Chapter 55: Someone Used His Name
Both guards stationed at the ballroom entrance responded the moment they heard someone call for security.
They crossed the room quickly enough to attract attention from several nearby guests, and a third guard followed at a slower pace while speaking quietly into the microphone attached to his collar. By the time they reached the dessert table, Meilin had already moved aside to give them an unobstructed view of Zhiyi.
"This woman entered without an invitation," Meilin announced. "No one checked her name at the gate, and she admitted that she isn’t supposed to be here."
The first guard looked at Meilin before examining the three women beside her.
Recognition passed over his face. Whether he knew their names or merely recognized that their dresses and jewelry belonged inside the Liang family’s ballroom, Zhiyi couldn’t determine, but he accepted their presence without requesting evidence.
His attention shifted to her. "Your invitation."
"I don’t have one."
Meilin’s friends exchanged satisfied looks while the guard’s expression hardened.
Zhiyi looked toward her table again, but the guests between them had shifted.
Her chair was no longer visible, and Hanchuan had now been gone for at least fourteen minutes.
That exceeded his estimate by forty percent. The property dispute had probably expanded beyond the eastern access road, or someone had introduced information the messenger hadn’t possessed when he interrupted dinner.
Either possibility meant Hanchuan would already be displeased.
Returning after he discovered her missing would make it worse.
"My place was arranged by the Liang family," she explained. "My name is on the table."
"Which table?" the guard asked.
Zhiyi attempted to locate it through the guests, but several people had stopped moving to watch the confrontation. Their bodies blocked the direct line between her and the six seats near the garden doors.
"The one eighteen meters behind you."
The guard glanced over his shoulder at a ballroom containing dozens of tables. "You’ll need to be more specific."
Doing that required naming the five men seated with her.
Zhiyi had already decided that Meilin couldn’t be allowed to know that information, but the guards presented an additional variable.
Security personnel working inside the Liang residence should already possess a complete guest list and seating plan. Telling them where to look shouldn’t expose anything they weren’t authorized to know.
"Contact Rong Jingwei," she said. "He can confirm where I belong."
The guard’s expression changed immediately, and it wasn’t recognition.
His mouth pulled into a humorless smile while his partner looked Zhiyi over again, apparently searching for something that would explain why she believed the request was reasonable.
"You want us to call President Rong?" the second guard asked.
"Yes."
A woman behind Meilin laughed.
The first guard moved closer to Zhiyi. "President Rong doesn’t deal with uninvited guests."
The statement was probably accurate under ordinary circumstances, but the problem could be solved in less than thirty seconds if someone asked him one question.
Jingwei had been absent from the ballroom when Zhiyi left the table. He might be handling another security issue elsewhere in the residence, but answering a call wouldn’t require him to return.
"He knows me," she explained.
This produced more laughter from Meilin’s friends.
Meilin folded her arms and regarded Zhiyi with an expression that suggested the situation had finally become embarrassing enough to satisfy her. "First it was two older men paying for everything. Now she knows Rong Jingwei."
Both statements were true, but Meilin presented them as though they contradicted one another.
The guards apparently agreed with her.
"That’s enough," the first one said. "You’re leaving."
"I can’t leave the residence," Zhiyi replied, shaking her head.
Hanchuan had specifically instructed her to remain at the table. Returning to it was already difficult to reconcile with her current location, but being removed from the building would violate every possible interpretation of his words.
The guard reached for her.
Zhiyi stepped back before his hand touched her, moving automatically rather than making a deliberate attempt to escape. The heel of her shoe struck the base of the dessert table, leaving no additional space behind her.
"She’s resisting," Meilin said.
Zhiyi wasn’t. She had taken one step, and no one had instructed her to remain still. Before she could explain the distinction, the guard closed one hand around her upper arm.
His fingers pressed directly against her bare skin.
Zhiyi stopped thinking about the invitation.
The pressure of his grip registered first, followed by warmth spreading beneath his palm. His thumb rested against the inside of her arm while his fingers closed around the outside, leaving no direction in which she could pull away without increasing the contact.
He was touching her.
The plate tilted in her other hand. The server caught it before the fruit tart slid onto the floor, but Zhiyi barely registered its removal. A second guard had taken hold of her opposite arm, and both men were repositioning themselves beside her.
One hand closed above each elbow.
A second hand locked around each forearm.
Four points of contact.
Zhiyi held herself completely still. Moving would create friction between their palms and her skin. Pulling away would require them to tighten their grip. Neither option reduced the number of hands touching her.
"I’m not resisting," she repeated through gritted teeth.
The first guard tightened his fingers anyway. "Then stop making this difficult."
The pressure increased until the skin beneath his hand whitened. Red marks appeared around the edges of his fingers, and the guard on her right gripped hard enough that the outline of his thumb became visible along the inside of her forearm.
Pain should have required a response. She knew that pain existed to identify damage and prevent it from worsening, but the information didn’t rise high enough for her to examine it.
The hands remained the larger problem.
They were still touching her.
They had also prevented her from returning to the table.
"If you contact Rong Jingwei, he will tell you to release me."
The first guard gave a short laugh. "Using President Rong’s name isn’t going to keep you inside."
"I’m not using it to remain inside. I’m telling you how to verify the information you refused to check."
His fingers dug deeper into her arm.
The skin beneath both guards’ hands had darkened from red to a mottled purple, but Zhiyi didn’t look down.
She was calculating how long Hanchuan had been gone, how long it would take him to reach the ballroom after completing the property transfer and whether he would check the dessert table before asking someone to review the security cameras.
The third guard had remained several steps away from the confrontation. Unlike the other two, he didn’t laugh when Zhiyi repeated Jingwei’s name. His attention moved from her face to the bruises forming beneath his coworkers’ hands before settling on Meilin.
Meilin was smiling.
The guard reached into his jacket and removed his phone.
He didn’t tell the others that he was checking. He stepped far enough away that the women couldn’t read the screen and typed a short message to the man whose company had been hired to secure the event.
President Rong, a young woman at the dessert table is using your name to avoid removal. Is she authorized to remain?
The response didn’t come immediately.
Across the residence, Rong Jingwei had just finished examining a malfunctioning camera feed when his phone vibrated. He glanced at the message, read it a second time and felt what little patience he possessed disappear.
No guest with a legitimate reason to remain at the Liang residence needed to use his name.
Anyone who actually knew him would understand that invoking it during an argument with his employees was more likely to worsen the situation than resolve it.
So, he sent no reply.
Jingwei slid the phone into his pocket and left the security room, already irritated that his men had allowed the interruption to reach him.
The dessert table was less than two minutes away. He would identify the liar, have them removed and determine afterward why his guards had needed assistance with something so simple.
His expression grew colder as he entered the corridor leading back to the ballroom.
Who the hell had been stupid enough to use his name?