"What's wrong?" Bai Tao asked as he grabbed his keys. He rounded his desk with a worried look on his face.

How did he answer this question? It was just a suspicion.

Thankfully the need to answer was interrupted when Ping An stepped into the office.

His eyes as he looked at his mother were fridged.

Stepping past her, he nodded to his father. "Let’s go."

His mother reached out to hold his arm.

He dodged her hand. "Don't touch me."

"Bai Li!" She screamed. Throwing her body towards him. "What's wrong?!"

Pushing her away, he watched as she landed heavily on the ground. Staring down at her, impulses he buried came rushing forward. It wouldn't take much to break her neck.

Ping An’s expression morphed into open-mouthed shock.

A warm had held the back of his neck. Grounding him.

"Let’s go." Bai Tao used his hold to push him out of the room. "Is it worth going to jail for?"

"Yes." That was the truth. If what he suspected was confirmed, then it was well worth it. He was rethinking his bottom line.

As he sat in the car, he started laughing. At some point, the laughter turned into sobs. He stared out the window, grateful that his father wasn't asking any questions.

They arrived at the hospital. His father led him to an office. Behind a desk sat a good-looking middle-aged man in a lab coat.

Seeing them enter, he stood and greeted Bai Tao. “Just because we are friends doesn't mean you can drop by like this."

Bai Tao shook his hand, then gestured behind him. "I need you to check my son."

The doctor was shocked. His eyes moved past Bai Tao to land on Bai Li, who just entered the room.

"Hi. I’m Julian Simmonds. What can I help you with?" There was curiosity. He vibrated from the questions he held back from asking.

He probably should be more polite, but he couldn’t muster the energy. "I need a tox screen done. I think my mother has been drugging me with stimulants or drugs and more recently started giving me small doses of lead."

Julian stepped back as if slapped. "Kid, that's a serious accusation." He crossed his arms over his chest.

He looked the doctor up and down. He didn't even pretend to be his fifteen-year-old self. "Do you think I have enough time to fuck around with you for shits and giggles? Do the tests, or I will find someone else who will."

Julian looked insulted. His face mottled red. “Haha, that arrogance is like…”

Bai Li wasn’t interested in what he had to say. He cut him off, pointing to his father he continued to speak. "Check him as well. Whatever the stimulant is leaves the body quickly. I'm sure he gets frequent check-ups, and no one notices anything."

Julian wanted to argue. It was clear from his clenched fists. “What prompted this suspicion?”

He held eye contact without flinching or backing down. He used to eat people like Julian Simmonds for breakfast. For the first time in a while, he hated being young.

"Check it." Bai Tao said. There was disbelief in his eyes, but he didn’t contradict him.

Bai Li scoffed. What did he know? He was grateful for his father giving him the benefit of the doubt, but he could barely contain the anger he was feeling.

Sitting heavily in the chair, a face he kept at bay floated in his mind.

In his last life, he found out he had lead poisoning. He was about thirty years old when he got the diagnosis.

The doses he was exposed to were high enough to make him infertile, give him minor neurological issues, stomach and kidney problems.

He didn’t have any outward symptoms when he was a child. Even if he did, under his mother’s, care wouldn’t they have been explained away as something else?

Lead poisoning and any of the symptoms should have shown up in a routine physical. The results of his physicals were doctored.

He was on a business trip in N country when he got sick. They found traces of prolonged exposure to lead. Because of the trace amounts in his system, they hadn't been able to tell him when he came in contact or for how long.

The doctor grumbled as he came and drew his blood. He wasn't gentle while doing it, but Bai Lii couldn't care less.

Bai Tao’s eyes had not left his sons. Bai Li’s serious expression must have made him realize there was something more happening. "Julian. Rush the test."

"Tao." Julian protested. To him, this was a wild goose chase. How often did the family come for checkups and physicals? Something as severe as lead poisoning wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Bai Tao rubbed his temples. "Just do it."

Bai Li ignored them. Did she do it? Or had he unfairly blamed her for something his mother did?

Those beautiful blue eyes.

They found evidence. She was guilty of other things. There was no reason not to suspect her.

He dug his fingers into his scalp.

"Bai Li was it?" Julian asked. "I don't know the situation, but you shouldn't cause problems like this."

"Dad." His voice was warm. "Control your friend." Despite the warm tone of voice he used, the other two men couldn't stop the shiver that passed through them.

The entire time he was waiting on the results, his mind was stuck in the past. Why were his teen years such a blur?

They sat in tense silence. It was broken by a nurse running into the room with a concerned look on her face. She handed over the results.

The smug look on Julian’s face melted into one of concern. His head snapped up. Julian looked at Bai Li with a worried gaze.

Bai Tao got out of his chair and took the results out of Julian’s hands. “Fuck!”

Bai Li hung his head down. So it was true then. Every time something new came to light, he was shocked by the levels his mother would go to.

As he sat there waiting on the results, he wondered what his mother was working towards. In his last life, he thought his infertility was the final goal.

Being unable to produce an heir could have been an issue when he wanted to inherit the company. Ping Zen cared so much about keeping the company in the family.

Knowing the culprit now, he doubted that theory. The only thing that jumped into his mind was his grades. The most severe side effect of lead exposure in children seemed to be neurological.

She always stressed a need to keep his grades low. His grades had been improving because he’d developed a desire to prove himself. Why did his doing well or not in school matter?

Narrowing his field of vision to exclude his past life knowledge and factoring in the information his mother was working with. Quickly he eliminated factors and discarded theories.

He went through multiple routes with a wide array of factors.

What he landed on each time was Wen Shi.

In his last life. Was his death caused because he ran his father out of the company?

In that case, how laughable was his life?

It was so stupid.

What did Doyle say, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Didn't she give him the answer already? Don't appear as a threat to your father.

Wen Shi belonged to Ping Zen. If he was outstanding at the age of fifteen by the age of twenty-three, at the latest, he could occupy a prominent position at Wen Shi.

Ping Zen would choose him, the biological grandson over the outsider Bai Tao, to inherit the company. His mother didn't know that his grandfather wasn't in a rush to make those decisions because Bai Feng existed.

He let out a dry laugh. No wonder she pushed him down the stairs. Ping An must have been pissed when he did well at college. She didn’t do enough damage to make him stupid.

Squeezing his eyes, he focused on the present.

His father and the doctor discussed his treatment options. Cutting them off he asked, "What about the other substance?"

"There are two many things to test for. We would need a way to narrow down what to look for." He now fully believed that the two were poisoned. If the kid was right about one, he was likely right about the other.

"It's fine. Whatever it is doesn't have any lasting side effects." Bai Li didn’t expect instant results, but he was still disappointed.

Jullian knitted his fingers together. "How can you be so sure?"

Why wouldn't he be? Ping An would burn down the whole world and make sure not a drop of ash had the chance to fall on Bai Tao.

Worse at this moment in time, there was no Lee Shan?

"I don't know whether to call it love or obsession, but the only person in this word she won’t do permanent damage to is him," he said while looking at his father. "At least for now."

"Soon enough, she will want to kill me." Bai Tao said.

"No," he disagreed. "She will kill everyone around you."

Bai Tao didn’t comment. There was nothing much he could say."What is the treatment he needs?"