Chapter 1: The Turn of the Wheel
The brakes shrieked.
Vu Khai stamped down hard, sending the car skidding across the rain slick asphalt. It swung sideways for nearly ten meters before jolting to a stop, barely an arm’s reach from the figure standing in the middle of the road.
She did not flinch.
Wind tore in from the bay and battered the side of the car in savage bursts. Khai remained frozen behind the wheel, both hands locked around it, his pulse hammering high in his throat.
The headlights washed over her face.
Pham Thao Vy.
The daughter of Mr. Tuong, the estate steward.
She stood squarely in front of a vehicle weighing more than a ton as though it were no more dangerous than a stray buffalo blocking a village road, not a machine that could crush the life out of her before Khai had time to blink.
He shoved the door open and stepped into the wind.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“You are the one who has lost his mind.”
Vy refused to look at him. Her hands were curled into fists and held rigidly against her sides.
“The investiture is at seven. It is almost six now. Where exactly do you think you are going?”
“Where I go is none of your business.”
“Then who is going to answer for my father?”
The question pinned Khai to the road.
The storm had been gathering since four that afternoon. Black clouds rolled in from the open sea, shrouding the entire bay in a dull, leaden gloom.
Beyond the stone embankment, waves reared up and crashed against the rocks with heavy, hollow blows, as though someone were hurling boulders into the water below.
The road to Mui Da lay deserted. Thorny pineapple plants crowded both sides, broken only by a few utility poles standing alone beneath the darkening sky.
“What happened to your father?”
“Madam has not allowed him to leave the house since noon. She said that if you were missing when the ceremony began, she would question everyone one by one.”
Vy rushed through the words without pausing for breath, as though a moment of silence might rob her of the nerve to continue.
“She will ask who took the car keys, who opened the rear gate, and who disabled the scanner in the garage.”
Her voice tightened.
“Duc Duy has been standing in the courtyard since two this afternoon. No one has dared tell him to sit down. Do you know what Madam is like when she starts questioning people?”
Khai knew.
He knew far better than Vy did.
He turned toward the sea.
The wind struck one side of his face, leaving salt on his lips and a raw sting across his skin.
Inside his head, the same stubborn voice that had haunted him for days began again.
Go.
Leave this province. Leave this family.
Disappear for 30 years. No one will ever find you.
But the voice always stopped there.
It never told him what would become of Mr. Tuong.
It never mentioned Duc Duy.
It said nothing about the servants who had fed him before he had been old enough to hold a rice bowl in his own hands.
“Go back,” Khai said. “Tell my mother you could not find me. She will not punish you for that.”
“I am not going back.”
“Vy, listen to me.”
“I already told you. I am not going back.”
She shifted sideways, blocking the exact opening he had glanced toward.
Khai clenched his jaw. He moved around her and reached for the car door, but she followed, cutting him off again.
“Get out of the way.”
“Go ahead. Try to leave.”
Only then did Vy pull something from her coat pocket.
A ring of motorcycle keys swung from the tip of her finger.
“Vy, do not even think about it.”
She hurled them.
The keys sailed past his shoulder, struck the stone embankment with a sharp metallic clink, then vanished among the rocks beneath the crashing waves.
Her motorcycle remained parked on the roadside behind them, suddenly as useless as a heap of scrap metal.
“The estate is 22 kilometers from here,” Vy said. “If you refuse to turn back, I will walk.”
Her voice trembled, but she held her ground.
“If I cannot reach the estate by seven, then I will get there at eight. Or ten.”
“If it rains, I will walk through the rain.”
“If you want to sit in your car and watch me go, then watch.”
Khai stood before her with his arms hanging at his sides.
For one brief moment, he truly wanted to shout in her face.
He wanted to ask whether she had any idea how many nights he had spent planning this escape.
He wanted to tell her that the grand Hai Long Estate was nothing but a tomb built from the finest timber.
Everyone looked at him and saw a man about to inherit an empire.
No one saw the noose tightening around his throat.
But Khai did not shout.
Instead, he looked at Vy’s hands.
Her fists were clenched so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Yet she kept them pressed close to her body, like a child struggling not to show fear.
“You knew I would never leave you out here,” he said. “That is why you did this.”
“Yes.”
Vy finally met his eyes.
Her own were already red.
“I knew.”
Khai turned, yanked open the car door, and slammed it hard enough to shake the frame.
“Get in.”
Until that moment, Khai believed the rest of his life had been decided by one simple turn of the steering wheel on a storm darkened coastal road.
A single turn.
So easy it barely felt like a choice.
He had no idea what it would cost him.
