The conversation between Tan Xiao and Alexandra Doria did not go well.
After Zhang had finished discussing a complete crisis-response strategy with his executives, he dismissed everyone to get some sleep. Each had work to do first thing the next morning.
He found Tan Xiao in a small meeting room on the same floor.
“…”
Tan Xiao had clearly been crying. His eyes were still red.
When Zhang pushed the door open, Tan Xiao assumed it was a colleague working late who needed the room. He turned his face away to conceal himself and said, “Sorry, I’m leaving now.”
But when he recognized Zhang, he looked embarrassed again. He hadn’t wanted coworkers to see him wiping tears because it was humiliating. He hadn’t wanted Zhang to see because he’d worry.
Zhang shut the door behind him, walked over, and stood before him. They looked at each other.
Tan Xiao smiled readily and rarely cried in ordinary life. A moving drama or anime might bring tears to his eyes, and he could squeeze out a few when acting spoiled.
Real crying was different. He looked like a pitiful little puppy.
“Did your sister bully you?” Zhang asked.
“How could she bully me over the phone?” Tan Xiao said. “She’s bullying you. I’m so angry.”
Tan Xiao had wanted a proper discussion with his sister, but Tan Yun hadn’t given him the opportunity. Just as Zhang had predicted, she cared nothing for a Chinese internet company that had been listed for less than three years. She was only using this method to warn her brother not to forget his surname.
WenCheng was Zhang’s vulnerable point. Zhang was Tan Xiao’s.
Zhang had expected as much. He’d read about some of Alexandra Doria’s past major commercial moves. She was an iron-willed woman whose families on both her mother’s and father’s sides had dominated European capital markets for years, with enormous backing and ruthless methods.
Of course, the portrait painted in official reports couldn’t possibly capture every aspect of Tan Yun in private.
Tan Xiao had once mentioned that although his sister had been strict with him in childhood, she’d cared for him too. She remembered his birthdays. After his riding lessons, she reminded him to take care not to develop a rider’s bowlegs. For Chinese New Year she hung Chinese knots and put up Spring Festival couplets in his room, though she hadn’t understood how they worked and stuck the couplets above his bed.
Tan Xiao didn’t believe he’d been imagining their sibling bond.
But the last real conversation they’d had had taken place after his university entrance examination. She’d flown to China to stop him from studying computer science, firmly insisting he major in business instead.
They hadn’t truly met face to face since.
He’d later heard she had been preparing for a divorce at the time.
After earning her business master’s degree at Bocconi University, Tan Yun had entered the family enterprise in an important position and achieved impressive commercial success. But at thirty, her family had still required her to marry. Her husband had been the heir to a century-old luxury fashion house. The marriage had been jointly arranged by the Doria family and her relatives on the cruise-ship manufacturing side. That year, the luxury brand launched a luxury cruise project, while the shipping company gained access to logistics business in the luxury-goods supply chain. It had been a short marriage that served the interests of all three parties.
In middle age, Tan Minhong had lost all ambition, preferring yachts and beautiful women around the world. Tan Yun was the nominal first heir, but in reality she was gradually becoming the true person in charge of the Doria family.
What hurt Tan Xiao most wasn’t her cold reprimands or threats. It was finally facing a truth he’d sensed for a long time. Money and power had remade his sister. She was now a queen at the summit of wealth, looking down over the world. She was Alexandra Doria, no longer the Sister Tan Yun of his childhood memories who reminded him to soak his legs after riding.
The old white men in the family had always seemed cold and frightening to him, but their faces were blurred together. After hanging up with Tan Yun, he suddenly found that for an instant he couldn’t remember exactly what she looked like either.
The realization broke his heart.
Zhang watched him anxiously and opened his arms. Tan Xiao stepped forward and hugged him, feeling tears well up again. He lowered his face and hid his eyes against Zhang’s shoulder.
“What do we do?” Tan Xiao didn’t want to speak about people and things that no longer mattered. He was more concerned about WenCheng. “What came out of your meeting? Do you have a plan?”
“Don’t worry.” Zhang heard the thickness in his voice. “The people of WenCheng are united.”
Tan Xiao thought he was about to proclaim that the WenCheng team would stand together and overcome the suppression of a giant international corporation.
Instead Zhang said, “We won’t let the foreigners get away with this.”
“…” Tan Xiao couldn’t quite laugh, but he couldn’t cry anymore either.
He’d never considered himself a little foreigner. Ever since childhood, he’d always thought of himself as a little local.
Zhang held him and joked to cheer him up, and his emotions slowly settled.
It was almost eleven thirty. “Let’s go home,” Tan Xiao said. “You need a good night’s sleep. I’m sure there’s a lot more to do tomorrow.”
“All right. Which home?”
“Either.”
After thinking, he added, “Wherever you are, that’s my home.”
Zhang’s eyes prickled at the words. He forcibly held back his tears. Crying now would severely damage his domineering-CEO rating, and of course he knew that.
In the end they went to Zhang’s house. It was better stocked with everyday necessities, and the dependable housekeeper could look after their meals and daily needs, protecting their health while the commercial battle continued.
Zhang hadn’t slept well the night before and had worked with total concentration all day. The moment his head touched the pillow, he fell fast asleep.
Tan Xiao wasn’t sleepy. He lay beside Zhang, studying his profile in the darkness.
Before today, Tan Xiao had hardly ever imagined the distant future.
He loved Zhang very much now. Sometimes Zhang was the only person he could see or think about. They were happy together and gave each other the most wonderful emotional experience.
But what about years from now? Ten years, decades? He hadn’t thought much about that.
It wasn’t that he doubted their love could last forever. He was simply too young. Life hadn’t yet seemed settled enough for such certainty.
In the office that evening, during the few minutes he’d buried his eyes against Zhang’s shoulder, something unique about Zhang’s presence had stirred a longing for permanence in their relationship.
Was it a feeling of safety? He didn’t know. He’d never even stopped to consider whether he lacked a sense of security. But in that moment, Zhang stopped being merely a happy resting place he’d found at twenty-three or twenty-four. He became where Tan Xiao belonged. He became home.
The next morning, Zhang woke early. He felt Tan Xiao’s arm wrapped around him and his warm cheek nestled at Zhang’s neck.
This wasn’t his usual sleeping posture. When awake, Tan Xiao loved kissing and cuddling, but asleep he was a different person and found being touched annoying. Once, when Zhang had tried to hug him in the middle of the night, Tan Xiao had punched him in his sleep.
Zhang understood the signal: Tan Xiao loved him even more now. Which meant he’d handled this crisis absolutely correctly. Perfect marks.
Zhang could sometimes tell their love for each other ran to similar depths, but their expectations for the future weren’t quite the same.
The moment he decided to become Tan Xiao’s partner, he’d decided Tan Xiao would be his lifelong companion. Even after Tan Xiao’s background came to light and circumstances changed slightly, Zhang’s fundamental expectation had never shifted.
Tan Xiao, on the other hand, was lively and spontaneous. It was enough for him to know what he wanted to do next month. Expecting him to have decided already that he would spend his entire life with Zhang would be unrealistic.
During their trip to Shenzhen, Zhang had shared his concerns with President Fu. He thought the Doria family might take action against WenCheng, had simulated several possible methods, and had prepared responses to each.
He wasn’t like Tan Xiao, blindly optimistic about the conduct of an old-money dynasty. Capital’s methods were always blunt and brutal, because history had shown repeatedly that beating people with the cudgel of wealth usually worked.
At the time Fu had asked him: money was precious, but love more so. If Tan Xiao changed his mind one day, would any of this be worth it?
Zhang had answered that outcomes depended on people’s actions. He wouldn’t give Tan Xiao the chance to stop loving him.
If you didn’t try, how could you know something wouldn’t work? Hadn’t this just proved it? Zhang could tell Tan Xiao’s feelings, already deep, had become even more devoted.
When Zhang stirred, Tan Xiao opened his eyes and looked at the bedside clock. Not yet seven thirty.
“Are you leaving this early?” he asked.
“I’m awake. I don’t need to leave until before nine,” Zhang said. “I’m not going to the office. I have someone to meet.”
Tan Xiao wanted to say a great deal, but thought it would sound childish right now, so he merely murmured, “Mm.”
“Won’t you talk to me?” Zhang asked. “I haven’t had time to listen to you properly these past couple of days.”
“What do you want to hear?”
“Anything.” Zhang said, “Call me something. I’ve missed you.”
“Brother,” Tan Xiao said.
Zhang turned his face. Tan Xiao lifted his head, and they kissed.
Tan Xiao’s face rested on the pillow, the lovely butterfly wings of his shoulder blades rising and trembling.
Zhang held him from behind, and they kept kissing.
After eight, Zhang found a formal outfit. “Which tie looks good? Help me choose.”
Tan Xiao selected one, stood in front of him, and tied it. Halfway through, he was suddenly overcome by affection and leaned in to kiss him.
Zhang kissed him briefly and smiled. “I’m short on time. Can we keep kissing when I get back tonight?”
Tan Xiao said nothing and finished tying the knot.
“Are you going to the office today?” Zhang asked. “If you don’t want to go, don’t.”
“I am. Secretary Feng must have things to do. I need to be there.”
Zhang teased, “Sorry to trouble Assistant Tan.”
Tan Xiao hated hearing that. He almost teared up again. It was he who’d caused trouble for Zhang and everyone else.
“All right, all right. What’s wrong?” Zhang asked.
“I’m going to HR to sign a proper employment contract with WenCheng. I’m going to work like an ox and horse for this company.”
Then he remembered how, when they’d first met, Zhang had wanted him to come to WenCheng as another beast of burden.
Which made him think that if that first encounter had never happened, none of this would have happened either. Zhang and his WenCheng would still have been fine. What an unlucky CEO and unlucky little company.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Zhang said. “Or rather, there’s no necessary connection. Given WenCheng’s development, sooner or later an upstream supplier would have found an excuse to make things difficult. It was only a question of what triggered it.”
Tan Xiao understood. Power struggles between suppliers and platforms were a longstanding structural issue in online travel. Hotels and airlines clashed with booking platforms from time to time. It was a normal feature of the industry.
WenCheng’s current troubles weren’t exactly novel.
Of course, other people could treat this as an ordinary commercial event. Zhang knew the whole backstory: he, a lust-addled CEO, had seduced a rich family’s young master, enraged the family, and provoked sanctions against himself and WenCheng.
At nine thirty he arrived at the regulatory authority to brief the relevant officials. Thanks to WenCheng’s habit of obeying the law, and his own good reputation, the officials held no negative preconceptions about him.
He also openly acknowledged that the incident had origins in his private romantic life. The officials took a broader view and weren’t particularly interested in private family affairs. They were more concerned with how the incident should be classified. Did it amount to foreign capital suppressing a domestic business? Were unidentified overseas forces trying to exploit the situation to create an industry monopoly?
At WenCheng, Tan Xiao clocked in on time. As expected, Feng was away dealing with other matters.
Other colleagues who passed his desk didn’t stop to chat as they usually would. Everyone knew the company was in trouble, and they knew Tan Xiao was unsettled. They carefully avoided disturbing him.
He mechanically handled small administrative jobs all morning. With the CEO absent, there wasn’t much important work in the President’s Office. None of it was beyond Assistant Tan, but it couldn’t make him feel the job was particularly interesting either.
Every so often he checked financial news and refreshed social media, terrified of seeing something bad.
By midday, online discussion of WenCheng’s supply-chain problems was intensifying.
At the same time, the company’s public relations team began acting. After Zhang’s communication with regulators received a positive response, PR addressed the doubts through financial media: a certain international hotel group was maliciously restricting consumer choice, and WenCheng was actively defending its users’ right to fair transactions.
Zhang had set that direction on the first day of the crisis. They mustn’t frame the matter as a giant upstream corporation bullying a small platform, although that was true. The public would only think, You’re fighting a business war. What’s that got to do with us? Framing it that way would lose their advantage in public opinion.
WenCheng’s position had to be unmistakable: this wasn’t WenCheng’s fault, but it was WenCheng’s responsibility. A large multinational corporation was arbitrarily trampling a smaller Chinese platform and thereby depriving countless Chinese consumers of their rights. WenCheng firmly opposed such malicious pressure.
Several colleagues in the President’s Office forwarded the article to Tan Xiao. From that moment, the tension hanging over the company began to ease.
Tan Xiao also inferred from the social media posts of acquaintances in Finance that Vice President Sun had gone to the bank. Presumably he’d arranged a standby credit facility against a possible wave of early-payment demands.
Judging by the shift in online opinion after the news appeared, WenCheng hadn’t lost the battle for public support. A run on payments was therefore unlikely. If cash flow stayed intact, they could survive the storm.
Tan Xiao thanked each colleague who’d forwarded the news, or replied with heart-shaped reaction stickers.
He went to the restroom and washed his face with cold water, rubbing so roughly that his entire face turned red. He tried hard to smile at himself in the mirror.
Zhang didn’t return to the office that afternoon. The API access was gone. The hundreds of hotel endpoints would not be restored until the conflict was resolved. What WenCheng needed now was an alternative route around the blockade.
At seven that evening, WenCheng made a major announcement: starting immediately, every hotel could join the platform at zero commission for three months.
It was a burn-the-boats decision, trading short-term losses for a stronger long-term ecosystem. Even some brands affiliated with M Group were unwilling to miss this opportunity to benefit.
At this stage, some still called it losing money to make a splash. Did WenCheng and Zhang have any further moves?
Yes. They did.
Just over ten days later, WenCheng reached strategic alliances with several domestic hotel groups and announced a Hundred Cities, Thousand Hotels initiative. The partners’ upscale hotel ranges would fill the gap left by M Group’s withdrawal.
WenCheng had previously sat at the tail of the first tier among comparable platforms. By the end of September, average daily app downloads had increased nearly tenfold, peak daily active users were approaching two million, hotel room nights had grown by more than a hundred percent month over month, and monthly platform transactions had exceeded two billion yuan for the first time.
WenCheng held an internal celebration, raising glasses and cheering the extraordinary comeback its employees had achieved through nearly three months of grueling work.
Tan Xiao stood in a corner watching the cheerful crowd, his attention drifting.
“Little Doctor.” President Fu had just arrived. He came over and asked quietly, “Where’s your husband?”
“He went to change his tie. He’s speaking onstage in a bit, and the one he had on clashed with the backdrop. I told him to switch it.”
Zhang had led the head-on response this time, while Fu steadied the stock market and reassured the board, flying back and forth everywhere. He deserved a share of the credit and naturally came to the celebration in style.
“You look listless,” Fu said. “What’s wrong?”
“Didn’t sleep very well.”
Feng had fallen ill under the pressure and been on and off sick leave all month. Tan Xiao had taken on administrative-secretary duties as well, helping Zhang with innumerable small tasks. He’d never realized just how extraordinary Feng was until he tried doing the work. The man was practically superhuman. How had he held out this long before falling sick? Weight training really did help.
“Now that the battle’s over, you should rest,” Fu told him. “Zhang wouldn’t be too heartbroken if WenCheng went bust. But if you work yourself sick, he’d be devastated.”
Tan Xiao laughed. “Where’s all this resentment coming from? Our CEO hasn’t been idle. He’s worked himself to the bone for WenCheng. Stop smearing him behind his back. Sounds to me like you’re planning to usurp the throne.”
“What kind of executive would I be if I didn’t want to be CEO?” Fu replied. “Ambition is normal. But I’m kind. Otherwise I could’ve sabotaged him during this crisis, left him unable to answer to the board, forced him to resign, and WenCheng would be mine.”
Sure, brother, whatever you say, Tan Xiao thought. Who was it last month who argued with two directors until he was red in the face, defending Zhang to the hilt?
Anyone who sincerely treated his husband well was a good person as far as Tan Xiao was concerned. He liked most of his WenCheng colleagues now, because they’d stood on Zhang’s side.
“You…” Fu actually wanted to say something else. He hoped Tan Xiao would ask the obvious question. But Tan Xiao was not so easy to bait. He simply wouldn’t ask why Zhang might have had to resign.
How could he? He’d felt guilty about the crisis for so long. Only once things improved had that guilt begun to fade. He certainly wasn’t about to bring it up voluntarily. What was he supposed to say? It’s all because I fell in love with Zhang that everyone suffered and worked overtime?
Zhang would soon announce generous bonuses, at least compensating employees for their hard work. If there weren’t tax-reporting complications, Tan Xiao would have loved to shower every one of them with hundreds of thousands, or even a million yuan.
Since Tan Xiao wouldn’t ask and Fu really wanted to tell him, Fu pretended he had asked. “As for resigning to take responsibility, he’d planned for that a long time ago.”
Tan Xiao looked at him curiously.
“He hasn’t told you, has he? He had a plan. If the other side went too far and he couldn’t hold them off, he wouldn’t drag WenCheng down. He’d hand the company to me. Then he’d have no leverage left for anyone to use against him, and he could take you around the world.”
“…”
“He said you don’t like working, but you love studying, so you’d finish your postdoc first and then go traveling.”
Zhang had said they’d explore the world together and settle wherever they liked.
He didn’t own a private jet, so they’d have to fly business or first class.
He couldn’t buy homes all over the world, but he could afford hotel rooms.
He wasn’t nearly as poor as Tan Xiao believed. He still had some money, at least enough to support his wife.
“…” Tan Xiao murmured, “Mm.”
Zhang returned with a different tie. Seeing Fu talking to Tan Xiao, Fu grinning while Tan Xiao looked expressionless, he promptly stepped between them. “Move along. Stop pestering my wife for no reason.”
“What’s wrong with talking?” Fu protested, deeply wronged. “Look at the bags under his eyes. He’s about to fall asleep standing up. You have him working as your assistant, your secretary, and your wife. Are you even human?”
Zhang shooed Fu away like a fly.
“Do you want to go back and sleep?” he asked Tan Xiao. “I can get you a room upstairs. Have a nap, and I’ll wake you after it’s over so we can go home.”
Tan Xiao stared at him blankly. Everyone had been busy lately. Zhang was noticeably thinner. He simply had more stamina than others; it wasn’t inexhaustible.
“What’s wrong?” Zhang asked.
“I’ll wait until you finish speaking,” Tan Xiao said. “I wrote the first draft of your speech. I want to hear it.”
Zhang went onstage. He read the parts of Tan Xiao’s draft he’d kept, along with the changes he’d made, before announcing the bonuses. Beyond special awards for the core crisis-response teams, frontline employees would receive one to three months’ salary according to their involvement. Middle and senior management would receive twice as much. Every WenCheng employee would also receive a small equity-option award, only a symbolic few thousand shares each, but enormously important for team unity.
Feng had recovered from his illness and attended too. He was seated beside Tan Xiao. As they listened, both began to cry, until finally they were clinging to each other and sobbing.
Under the scheme, Feng would receive more than seventy thousand yuan; Tan Xiao, about fifty thousand.
As he wept, Feng thought, I got sick enough to need an IV drip for seventy thousand yuan. Of course I’m crying my heart out. Assistant Tan, are you okay? Fifty thousand isn’t even enough to replace a part on your car!