Chapter 5

The smell of scorched paper clung to the back room of the Lin storefront, a bitter, chemical reminder that Mei’s professional life had officially ceased to exist. On the floor, the charred remains of her legal injunction—the last weapon she had possessed as a lawyer—lay like curled, black insects. She didn't look at the clock. The sunset deadline for the neighborhood’s liquidation was no longer a date on a calendar; it was a physical weight pressing against her lungs. Mei smoothed a fresh sheet of heavy, cream-colored stationery across the scarred wooden desk. Her fingers were stained with soot, but they were steady. Outside, the muffled roar of Chinatown continued—an indifferent chaos that had sustained her family for generations, unaware that their foundations were being sold out from under them.

“You’re burning the wrong bridges, Mei,” Auntie Li whispered from the doorway. She didn’t enter; she stood in the threshold, a shadow against the dim light of the shop, her eyes darting toward the heavy, leather-bound ledger resting near Mei’s elbow. “Chen is already moving the silent partners. They aren’t waiting for the law anymore. If they find that box, it isn’t just money they’ll take. It’s the history of every family on this block.”

Mei looked up, her gaze cold. “Why are you here, Auntie? You told me to stay away. You told me the legal path was the only one that wouldn’t get me killed.”

Li stepped inside, her heels clicking like a countdown against the floorboards. “The legal path was a fantasy you built to keep from looking in the mirror! Uncle Wei didn’t just hold these titles in trust fo

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