Sherly's breath hitched, and for a moment, the beautiful garden around her seemed to vanish. Hope was a cruel thing, and Sherly had learned long ago not to trust it.
"Javon, you… you can't be serious," she said, trying to smile, but the result was fragile and bitter. "I don't need to be comforted. I've come to terms with my condition."
Javon brushed a dry leaf from Sherly's shoulder, his gaze intense, as if it could pierce through the layers of calm she had painstakingly built. "Come to terms?" he asked softly. "The Sherly I remember was a fighter. A business genius whose stare could make directors tremble. She would never 'come to terms' with defeat."
Sherly's grip on the thin blanket over her knees tightened. "What else can I do?" she sighed, her defensive walls beginning to crack. "I've seen all the most prominent experts, tried every new medical technology from around the world. The result was always the same." She stared blankly ahead. "They all shook their heads. 'There's no precedent,' they said. My legs are dead."
"Just because they can't, doesn't mean there's no way," Javon countered, his voice filled with a conviction that defied logic. He knelt before her wheelchair. "In my field of knowledge, nothing is truly dead as long as the root remains. They see severed nerves. I see blocked energy meridians."
Sherly looked at him, astonished. "Why? Why would you help me?"
"Because you're my fiancée now," Javon answered simply. "And I need a partner who can stand by my side, not behind me. I believe in your spirit, and I believe in my ability."
The wind blew, carrying the scent of damp earth and blooming flowers. Sherly's heart, which had long beaten to a rhythm of resignation, now began to pound. For the first time since the accident, someone wasn't looking at her with pity or disgust. Someone saw the fighter within her, not the disabled woman in a wheelchair.
A final doubt surfaced. "But... how? The world knows you as..." She trailed off, unable to say the words 'playboy' or 'troublemaker'.
Javon understood. He gave a faint smile. "The outside world only sees what it wants to see. I learned a few things during these past five years."
Without asking for permission, he placed his fingertips on the blanket, directly over Sherly's knee. He closed his eyes. It wasn't an ordinary touch, but a scan. With the Dragon's Pulse technique flowing within him, he could feel what the most advanced MRI machine could not—a dense, cold stagnation, a frozen blockage of vital energy.
"Sometimes... there's a tingling sensation here, isn't there?" he asked without opening his eyes.
Sherly nodded in shock. "Yes, the doctors said it was an abnormal nerve impulse."
"The doctors called it a 'glitch'," Javon cut in. "I call it an 'echo'. The echo of a life that still wants to flow. This isn't an impossible case, it just requires a different approach." He opened his eyes. "I can melt that ice dam, Sherly."
That painful hope was now so real that Sherly could hardly breathe. "What... what do I have to do?"
"Trust me," Javon said. "I'll deduct the cost of the treatment from the fifteen million you gave me. I won't take your money for nothing."
Hearing that, Sherly snapped out of her shock. Her face reverted to the concerned expression of a strategist. "Don't even think about it. That money is yours. Besides, for your family's situation, fifteen million won't be enough to patch a fifty-million-dollar hole. We need to find a way, quickly."
Javon smiled at the rapid change. This was the real Sherly. "I already have a plan."
"You can't fight them all alone!"
"I am enough," Javon replied, and the certainty in his eyes was so absolute it sent a shiver down Sherly's spine.
Even so, Sherly reached into her bag, took out a slip of paper and a pen, and wrote down a name and a phone number. "I may not be able to walk, but my connections still exist. This is Livia's contact. She's a legend in the investment world. The only person I can trust completely. Tell her I sent you."
Javon accepted the paper. The name 'Livia' sounded familiar, stirring a memory of whispers in the Black Coral Prison about an untouchable queen of finance. A very useful piece on the board. "Alright, thank you."
He said his goodbyes and hurried off, leaving Sherly in a daze, staring at the slip of paper in her hand as if it were a ticket to a miracle.
***
The car sped down the highway. In Javon's mind, business strategies and diagrams of human meridians merged into one. The hundred million from the Edelweiss family would soon arrive, enough to stabilize the company and begin Sherly's treatment. Everything was going according to plan.
Then, a flash in his rearview mirror caught his attention.
Two unmarked white vans. Tailing him too closely, moving with coordinated aggression.
Javier certainly didn't waste any time.
A cold smile played on Javon's lips. 'Good. I could use a warm-up.'
He didn't panic. Instead, he calmly turned the steering wheel, taking the next exit, moving away from the traffic. He wasn't running away; he was choosing his battlefield. His car slowed and finally stopped in front of the rusted gates of a long-abandoned factory.
He killed the engine and waited. The doors of the two vans slid open violently, and more than a dozen burly men jumped out, surrounding his car. Their leader, a man with a scar on his eyebrow, tapped a steel pipe against his palm.
"Look who it is," he said mockingly. "Young Master Forger. I hear you swapped fiancées? From porcelain to damaged goods, huh?"
CLICK.
Javon's car door opened slowly. He stepped out, loosening the tie that felt like it was strangling him.
Before the leader could continue his taunts, a shadow shot forward.
THWACK!
The scarred man was thrown backward as if hit by a bull, his steel pipe clattering to the ground.
Javon wrapped his tie around his knuckles, his eyes glinting coldly as he stared at the rest of the stunned mob.
"Too much talking," he hissed. "Let's get this over with."