I looked Mai dead in the eye. “We are going to lay a trap for the arsonists, and we are going to find that colonial deed before the first match is struck.”
Mai looked at me, terrified but fiercely loyal. “Where do we even start looking?”
“My grandfather,” I murmured, staring at the portrait of the stern old man in the hallway. “He always said the house protects its own heart.”
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unknown number.
I answered it cautiously. “Hello?”
“Ms. Linh,” a raspy, unfamiliar voice croaked through the speaker. “I used to be your grandfather’s head carpenter. If you want to stop the fire tonight, you need to look behind the third lotus column in the conservatory. But hurry. Vu’s men are already in the garden.”
Chapter 4: Trial by Fire
The line went dead.
“Who was that?” Mai asked, seeing the blood drain from my face.
“I don’t know,” I lied, slipping the phone into my pocket. My mind was chaotic. Vu’s men are already in the garden.
“Mai, go out the front door right now. Walk down the street to the café and do not come back until I text you. If anything goes wrong, upload the video of Huy in the basement to every news outlet in the country.”
“I am not leaving you here!” Mai protested, grabbing my arm.
“You have to,” I insisted, pushing her gently toward the door. “If they see us both here, they’ll know we’re onto them. I need to be the distracted girlfriend getting ready for a gala. Go!”
Reluctantly, Mai slipped out the front door.
I ran up the grand staircase to my bedroom. I pulled a sleek, emerald-green silk dress from my closet—the kind of dress you wear when you want to look invincible. I hastily applied red lipstick, my hands shaking so badly I smeared it twice. I needed to look like I was preparing for a night of champagne and polite laughter, not a war.
From the window, I peered down into the sprawling, overgrown garden. The sun was setting, casting long, menacing shadows across the statues. There, near the old stone fountain, I saw the rustle of leaves. A flash of a dark jacket.
They were here. They were waiting for me to leave with Huy so they could douse my history in gasoline.
I checked my watch. 6:00 PM. Huy would be coming upstairs any minute to pick me up.
I bolted out of my room and sprinted down the back servant stairs, bypassing the main floors entirely. I rushed toward the conservatory at the rear of the manor. It was a beautiful, glass-domed room choked with overgrown ferns and ancient orchids.
The third lotus column.
I counted the heavy, hand-carved mahogany columns that supported the glass roof. One. Two. Three.
I approached it, running my hands over the intricate carvings of lotus petals. It felt solid. Immovable. I pressed against the wood, pushed, pulled. Nothing happened. Panic began to claw at my throat. I could smell it now—the faint, acrid stench of gasoline drifting in through the cracked conservatory windows.
“Come on, Ông,” I whispered to my grandfather’s ghost. “Help me.”
I examined the lotus carving closer. The center of the flower on the third column was slightly darker, worn down by decades of touch. It wasn’t a push mechanism. It was a twist.
I gripped the wooden lotus center and twisted it counter-clockwise. With a heavy, satisfying clack, a hidden latch released. A narrow, vertical panel in the column popped open, revealing a hollowed-out cavity.
Inside was a cylindrical brass tube, heavily tarnished with age.
I pulled it out, my fingers trembling. I uncapped the tube and slid out a roll of heavy, yellowed parchment. I unrolled it.
It was written in old French and traditional Vietnamese script. It bore the royal seal of the Nguyen Dynasty, alongside the signature of the French Governor-General, dated 1912.
The original deed.
But as I scanned the text, my breath caught. It wasn’t just a deed of ownership. It was a Sovereign Heritage Grant. It explicitly stated that the Thien Thuy Manor and the land it sat upon were sovereign historical territories, exempt from all municipal and federal seizures in perpetuity, signed into international treaty before the modern government even existed.
It was an ironclad, undeniable legal shield. Chairman Vu couldn’t touch this land with a thousand eminent domain decrees.
“A fascinating piece of history,” a voice echoed from the doorway.
I spun around, clutching the parchment to my chest.
Standing at the entrance of the conservatory was Chairman Vu himself, accompanied by two massive men holding red jerry cans of gasoline.
Vu was older than I expected, with silver hair slicked back and a tailored suit that probably cost more than my entire restoration budget. His smile was predatory, utterly devoid of warmth.
“I see Huy failed to keep you suitably distracted,” Vu said smoothly, stepping into the room. “A pity. He’s usually so good with women. But I suppose a woman obsessed with the past is harder to seduce than one looking for a future.”
“You’re trespassing, Vu,” I said, backing away slightly, my mind calculating the distance to the side exit.
“I’m merely surveying my future parking lot,” Vu chuckled. He gestured to his men. “Douse the perimeter. Make sure it looks like old wiring in the walls sparked it.”
The men uncapped the cans. The smell of gasoline became overwhelming, burning my eyes.
“If you burn this house, this document survives with me,” I held up the parchment. “And I will parade it through every international court in the world. You’ll be ruined.”
“Only if you make it out of the house, my dear,” Vu said, his smile dropping into a flat, terrifying grimace. “Accidental fires in old wooden mansions… they are terribly tragic. Sometimes, the owners get trapped inside.”
My blood ran cold. He wasn’t just going to burn the house. He was going to kill me.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the front of the house. The heavy oak doors splintering open.
“Linh!”
It was Huy. He burst into the conservatory, chest heaving, his suit jacket discarded. He looked wildly around the room, taking in the gasoline, the thugs, and Chairman Vu.
Vu sighed, looking annoyed. “Huy, I thought I told you to wait at the gala. This is the messy part of the business you usually prefer to avoid.”
Huy stepped between me and Chairman Vu. My heart gave a confusing, painful jolt. Was he protecting me, or ensuring I didn’t escape?
“Call them off, Vu,” Huy commanded, his voice tight with an emotion I couldn’t read. “This wasn’t the deal. Nobody gets hurt. We just wanted the land.”
“The deal changed when she found the royal deed,” Vu snapped, his patience evaporating. “She’s a liability. Step aside, Huy. You’ll get your bonus.”
Huy looked over his shoulder at me. His eyes were wide, desperate, and filled with a profound agony. “Linh, I am so sorry,” he whispered.
Then, Huy did the unthinkable. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver Zippo lighter, and flipped the lid open with a sharp clink.
He ignited the flame.
“Huy, no!” I screamed.
Huy looked at me, a tear tracking down his cheek, and tossed the burning lighter directly into a puddle of gasoline at my feet.
Chapter 5: Out of the Ashes
The world erupted in a violent roar of orange and blue.
A wall of heat slammed into me, throwing me backward. I hit the terracotta tiles hard, the wind knocked from my lungs. The puddle of gasoline at my feet had ignited instantly, creating a curtain of fire that separated me from Huy, Vu, and the thugs.
“Are you insane?!” Chairman Vu bellowed, retreating from the sudden inferno. “You’ll burn us all!”
The dry ferns and wooden trellises in the conservatory caught fire immediately. The smoke was thick, black, and choking. I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, clutching the brass tube containing the royal deed against my chest like a newborn child.
Through the dancing flames, I saw Huy lock eyes with me. He didn’t look like a corporate shark anymore; he looked completely unhinged.
“Run, Linh!” Huy screamed over the roar of the fire. “Use the servant tunnel! Go!”
He hadn’t thrown the lighter at me to kill me. He had thrown it to create a barrier of fire between me and Vu’s men, giving me a chance to escape.
One of Vu’s thugs lunged through a gap in the flames, reaching for me. Huy tackled him sideways, sending them both crashing into a stand of burning orchids.
I didn’t hesitate. I turned and fled.
I scrambled through the thick smoke, my emerald dress tearing on the thorns of a burning rose bush. I found the heavy iron door leading to the old coal chute—the servant tunnel my grandfather had shown me when I was a child. I threw my weight against it. It groaned and gave way, plunging me into cold, damp darkness.
I crawled on my hands and knees, the smell of smoke following me down into the earth. I could hear the muffled shouts above, the crackling of wood, the breaking of glass. My beautiful, historic home was dying.
I emerged three blocks away, coughing violently as I pushed open an old storm grate in an alleyway. The cool night air hit my lungs like ice. I collapsed on the wet pavement, my dress ruined, my hands bleeding, but my grip on the brass tube never loosened.
