Against the Algorithm

Chapter 45: Quiet Claims and Soft Surrenders

She slid inside with all the poise of royalty stepping into her carriage. The door closed behind her with a soft, definitive click. Inside, the leather interior was quiet and cool. She adjusted the seat, crossed her legs, then pulled her phone from her coat pocket and tapped her husband's number first.

The call connected after one ring.

Chen Kazemi's voice, deep and rich, laced with that familiar warmth that only she ever saw, answered smoothly, "You done?"

"It's handled," Kaya replied, tone calm and clipped but threaded with that faint intimacy that only surfaced with him. "I'm on my way home."

There was a pause, and then a chuckle rumbled through the line. "I take it no mess?"

"None. No noise, no evidence. And I expect dinner waiting," s he said, voice dipping with unmistakable promise. "Something decadent. Red meat. Something expensive. And wine. A proper vintage."

He laughed. "Anything you want, Kaya."

"I know." she murmured, lips curving slightly before she ended the call. Without missing a beat, she tapped in a second number.

This one rang longer.

Then connected.

Lu Sicheng's voice, sharp and alert despite the hour, came through the line. "You calling to tell me it's done?"

"They're finished," Kaya replied, gaze flicking lazily to the burning silhouette of the house in the rear-view mirror as the car pulled away. "All three of them. No suffering. Just silence."

There was a pause.

Then a low exhale from the other end. "Did they beg?"

She tilted her head slightly. "They tried."

"Didn't work, did it?"

"You know better." she said simply.

Silence stretched for a moment, then his voice came back low, edged in finality. "Good.

Lu Sicheng stared at the screen for a long moment after the call ended, the soft ping of the line disconnecting hanging briefly in the air before silence settled around him. The weight of those final words lingered—all three of them, no suffering, just silence. He leaned back in his chair, let his phone drop lightly onto the desk, and shook his head once, a quiet breath pushing through his nose. Not out of surprise exactly—Chen Kaya was a force he'd long respected from a distance—but still, it was something else entirely to know she had taken this into her own hands. Not for him. Not for the Lu family. But for Yao. His fingers tapped once against the wood, slow and thoughtful.

Of all the people in the world, his sweet, shy, easily flustered Xiǎo tùzǐ had her in her corner. Kaya, the woman who could walk through a room of killers and never flinch. The woman who had once been a whispered name in the darker circles of international business and underground loyalty. The one married into the Chen family not just by name, but by power. And she had done this for Yao. No deal. No contract.

Sicheng rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, lips twitching faintly, not in amusement, but in a kind of disbelief threaded with pride. His Xiǎo tùzǐ, with her long platinum hair and soft voice, who still flushed when he kissed the corner of her mouth or teased her too closely during their quiet evenings—she didn't even realize how the world bent subtly around her. How people noticed her not for her fire, but for her light. How they fell, slowly and helplessly, not in awe, but in wanting—wanting to know her, to protect her, to stand near that calm, grounded core that had held even him when he hadn't known he needed it. She didn't strut. She didn't demand. She simply was. And it was enough to make the most dangerous woman he'd ever met carve out retribution without a second thought. He picked his phone back up, absently turning it over in his hand, his gaze drifting toward the faint outline of the photo beside his monitor—the one Yao had taken without realizing, of Da Bing and Xiao Cong curled up on her desk, his jacket draped over her chair in the background.