Not My Brother - Chapter 1

Lu Guanhe had slapped the paternity test results down on the coffee table.

They showed that Lu Jianguo and I weren’t related by blood in the slightest.

The paper trembled faintly between my hands as I stared at it, stunned.

Arms folded across his chest, Lu Guanhe sneered.

“Hey, Lu Mingyuan. Don’t you always throw your weight around as my older brother and try to teach me a lesson?”

He leaned forward and gripped my chin in one hand.

“Open your eyes and take a good look. You have nothing to do with the Lu family. Nothing to do with me, either. If you’re smart enough to say something nice, I might let you stay.”

I crumpled the paper in a white-knuckled grip, then slowly relaxed my hand.

“No need. I’ll leave.”

Lu Guanhe’s hand dropped away at once.

I didn’t look at his expression. Still holding the paper, I turned and went upstairs.

I was finally leaving. Lu Guanhe must have been out of his mind with joy.

After all, this younger brother of mine in name only had loathed me for nearly ten years.

I was in eighth grade when my mother abruptly told me I had a father.

Ignoring my protests, she dragged me into a cab and took me straight to the Lu residence.

Only then did I learn that one of the city’s rising young entrepreneurs had once been briefly married to my mother, back when he was penniless and at rock bottom.

By then, they had been separated for years, and Lu Jianguo’s son was already ten.

Lu Jianguo held his son in his arms while his wife, dressed in a long gown, linked her arm through his.

Lu Guanhe, still a child, just stared blankly at me.

My mother cried, caused a scene, and threatened to kill herself, insisting I was Lu Jianguo’s son and demanding years of unpaid child support.

Lu Jianguo had only one thing to say: if she wanted the money, the child had to stay.

My mother gave me a guilty glance and slowly backed away.

Then she walked off into the heavy snow without looking back.

No matter how I begged her, she never turned around to look at me again.

From that day on, I stayed with the Lu family.

Lu Jianguo had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. He hadn’t raised me, but I was still his son—or so we believed.

He sent me to the best school and hired top tutors to help with my studies.

Often, between assignments, I would look out the window and see their family of three gathered happily in the courtyard.

And I was a thief peering in at someone else’s happiness.

I knew Lu Guanhe hated me.

Because of me, Auntie Li and Lu Jianguo fought again and again.

Once, right in front of me, Lu Guanhe cursed me with the most vicious words he knew.

I didn’t go easy on him. Taking advantage of being a few years older, I grabbed him by the collar and threw him out.

“If I’m the son of a beast, then Lu Jianguo is the big beast, and you’re the little one.”

I shut the door. Outside, Lu Guanhe nearly exploded with rage.

I began packing up what little I had in the Lu house.

There wasn’t much. In my senior year of high school, after an enormous fight between Auntie Li and Lu Jianguo, Lu Jianguo finally gave in and decided to send me abroad.

At the time, Lu Guanhe had stood in my doorway with his arms crossed and a grin on his face.

“Finally getting the hell out?”

I ignored him, knocked his shoulder aside, and walked out.

I spent three years alone in a foreign country.

Apart from Lu Guanhe’s laughable curses, delivered punctually every New Year and birthday, I heard nothing from home.

So when an unfamiliar number called to tell me that Lu Jianguo and Auntie Li had died in a car crash, I thought I was still asleep and hallucinating.

Lu Guanhe was two weeks shy of eighteen. I took an overnight flight home.

Lu Jianguo was barely dead before relatives of every stripe came crawling out. Everyone wanted a bite of this enormous pie.

Lu Guanhe sat alone at the police station in nothing but a short-sleeved shirt, his face cold.

I took off my coat and draped it over him, only for him to seize my wrist in a death grip.

I didn’t know how many nights he had gone without sleep. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Lu Mingyuan, you must be thrilled.”

“I am.”

I agreed casually. “The whole mess that is Lu Group is on my shoulders now.

“And you.”

I forced his hands through the sleeves, zipped up the coat, and gave him a faint, humorless smile.

“You’re on my shoulders too, you little disaster.”

I kept the Lu family standing by sheer force. By day, I schemed and sparred with a pack of old foxes. At night, I came home and had to guard against the feral dog under my own roof.

Once, Lu Guanhe held a paring knife to my throat.

He asked why, if I was so damn devoted, I didn’t go below and keep his parents company.

The blade opened a thin cut, and a bead of blood welled up.

“I can’t bear to.” I caught him by the throat in return. “How could I bear to go down there while you’re still alive?”

This time, I had just returned from a meeting abroad to find the company turned upside down.

That was when I learned Auntie Li had left Lu Guanhe a contingency plan within the company.

And a single, lethal paternity test.