Read Chapter 21: — SUSAN MERLIN

Susan folded her hands on the table.

“The quiet surgeon—the one who actually operated, the one people sometimes described as unexpectedly gentle—that was my father, Zou Shiming.”

“And the other?” Li asked.

“His twin. Zou Shiyuan.”

Li felt cold despite the warm room.

“Shiyuan impersonated him?”

“For years.”

Susan did not tell the story like a confession. She told it like someone who had repeated the facts privately so many times that emotion had worn grooves around them.

Shiyuan had discovered that resemblance could become power. He appeared at meetings, signed routine documents, provoked enemies, negotiated with people who believed they were speaking to the famous surgeon. When true surgical expertise was required, the real Shiming appeared.

At times, Shiyuan kept his brother under direct control. At others, he relied on threats, family secrets and a web of people loyal to money rather than either man.

“He liked becoming him,” Susan said. “It was not only useful. It gave him pleasure.”

Li thought of the two Zous he had known without knowing there were two.

The man who listened in theatre.

The man who shouted in committees.

The doctor who could discuss uncertainty with painful honesty.

The administrator who punished contradiction as disrespect.

“Why didn’t your father expose him?”

Susan’s expression changed.

“Because my father was not a saint.”

The answer surprised Li more than praise would have.

“He protected his reputation. He hid our family chaos. He believed he could manage everything privately. Every compromise made the next compromise easier. Eventually secrecy became the prison Shiyuan needed.”

“You love him.”

“Yes.”

“And you blame him.”

“Yes.”

Susan looked directly at him.

“Love is not the same as pretending someone did everything right.”

She produced old messages, photographs, travel records and a private log of the brothers’ movements. Individually, each item was ambiguous. Together, they gave investigators the first independent structure supporting the two-Zou theory.

One photograph mattered more than the others.

It showed Shiyuan with a man later linked to Gao Xingchen’s security network.

Another record placed the real Shiming at a hidden research location after the date everyone believed he had vanished.

Chenxi read the material twice.

“So the abducted man in the public story may not be the man whose remains we recovered.”

Susan nodded.

“And my father may still be alive.”

For the first time since Zhao’s death, Chenxi looked almost afraid to hope.