The woman before me peels away her white scrub. Beneath it, nothing. Her breasts are full, a perfect handful.

  She drops to her knees. Her mouth envelops my member, slowly moving up and down my length. The sensation is exquisite. Intoxicating.

  But rage burns through the pleasure. Ruoyu betrayed me. Not just betrayed—she tried to kill me.

  The nurses who serve high Party officials are abducted young. Five to nine years old, sent to the Special Supply Department under the General Office of the Central Committee. Trained sixteen. Perfected into instruments.

  A Party tradition started in the mid seventies, feeding a network of child abduction groups all over the Republic. If a girl is rejected by the Special Supply Department, they will be sold to villages as child brides. Or to overseas prostitution rings. Both lead to a life in chains.

  Ruoyu was the lucky one. The Party gave her everything—more than her migrant worker parents could dream of providing.

  She lived at the center of power. Never hungry. Never cold. Never unsafe. In a few years, she would have retired at thirty-five with full pension and lifetime medical care.

  And the ungrateful bitch tried to poison me. Liran was right: it is much safer to be feared than to be loved, if one of the two must be wanting.

  /** This is actually a quote from The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. But Diping doesn't know.

  **/

  The headache has faded. The fury has not. I drive my knee into the woman's head. Hard. She jerks backward, crashing to the floor. Terror floods her eyes instantly. She knows. She's not a trained nurse—she won't be recycled back to the nursing school, reassigned to some deputy minister. She won't be let out to spread rumors about the Party. She'll be incinerated. Unless her organs are already matched to someone matters.

  I don't care. She's the third in fifteen minutes. My anger demands more.

  After Ruoyu, Liran declared the nursing school too dangerous. She found these instead—second wives, disposable.

  They already live a life of sexual servitude. They already know how to please man. Most of them are educated, refined even. The Special Supply Department can train them in medical skills on the job.

  They live in shadows. Their husbands will believe they ran off with lovers. Some families may search. But they won't involve police until it's far too late.

  Most Party officials demand virgins. Insecurity masquerading as preference. They don't understand that certain pleasures require experience.

  But I'm not like them. I never cared about a hymen. Not even my wife's. That never stopped me from valuing her—her steel, her ambition, her brilliant ruthlessness.

  The fourth woman snares my attention. She has Liran's curves. Voluptuous. Full-bodied. Some would even say she's a little chubby. But that's my type. Still, her waist tapers deliciously. Not by resemblance. Yet, she reminds me of that foreign creature. Lyra. The night witch.

  She smiles through it all. They're all terrified—carried from their homes by special forces soldiers in the dead of night. But she keeps smiling. Not forced. Genuine. A smile perfected through thousands of repetitions. A smile to snare her man's heart, no matter what she feels inside.

  She knows survival. She knows success. I'd bet everything that she does whatever her husband demands without hesitation. Even sharing him with other women.

  I hunger for women who please. Liran, Lyra—the finest women in my life are all masters of pleasure.

  She gives exceptional head. She knows how to use her tongue, sliding and swirling even as she takes me to the root.

  I think she'll finish me with her mouth. But she stops. She climbs onto me and rides me, controlling the rhythm.

  She fakes her climax beautifully. Almost as skilled as Liran. Lyra's orgasms were real. She was something else entirely.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Then she whispers, "Get up and fuck my ass." She smiles wider. "Great leader."

  I like the way she takes command. Her ass has been entered many times—she doesn't even need preparation. Just two hands spreading her cheeks is enough for me to enter.

  Still, the sensation of tightness excites me. I'm undone in five minutes.

  She keeps me inside her until she's sure I won't harden again. Then she turns around and takes me in her mouth, cleaning me thoroughly. Taking every drop like an addict.

  "What's your name?" I ask.

  "Yuting," she says, looking up through her lashes, still smiling.

  /** Yuting was the friend whose home Shishi went to in chapter 39.

  **/

  … …

  I wake in Yuting's arms, my head cradled against her shoulder the way Liran used to hold me when she was younger—before ambition hardened us both.

  The first thing I see is Liran's face. Patient. Determined. Waiting.

  "Have you fully recovered?" Her tone is polite, but the steel beneath it is undeniable. She is not asking. She demands readiness.

  I push myself upright. “What do you want?”

  "What we need." The correction is sharp. "We have no time to waste. We must call a Politburo Committee Meeting immediately."

  I understand at once. With Keyang hospitalized, Qiuhan and Huoning in ICU, the board is cleared. I can redraw the Party’s power structure without resistance.

  I glance around. We’re alone. Yuting is already on her feet, so desperate to flee she doesn’t even reach for her scrub. The door creaks open, and she slips out—naked, silent, vanishing like a discarded secret.

  "Three positions," Liran says, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

  "First—Secretary of the Work Committee for Central Government Organs." I meet her eyes, seeking confirmation.

  She nods.

  The Work Committee enforces the Party's will across all government ministries and agencies. Political oversight. Cadre management. Internal discipline. Anti-corruption. A Party position that Jiang foolishly ceded to the Prime Minister's influence. Now I'll take it back.

  “Deputy Secretary of the Discipline Commission,” I continue.

  Another nod.

  Qiuhan can no longer be trusted, I need my own blade—one I wield directly, one that doesn’t flinch when I say cut.

  "And the third?" I pause, searching her face.

  Liran lets the silence stretch, tension coiling like a wire. Then: “Chairman of the Financial Regulatory Commission.”

  My stomach tightens. “You want to replace Xialai? Provoke his father?” The words come out sharper than I intend.

  Yibu Bo, Xialai's father, was one of the original Ruby Five. With Beidaihe Summer Retreat approaching—and the fourth plenum looming, the one that decides the Party's next leadership—I hesitate.

  "Not replace. Promote." Liran's smile is thin, predatory. "He's managed cities and ministries, but never a province. Give him one. Strengthen his candidacy for the next Ruby Five. His father will be grateful."

  I nod. Clever.

  “More importantly,” she continues, leaning in, “we need absolute control over the financial sector. The investigation into your assassination uncovered something... unexpected.”

  She pauses.

  “Keyang and Qiuhan have been colluding to crash the bull market.”

  Ice floods my veins. The stock market boom is one of my signature achievements—proof that the Party still delivers prosperity. Together with my relentless anti-corruption campaign, these twin pillars sustain my popularity, keep the people believing in the Ruby Dream.

  "We stop them," I say, my voice hard. "Right now."

  Liran shakes her head slowly.

  “I’ve thought this through.” Her eyes gleam with something dark and beautiful. “Lyra was right. If you want to serve beyond seventy, the circumstances must be extraordinary.”

  “You and Keyang are the same age—born three months apart. Your birthday falls before the term rotation. His falls after. A bureaucratic accident of timing.” She leans closer. “This is our chance to shatter that constraint. If we can prove Keyang is fundamentally unsuitable for leadership.”

  “You already told me he orchestrated my assassination!” My fist clenches. “Isn’t that enough?”

  "Too sensational. Too convenient." Liran's patience is maddening. "We have no evidence tying him personally to the plot. It could be dismissed as a rogue security chief acting alone—motivated by personal hatred of the Party."

  She rises, begins pacing like a chess master explaining a winning strategy.

  "But combine the assassination attempt with economic sabotage—deliberately crashing the market, wiping out the savings of millions of families..." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Two crimes. Each amplifies the other. Yet mere intent isn't enough. The old guards must witness the devastation. Hear the people's rage. See the bodies falling from high-rises. Feel the foundations of trust in the Party crack and splinter."

  She stops. Turns to me.

  "That will wake them up. That will make them understand: Keyang is a threat not just to you—but to the Party's survival."

  I nod slowly. The pieces align in my mind. The elegance of it. The ruthlessness.

  "This reminds me of Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign," I say, my voice filled with admiration. "'Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.'" I smile. "An overt conspiracy. Luring the snakes from their holes so we can crush them."

  Liran smiles back. And in that moment, we understand each other perfectly.

  “Crisis demands continuity. Don’t change horses midstream.” Her eyes are cold. Beautiful. Merciless. “Then we enrich the Ruby Dream. A better life for the poor. A nation reunited. Taiwan reclaimed.”

  “And I become the savior who delivers it all,” I finish, feeling power surge through me. “The Ruby Dream. Not just the people’s dream. The Party’s dream. I become the irreplaceable future.”

  I stand. My body aches, but my mind is clear. The conspiracy unfolds before me like a map of conquest.

  And in that moment, I know—whatever the cost, whatever the suffering—I will remain in power.

  Keyang thought he could poison me. Remove me. Replace me.

  He has no idea what’s coming.