Mr. Lam, this is a
business meeting. Family matters should be settled elsewhere.”
Khai Minh turned his face
squarely toward the voice.
“You’re sitting in front of
assets registered in my name, telling me to go settle things elsewhere?”
“You’re not yet of age to
run this directly. Mai Ngoc remains the legal representative.”
Bach stepped forward and
laid a copy of the trust deed and the disposal-restriction annex on the table.
“Mai Ngoc holds the right
to vote by proxy and to manage day-to-day affairs. But Annex Three bars any
transaction that alters control, creates share-conversion rights, or encumbers
the assets for more than three years, without the signature of the of-age
beneficiary and the countersignature of the trust’s lawyer. This twenty-year
agreement violates all three limits.”
The notary at the end of
the table hurriedly pulled the documents toward himself. Truong Sinh’s legal
representative flipped rapidly through the pages, his expression souring by the
second.
Quang Vu didn’t so much as
glance at Bach. He kept his eyes on Khai Minh, his voice colder than before.
“You’re young, and your
health isn’t exactly convenient. Some matters have to be left to people with
experience.”
“People with experience.
You mean the ones who let D-17 harm patients, then went looking for ways to
doctor the report?”
The room fell silent.
A few reporters who’d been
invited to cover the event snapped their heads up. The recorders on the table
swiveled toward Khai Minh.
Mai Ngoc hurried over.
“Minh, don’t go making
claims you have no proof for.”
“The proof burned along
with Lab Seven. And the man holding the original report died on the southern
slope, the very same night.”
“That was an accident.”
“You’ve been saying that
line for six years.”
“Because it’s the police’s
conclusion.”
Khai Minh stood motionless,
his hand gripping the cane until the knuckles went white.
“And the person in the red
raincoat?”
Mai Ngoc’s breath stopped.
It was only the briefest
flicker, but Khai Minh heard it. He heard her breath catch, heard the
unconscious half-step her heel took backward, heard the metal bracelet on her
wrist clink faintly against the edge of the table.
For six years he had waited
for exactly this kind of reaction. Not a confession. Not tears. Just one
instant where the person across from him couldn’t raise their guard in time.
That was all it took to tell him his memory had never been entirely wrong.
“The day my mother died,
she looked at the person standing by the road, and called your name.”
Mai Ngoc looked at the
nephew before her. For a few seconds, the conference room vanished.
She saw again the
thirteen-year-old boy lying in recovery, his head wrapped in bandages, his eyes
still red with blood, his small ice-cold hand clutching hers as he asked: “Where
were you when the car burned?”
She had cried, truly.
The grief of losing her
sister had been real too.
But her answer had been a
lie.
“Minh…”
“Where were you?”
Mai Ngoc’s lips moved, but
before she could get a word out, Quang Vu cut in.
“Mr. Lam, you’re
turning a legal proceeding into a place to recount some childhood
hallucination. If you want to investigate, take it up with the police.”
Khai Minh whipped toward
him.
“I will. Not just the
accident, but D-17, Lab Seven, and everyone who took money to falsify my
medical records.”
Mai Ngoc trembled.
An Nhien, standing behind
them, saw it all with perfect clarity. She had once hated this woman, for the
envelope of cash, for the gentle voice that had masked her intent to spy on her
own nephew. But in that moment, the look on Mai Ngoc’s face was no longer that
of a woman afraid of losing a hospital. She looked like someone driven to the
very edge of a cliff, with years of waiting sins lying in the dark below.
Khai Minh turned toward the
notary An Nhien had just pointed out, and raised his voice.
“I demand this proceeding
be halted immediately. Every document signed today will be challenged in court,
and I’ll be requesting an emergency injunction.”
The room dissolved into
chaos. Reporters began firing questions; Truong Sinh’s representatives gathered
up their files; and Do Quang Vu leaned close to Mai Ngoc and murmured, very
quietly:
“Go home. Don’t say another
word.”
Mai Ngoc looked at him, and felt that it wasn’t advice at all. It was a warning.
Mai Ngoc left the hotel
to the ceaseless clicking of camera shutters behind her.
When she sank into the car,
her hands were still shaking too hard to fasten the seatbelt. The driver asked
where to. She didn’t answer. The car sat under the portico for more than ten
minutes, and she only watched the people coming and going through the fogged
glass, Khai Minh’s question looping over and over in her head.
Where were you?
She’d been there. Not
beside the car when it burst into flames, but close. Close enough to know the
plan to pressure her sister had gone far past what she’d agreed to. Close
enough to take Minh Quan’s call, telling her not to go to the slope, not to
call the police, to just let Truong Sinh’s people handle it.
She’d heard the news that
her sister was dead, and still she’d stayed silent. Because to speak up meant
confessing that she herself had once passed Thanh Ha’s schedule along to Truong
Sinh Pharmaceuticals.
Yes… yes, she had been
greedy. Envious. She had once wanted to seize the hospital, to take everything
her sister had. But she had never intended for anyone to die-and she’d
never dreamed that the man she’d partnered with, Quang Vu and his father, would
dare do that to her own sister.
Once the spear was thrown,
she had to follow it in. Her hands were stained now; even if she confessed, no
one would believe she was clean… so she’d kept her mouth shut. Kept it shut and
watched her sister die. Watched her poor nephew lose both his parents.
Over these six years, Mai
Ngoc had split her guilt into small pieces, so it would be easier to bear. She
hadn’t cut the brake line. Hadn’t set the fire. Hadn’t stood there in the red
raincoat. She had only handed over information, and stayed silent, taking
whatever was left after other people died.
But guilt doesn’t grow
lighter for being cut into pieces.
It only seeps deeper.
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