Lingling’s voice was low. “You’ll tell me everything. Coordinates. Encryption keys. All of it.”
Camille nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Orm’s hand found Lingling’s, squeezing hard. “We’ll fix this. Together.”
The cab merged into traffic, the SUV two cars behind. Lingling calculated escape vectors—side streets, pedestrian zones, the Seine. She opened her tablet, fingers flying. A drone swarm, courtesy of Kwong Corporation’s R&D division, was already en route from a warehouse in Lyon. 20 minutes out.
The driver glanced in the rearview. “You in trouble?”
“Define trouble,” Orm said.
The woman grinned. “Hold tight.”
She floored it, cutting across three lanes. Horns blared. The SUV swerved, tires screeching. Lingling braced Camille as they took a sharp left into a narrow street, market stalls blurring past. The SUV tried to follow, clipped a fruit cart, sent oranges exploding across the pavement.
They lost it.
For now.
---
Gare du Nord was chaos—commuters, tourists, the smell of burnt coffee and wet wool. Lingling supported Camille while Orm bought tickets to Brussels, a decoy. They slipped into a restroom, changed clothes from a duffel Nia had apparently packed—jeans, hoodies, baseball caps. Camille’s IV was disconnected, the port capped. She was pale but upright.
Lingling hacked the station’s PA system. A fake announcement: *Train to Lyon departing Platform 9.* The SUV’s occupants—two men in dark coats—sprinted toward it.
They took the metro instead, switching lines twice. Emerged at Châtelet, melted into the crowd. A private car waited, arranged by Kwong’s European fixer. They piled in, Camille in the back, head on Orm’s lap.
The car sped toward Le Bourget, a private airstrip. Lingling’s jet was being prepped, flight plan filed for Bangkok via a refueling stop in Dubai. She sent encrypted messages—security teams to Montmartre, digital forensics on the flash drive, a bounty on Uncle Lotus’s successor.
Camille’s voice was a thread. “The safe house is under Wat Arun. There’s a tunnel from the river. The ledger’s in a biometric vault. My retina, my voice.”
Lingling nodded. “We’ll get it. End this.”
Orm stroked Camille’s hair. “Why the mural? With Lingling?”
Camille’s eyes fluttered. “I painted it. Years ago. Before I knew you. Uncle Lotus showed me a photo of her—said she was the future. I was… obsessed. Drew her over and over. That alley was my studio.”
Lingling felt a chill. Someone had been watching her since childhood. Grooming Camille. The ledger wasn’t just leverage—it was a weapon aimed at her empire.
The car reached the airstrip. The jet’s stairs were down, engines warming. Lingling helped Camille aboard, settling her in a reclining seat. Orm buckled her in, kissing her forehead.
As they taxied, Lingling’s tablet pinged. A message from an anonymous server: *The clock ticks. 71 hours.*
Attached was a photo—taken minutes ago. The three of them boarding the jet. Someone was inside Le Bourget.
Lingling’s blood ran cold. She initiated lockdown protocols—cabin sealed, comms jammed, autopilot engaged. The jet lifted off, Paris shrinking below.
Camille was asleep, morphine patch on her arm. Orm stared out the window, tears tracking down her cheeks.
Lingling sat beside her, hand on her knee. “We’re not running. We’re hunting.”
Orm nodded. “What if the ledger’s a trap?”
“Then we spring it. On our terms.”
---
Mid-flight, Camille woke. Feverish. Delirious. She grabbed Lingling’s hand, grip fierce.
“There’s more,” she rasped. “The ledger… it has your father’s signature. A deal. Before he died.”
Lingling froze. Her father’s death—heart attack, official story. But there had been whispers. Poison. A coup within Kwong Corporation.
“What deal?” she asked.
Camille’s eyes rolled back. “Shares… Mystique Group… he sold you.”
Orm’s head snapped up. “What?”
But Camille was out, chest rising shallowly.
Lingling’s world tilted. Her father, selling her future to Mystique’s rivals? Arranging her marriage to Orm as a merger, not love? The numbers didn’t add up.
She opened her tablet, diving into archived Kwong files. Encryption layers peeled back like onion skin. There—buried in a folder dated 2019. A contract. Her father’s digital signature. Transfer of 15% Kwong shares to a shell company linked to Uncle Lotus. In exchange: *Protection of heiress. Marriage to Kornnaphat heir.*
Orm’s voice was small. “Is it true?”
Lingling couldn’t speak. The jet’s cabin felt too small, the air too thin. She had built her life on logic, on control. This was chaos.
She closed the tablet. “We get the ledger. Then we burn it.”
Orm reached for her, but Lingling pulled away. The fracture was complete.
---
Bangkok loomed 14 hours away. The ledger waited beneath Wat Arun, a digital Pandora’s box. Uncle Lotus’s successor watched from the shadows. And in the cabin, three women hurtled toward a reckoning—blood, betrayal, and the fragile thread of love holding them together.
Camille murmured in her sleep, “The cube… solve the cube…”
Lingling pulled it from her pocket, colors scrambled. For the first time, her fingers hesitated.
The clock ticked. 68 hours
YOU ARE READING
No one else but you
Romancelingling kwong with an Asperger's syndrome is married to orm kornanphat the marriage is built on love and trust .but will love and trust be enough for both of them to keep going.
The cipher in the canvas
Start from the beginning
