Early autumn had arrived, yet the weather remained oppressively hot, as if the season refused to yield.
Amid the endless flattery from the Tan Family juniors, Tan Qingya glanced up impatiently. What difference was there between these nieces of hers and all the sycophants outside?
“Li Zhenyu, do you not have enough homework?” she said as she rose to her feet. “Get back to your own rooms.”
“Little Aunt.” The girl called Li Zhenyu pouted in grievance. “I’ve already graduated from university.”
The other young juniors chimed in, insisting that they too had graduated. A flicker of surprise finally crossed Tan Qingya’s face. “You’ve graduated but aren’t working? Just freeloading off your family at home?”
Every voice fell silent in an instant.
In great aristocratic families, the younger generation typically inherited the family business once they came of age. With such vast wealth and enterprises, wasn’t it only natural for them to take over?
There was no such thing as “freeloading” in their world.
Under normal circumstances, words like those would have turned their faces sour in anger.
But they didn’t have the guts to show Tan Qingya that side of themselves.
Though Tan Qingya was only five years older than them, she was the Tan Family’s greatest authority figure—the sole heir. Every family enterprise rested in her hands. Even their parents couldn’t claim a share, let alone them.
They could only tuck their tails between their legs and behave.
Li Zhenyu hurriedly changed the subject. “Little Aunt, you probably don’t know this, but I changed my surname to Tan a few years ago. Now I’m called Tan Zhenyu.”
It had happened a few years back. Bearing the Li surname made it impossible to get anywhere in their social circle, but taking the Tan name drew crowds eager to fawn over her.
Tan Qingya turned to look at her. “How do you know I don’t know?”
Li Zhenyu froze.
The other juniors instantly fell silent as mice, and the atmosphere plunged into a deep freeze.
At last, the chattering flock of little birds had quieted down. Satisfied, Tan Qingya withdrew her gaze and headed toward the door.
Her Silly Dog, who ought to have been lounging at the entrance, was nowhere in sight. Tan Qingya frowned and turned to the servant nearby. “Where’s Little Beauty?”
The servant faltered, unable to give a coherent answer.
“Go find her.”
It was Silly Dog’s first time at the Old Mansion. If she got lost and put on her blustering, fake-tough act, she might frighten someone.
Tan Qingya had just reached the garden when she heard clattering noises from a corner, accompanied by the vigorous barks of her Silly Dog.
She headed that way.
“Little Aunt!” Seeing her veer toward the storage room, Li Zhenyu and the others paled and scrambled to block her path, steeling themselves. “That’s the storage room. It’s pretty dirty and messy in there.”
“My little dog is in there.” The girl in front of her couldn’t hide her emotions at all. Tan Qingya crossed her arms and gave a mocking smile. “What, got a secret?”
“How could we?”
Li Zhenyu shook her head but didn’t dare meet Tan Qingya’s eyes.
She was the junior closest to Tan Qingya. Rumor had it that when she was little, Tan Qingya had once given her a piece of candy of her own accord—a privilege none of the others had enjoyed.
Thanks to that single candy, she became her parents’ most beloved child and the only one permitted to take the Tan surname.
Even so, Tan Qingya’s pointed question just moments ago had made it clear that the name change meant nothing.
Tan Qingya’s expression betrayed no emotion, but her tone carried an irresistible force. “Get out of my way.”
Li Zhenyu went pale and stepped aside. She exchanged uneasy glances with her sisters, who hadn’t dared follow either.
In the end, they all trailed after her anyway.
A heavy padlock secured the storage room door, and something inside was rattling against it.
“Open it!”
Her voice was icy cold, laced with a barely perceptible hint of anxiety. At the same time came the full-throated barks of a dog.
Clearly, not only was her Silly Dog inside—there was also some poor little thing who had somehow offended these juniors and gotten locked away with her.
Tan Qingya glanced back. The juniors looked terrified and pitifully innocent. But she would bet anything they wore a very different face around others.
“Little Aunt, we really didn’t know your dog was in there too,” Li Zhenyu explained in a small voice.
Tan Qingya lowered her gaze but said nothing more. She took the key from them and swiftly unlocked the padlock.
No sooner had she removed it than the door flew open with a bang.
She had braced herself for Silly Dog to leap straight into her arms, but instead, a person burst out first—like an enraged little lion cub charging headlong and knocking her back two steps before she steadied herself.
Before she could react, warm, wet softness wrapped around her arm. Tan Qingya froze in surprise.
In the next instant, sharp teeth pierced her skin, and pain bloomed outward.
“Ahh! Little Aunt!”
“Fuck! Are you insane?!”
Shrieks erupted from behind her.
The biter went rigid with fright, her teeth even trembling faintly. A hint of amusement softened Tan Qingya’s features. She pressed her other hand to the girl’s forehead and pushed gently.
The girl’s head tilted back, revealing a small, strikingly pretty face—one impossible to forget. Tan Qingya arched a brow, concealing the flash of admiration in her eyes as she chuckled. “Where’d this little dog come from, getting so fierce?”
She was just like her own Silly Dog.
That blustery, pretend-tough look was identical. Poor thing—her eyes were even turning red. She must have been terrified.
“Are you crazy?! How dare you bite my Little Aunt!” Li Zhenyu finally snapped out of it and rushed forward, reaching out to shove the girl away.
That was Tan Qingya!
Zhou Jianghao had to be out of her mind! If she was going to lose it, fine—but she couldn’t drag everyone else down with her!
“Woof!”
Before she could lay a hand on her, a mighty bark rang out. Li Zhenyu jolted in fear. Looking up, she saw a massive German shepherd burst from the room. A muzzle covered its mouth, but its appearance was anything but friendly.
Beautiful—and ferocious.
Li Zhenyu stumbled back.
See? She knew it would scare people. Even this genuine biter of a “little dog” shrank back a little. Tan Qingya beckoned to her Silly Dog. “Come here.”
She turned to the frightened girl with a mocking smile. “Relax. You’re way more likely to bite than she is.”
Zhou Jianghao went stiff.
She glanced cautiously at the bloody bite marks on the woman’s arm. The fair skin was torn open, but this beautiful, noble-looking woman didn’t seem angry at all.
Her plan had failed.
A crushing wave of disappointment left her utterly at a loss.
Years ago, her mother’s kidney had matched with Eldest Miss Tan. When the Tan Family came calling, her mother had thought long-term. She hadn’t asked for money—instead, she set her sights on the family’s power and influence. In exchange for the kidney, she made them promise to take Zhou Jianghao in for ten years.
And so, at the age of ten, Zhou Jianghao had come to live with the Tan Family. Old Madam Tan had treated her kindly, providing food, clothing, and necessities no different from those of the Tan children themselves. But in the end, she was not one of them.
Over those ten years in the Tan household, she had never made a single demand of the family. Whenever she had free time, she took on part-time jobs to support herself and avoid troubling them.
She kept meticulous track of every penny the Tan Family spent on her. Through years of grueling, nonstop work, she had finally paid back every cent she owed.
And yet, the Tan Family juniors despised her without reason.
From childhood onward, they had bullied her endlessly. Living under someone else’s roof, she had swallowed her anger every time. But her repeated forbearance only seemed to make them bolder.
She had no idea what she had done lately to provoke them this time—not only suppressing her graduation thesis but also locking her in this storage room!
Since no amount of yielding could change their hatred, why should she keep playing the punching bag?
She had already settled her debt to the Tan Family.
Besides, her mother had given up a kidney to secure those ten years for her. What right did the Tan juniors have to act like she owed them?
If she had a choice, she would have preferred a healthy mother over a decade of depending on others’ charity.
That was why, knowing full well how prominent the woman outside was, she had bitten her on purpose.
She wanted to make a huge scene—escalate it all the way to Old Madam Tan. Even if there were consequences later, she could claim she had been scared out of her mind by the dog.
After all, she hadn’t been the one to start trouble.
She shouldn’t have been afraid.
But things had gone wrong from the start. Instead of a wolf, she had provoked a noble, gentle cat.
“Little Aunt, a-are you… okay?” Li Zhenyu stammered nervously. “The butler’s gone to fetch the doctor. I’ll have someone drag Zhou Jianghao away and deal with her properly!”
“Deal with her? What are you, a barbarian? This is a society governed by law—human rights come first.” Tan Qingya arched a brow and turned to the girl with her head bowed. With a smile, she asked, “Little sister, you’re not a Tan Family servant, are you?”
Unlike the Tan Family, she wasn’t aggressive at all.
The unexpectedly gentle tone left Zhou Jianghao stunned.
After a long moment, she shook her head. “No.”
She paused, a faint spark of hope flickering to life inside her. Slowly, she added, “They locked me in the storage room… and let their dog in to bite me.”
With that, she looked up at this young family head.
The woman wore an apricot-colored off-the-shoulder dress that hugged her hips, accentuating her perfect figure. Yet an innate nobility tempered its allure, transforming sensuality into an aura of unapproachable elegance.
She was like a flower atop a high peak—untouchable, beyond desecration.
A woman this young and beautiful could make the likes of Li Zhenyu lose sleep for nights with nothing more than a frown.
Zhou Jianghao’s feelings showed plainly on her face.
Tan Qingya resisted the urge to reach out and pinch the girl’s cheeks. She subtly glanced at Li Zhenyu and the others, whose expressions had shifted because of Zhou Jianghao’s words, and let out a chuckle. “Kids will be kids—they’re just being playful. Don’t take it to heart.”
With that, she ignored the pretty girl’s suddenly pale face and turned to the housekeeper who had brought the doctor. “Have Little Wang escort this sister safely home.”
Zhou Jianghao’s gaze darkened.
She unclenched her tightly balled fists and silently followed the servant away. Waves of inexplicable disappointment welled up inside her, but she fought to hold it back, refusing to glance back even once.
The moment Zhou Jianghao left, the gentle look Tan Qingya had plastered on her face slowly faded away.
The Tan family members standing at her side noticed nothing of the change. That single sentence from Tan Qingya had brought smiles to several of their faces.
Was Tan Qingya’s protectiveness a sign that she finally acknowledged them deep down?
They were all Tan family children in name only, but their parents weren’t the same people.
Their nominal mother was Tan Yanxi, the eldest daughter of the Tan family.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Tan Yanxi and her husband Li Ye lived together in body but not in spirit. Both had illegitimate children on the side, and eventually, the couple laid all their cards on the table and simply brought everyone home to raise as their own.
No matter whose kids they were, they treated them all the same. Once word of this spread through the great aristocratic clans, the Tan family became the butt of everyone’s jokes for a long time.
Old Madam Tan had been furious about it. She placed great value on her partner’s fidelity and the blood ties to her own descendants, so her disappointment in Eldest Miss Tan ran bone-deep. In the end, she named an heir outright, transferring all the Tan family assets to Tan Qingya—who was only five years old at the time.
She even forbade Tan Yanxi and Li Ye’s children from taking the Tan surname.
If the Li family hadn’t already gone bankrupt, leaving Li Ye’s household with nowhere else to turn, Old Madam Tan might have thrown them out on the street.
It took years before life for the Li family members became barely tolerable, but the truth was, their futures depended entirely on Tan Qingya.
From childhood, their parents had drilled into them the need to stay in Little Aunt’s good graces.
Had the clouds finally parted for them at last?
