Chapter 009: Li Ruobing Loses Her Composure

Chapter 009: Li Ruobing Loses Her Composure

“Come to Tower 7, Nancheng CBD.” The moment the call connected, Li Ruobing spoke first, her tone cold, brooking no refusal.

“I’m already downstairs,” Wu Chen said mildly.

Silence. Then a breath caught, held, released.

“I’ll send someone to bring you up.”

“Underground garage. White Lamborghini.” He hung up before she could answer.

For an ordinary stranger, getting an audience with someone of Li Ruobing’s standing would have been all but impossible. For Wu Chen, meeting anyone important in Donghai was simple. All it took was a phone call and the right few words.

He knew everyone’s secrets—everyone who mattered, at least. Mention one, casually, and they came running.

In their earlier call, what had actually pulled Li Ruobing back to the phone wasn’t the talk of a traitor. It was the mention of the bet. Almost no one alive knew about that bet. An outsider had no business knowing it existed at all.

Before long, a tall, lean man in a black suit and sunglasses appeared in the garage and rapped twice on the Lamborghini’s window.

Wu Chen recognized him—one of Li Ruobing’s top bodyguards, a former recon scout out of an elite special forces unit. Zhou Huan. Married, with a five-year-old son.

“Let’s go,” Wu Chen said, climbing out.

Zhou Huan took him in with a glance—plain clothes, and young, far too young. He looked like some broke college kid.

Why the boss wanted someone downstairs to fetch this, Zhou Huan couldn’t begin to guess. But he didn’t ask.

“This way, sir.” He gestured and led on ahead.

Nancheng CBD was Donghai’s business district, wall-to-wall high-rises, with security locked down tight. No badge, no elevator.

Zhou Huan swiped them up to the thirty-first floor.

Rent here ran obscene. Most new companies leased a single modest office and called it a headquarters. Li Ruobing, when she’d arrived three years ago, had leased five entire floors outright.

And that was only her corporate offices—one piece of the empire. She also owned a factory out in the industrial zone, a billion-yuan investment standing on its own.

Since all five floors belonged to one company, the whole space had been renovated as a single unit. The Huancai Fashion logo was everywhere you looked. Staff moved briskly between desks, the air humming with the particular urgency of people who were always, always busy.

Attractive people, too—an unusual density of them, even for a fashion company.

The bodyguard led him up a stairwell this time, floor after floor, until they reached the thirty-third.

No ordinary staff up here. Only black suits, positioned like sentries down every hallway. If Wu Chen hadn’t known exactly who he’d come to see, he might have assumed he was walking into some crime boss’s stronghold.

Which, in a sense, wasn’t far off. Li Ruobing simply didn’t run in underworld circles. To the world, she was Donghai’s star entrepreneur—a chairwoman, a well-known female CEO, untouchable in the ordinary sense.

Thirty-third floor. The president’s office.

Two bodyguards flanked the door like temple guardians.

“Boss. He’s here,” Zhou Huan said toward the room.

“Send him in.” The voice from inside was cold as stone.

Zhou Huan led Wu Chen inside.

The office was vast, floor-to-ceiling windows framing a stunning view, but sparsely furnished. The visitor’s sofa sat a deliberate distance from the desk.

“You’re the one who called?” Li Ruobing set down her pen and studied him, her gaze deep, unreadable.

She was caught off guard. Wu Chen looked nothing like what she’d pictured. A stranger who called out of nowhere, rattled off things only a handful of people knew, knew her identity, and spoke with perfect composure—she’d expected someone older. Composed. A grown man in his prime.

Instead, he looked barely out of school.

Wu Chen studied her right back.

Tall, slender, hair long and straight and black as ink, gold-rimmed glasses framing a face done up in cold, striking makeup. The air around her practically hummed with authority. She hadn’t said a word since he walked in, and already the room felt like it belonged to her—commanding, unapproachable.

That kind of presence made it easy to overlook how beautiful she was.

“Boss Li. A pleasure.” Wu Chen smiled.

Then, without waiting for an invitation, he began wandering the office—looking here, looking there, as casual as if he owned the place. He circled the desk once, drifting behind her chair before continuing on.

Zhou Huan glanced at Li Ruobing, silently asking whether he should intervene.

This was arrogance, plain and simple. Wu Chen hadn’t done anything overtly wrong, but strolling around Li Ruobing’s private office like a tourist—that alone was a statement.

“Leave us,” Li Ruobing told Zhou Huan.

He went.

She turned her attention to Wu Chen, who had settled onto the sofa by now, one leg crossed over the other, perfectly at ease.

“Wu Chen, is it?” She lifted a document from her desk. “Twenty-two years old. Computer science, Donghai University. Father, Wu Dahai. Mother, Zhang Xiujuan. They run a noodle shop in some small county town. You’ve got a younger sister too—Wu Jiao, still in high school.”

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Wu Chen applauded, grinning. “Boss Li really does move fast. Less than an hour, and already this thorough.”

He wasn’t remotely surprised. He knew exactly how far her reach extended.

His phone was registered under his real name—no tricks there. Anyone with money and connections could dig up his background easily enough. The only variable was how quickly.

“I half expected to find someone had stolen your SIM card. Turns out it really is you. A perfectly ordinary—” she let the file drop back onto the desk, “—college graduate.”

She meant it, too. It genuinely baffled her. He had no background whatsoever. Nothing to explain any of this.

“Does it really matter who I am?” He tilted his head, smiling. “I’ll keep this brief. Ten million, and I’ll tell you who the traitor is.”

“Who sent you?” she asked.

She seemed entirely uninterested in his traitor. What actually held her attention was the deeply wrong feeling radiating off the man in front of her.

“No one sent me. Think of me as… an information broker. I know things that would interest you—things you’d care about. You pay, I deliver. A clean trade.”

“A stranger walks in off the street, tells me there’s a traitor in my house, demands ten million yuan, and calls it a clean trade. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

She smiled—and then, in the space of a breath, the warmth vanished entirely. “I’m warning you. Give me an answer that satisfies me, or you don’t walk out of this room alive.”

She pulled open a drawer.

Clack.

A black handgun landed on the desktop.

This woman never wasted time on subtlety.

And she meant every word—she really would kill a man in her own office.

“Whoa—hah, wow. Planning to shoot me?” Wu Chen sucked in a breath, feigning shock, then laughed outright. He raised a hand and gave it a little shake. “With what, exactly? You’re missing something.”

Dangling from his fingers: a magazine.

Her expression cracked. She glanced down at the gun—empty. Gone.

“You—when did you—” She was on her feet before she finished the sentence.