Chapter 16: THERE ARE NO OMEGAS ON THIS FLOOR

Wang Chengli opened the door for him.

Guiying stepped out, looked up at the building one more time, and followed Wang Chengli inside.

The lobby was all glass and polished floors, a reception desk staffed by two people who looked up when they entered and then looked again when Wang Chengli approached. Whatever he said to them was brief and quiet. One of them picked up a phone immediately.

Guiying stood slightly to the side and waited, and thought about how he was going to ask Liu Liuxian for five million yuan over lunch.

He was going to have to be creative about this.

Wang Chengli led him through the lobby, into the elevator, and up to the thirty second floor without a word. The doors opened onto a corridor that was quieter than the lobby below, the particular quiet of a floor where people worked with focused efficiency and did not raise their voices.

He stopped in front of a set of large double doors at the end of the corridor.

"The Young Master is inside," he said. He stepped to the side.

Guiying looked at the doors. Then at Wang Chengli.

Wang Chengli looked back at him with the composed expression of a man who had delivered his charge to the correct location and considered his job complete.

He was not coming in.

Guiying pushed the door open and walked in alone.

The office was large and quietly impressive, floor to ceiling windows looking out over the city on one side, a desk that took up a substantial portion of the far end of the room on the other. Bookshelves. A sitting area. The kind of space that communicated authority without needing to try.

Liuxian was behind the desk.

He looked up when the door opened.

Whatever he had been expecting, it was not this.

His eyes went to the blonde hair first, then the rimless glasses, then the mask, then back up to the blonde hair as though confirming that what he was seeing was accurate. For approximately two seconds, Liu Liuxian, who had maintained perfect composure through quarterly reviews and hostile negotiations and every other thing his professional life had thrown at him, looked genuinely caught off guard.

"You are blonde?" he said.

"Temporarily," Guiying said.

The smile appeared then, slow and quiet, settling at the corner of his mouth. He leaned back in his chair and raised one hand, beckoning.

Guiying crossed the room.

When he was close enough Liuxian reached out, took his wrist with the same easy unhurried confidence he brought to everything, and pulled him down until Guiying was sitting in his lap, which was apparently where this had been going all along.

His arm settled around Guiying’s waist, loose and comfortable. He reached up with his other hand and pushed the rimless glasses up Guiying’s nose slightly, which had not been necessary but had apparently seemed reasonable.

"Were you followed?" he asked.

"No."

"Good." He looked at Guiying’s face for a moment with that quiet, warm attention he always brought to things he found interesting. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Guiying said. "And I need to talk to you about something."

"Mm." Liuxian reached for his phone on the desk. "Lunch first."

Guiying looked at the phone, then at Liuxian’s profile, then at the city beyond the window.

He was sitting in his husband’s lap in a corporate office on the thirty second floor, wearing a blonde wig, about to ask for five million yuan.

His life had taken a genuinely unexpected turn.

Liuxian picked up his phone and dialed without shifting his arm from around Guiying’s waist.

"Zhang Wei. Order lunch for two. The usual for me." He glanced at Guiying. "What do you want?"

Guiying told him. Liuxian relayed it, hung up, and set the phone back down.

The office settled into a comfortable quiet.

Guiying looked out at the city through the floor to ceiling windows, and his mind drifted back to the ride up. The elevator opening onto the thirty second floor, the corridor, the people moving through it with brisk efficiency. He had noticed something on the way in and had filed it away without fully examining it.

He examined it now.

"There are no Omegas on this floor?" he asked.

"No," Liuxian said.

"Why?"

"That is how it has always been."

Guiying turned to look at him.

Something in his expression shifted, not dramatically, but visibly. The particular shift of someone who had heard that answer before, from many different people, in many different contexts, and had never once found it acceptable.

"That is how it has always been," he repeated slowly.

"Guiying—"

"So that is the standard? Something is wrong and has always been wrong so we simply continue doing it because that is how it has always been?"

The temperature in the room changed slightly. Not hostile, not yet, but moving in that direction with quiet momentum. Liuxian looked at him, reading the shift, and something in his own expression recalibrated.

"That is not what I meant," he said. His voice was even and unhurried. "Let me explain properly."

Guiying looked at him and said nothing, which was its own kind of invitation to continue.

"I am not misogynistic," Liuxian said. "And I do not look down on Omegas. When I first became CEO there were Omegas on this floor. What followed was not something I was willing to repeat." He held Guiying’s gaze steadily. "Pheromones in a working environment are manageable up to a point. On this floor that point was repeatedly crossed. I was being approached in ways that were inappropriate and the work environment became something I could not allow to continue."

Guiying said nothing, listening.

"Despite that," Liuxian continued, "I have never once revoked the policy that any employee in heat or rut is entitled to paid time off. That policy has been abused more times than I can count. But I kept it anyway." He paused. "The only people on this floor are my secretaries who are Betas and Zhang Wei who is an Alpha. In every other department of this company, including senior and high paying roles, Omegas are hired, promoted, and compensated the same as everyone else. I have never denied anyone a position solely because of their designation."

He looked at Guiying.

"Do you like that answer?" he asked.

Guiying looked back at him for a long moment.

"It is a better answer than most would give," he said finally. "It is still not a perfect one."

"I know," Liuxian said simply.

The corner of Guiying’s mouth moved, just slightly, in a way that was not quite approval but was adjacent to it.