Chapter 044: Bet You Won’t Get Jealous

Chapter 044: Bet You Won’t Get Jealous

“Name your price.” Li Ruobing looked straight at him. She wanted to buy it.

“Can’t give it to you.” Wu Chen turned her down flat.

Her expression shifted, eyes narrowing—for a moment, suspicion crept back in that Wu Chen might have some tie to Ding Ruilong after all.

“Don’t let anger cloud your judgment. You know how much weight the great families carry. Even if I handed you his dirt right now, you couldn’t bring him down with it. The Ding family would shield him—and so would your own Li family,” Wu Chen said, smiling faintly.

“It might even void the bet outright, and your family would force you straight into marrying him. However bad your relationship with the family is, you’re still a Li. Move against him like that, and you’d drag both families into open conflict—your family would owe the Dings an apology for it. So ask yourself honestly: with what you’ve got right now, can you take on your own family? And the Dings too?”

Li Ruobing said nothing.

He was right. She hadn’t thought it through.

When she’d called him, she’d been at her angriest, wanting nothing more than to see Ding Ruilong destroyed.

But his words now had cooled her down.

He was right. She couldn’t go after Ding Ruilong directly—the same way he’d never once come at her directly. That was the line neither of them crossed. He only ever went after the people around her, or her company.

Ding Ruilong wanted to marry her. He didn’t want a war to the death.

She thought it over, then looked back down at the files.

“Reviewing spokesperson candidates?” Wu Chen asked.

“Mm.” She answered through her nose, still reading.

Because Deng Xunya had been badly hurt and hospitalized in an “accident,” the contract between Huancai and her agency fell squarely under force majeure.

It would dissolve automatically. Neither side in breach.

Huancai needed a new spokesperson.

Fast—but fast wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy at all.

Fourteen days stood between now and the launch. Nowhere near enough time. Set aside scheduling conflicts and existing endorsement deals—most reigning top-tier actresses simply wouldn’t touch a niche brand at all.

They’d already climbed high enough to endorse international names. There was no reason to step down.

The rare few willing to take it on would only do it for the money.

But—

Ding Ruilong kept muddying the water. Interfering at every turn.

Whenever Li Ruobing struck a deal with some star’s agent, Ding Ruilong would go straight to that agency’s owner the next day and talk them out of it. And since nothing had been signed yet, they always found some excuse to back out.

It had happened too many times already to count.

Nor could she call on family power to solve it. She hadn’t even asked her brother for help—Li Ruotai’s reach was the Li family’s reach, and using it would break the terms of the bet.

She had to negotiate this one alone.

She knew, probably, that her chance was already gone. Without a spokesperson, the launch could be delayed, or held as scheduled with far less impact than she needed.

She kept reading without a word.

The office sat heavy with silence.

“Boss Li.” Wu Chen spoke up suddenly, smiling. “Want to hire me to find one for you?”

She looked up.

He kept smiling.

“Aren’t you an information broker? You dabble in this too?” she said coldly, dropping her eyes back to the files. Whatever warmth had been in her yesterday was gone—today she’d put real distance between them.

Even after they’d kissed.

But that was simply who she was.

They were alone in her office now. No audience left to perform for.

“It’s money, that’s all. Pay the right price and I’ll bring you Tao Manying if that’s what you want. Or any other star who’s caught your eye—whoever I find, she’ll meet your standards. Guaranteed. Red-hot, top of her game.”

The boast came out so smooth even Wu Chen half believed it himself.

And the truth was, he did have a way to land Huancai a spokesperson fast—one that would meet Li Ruobing’s standards, maybe exceed them.

Take Tao Manying, the name he’d just tossed out.

The industry’s current darling. Golden Horse Best Actress, Hong Kong Film Award Best Actress, Tokyo Film Festival Best Actress, Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Best Actress. Only twenty-eight this year, and for years before that she’d barely registered—second-tier at best.

Then last year’s blockbuster, Sword and Autumn Water, swept nearly twenty Best Actress titles across every festival and awards show worth naming, her performance so electric it carried her reputation abroad.

A mainland actress standing right at the threshold of true international stardom.

Tao Manying sat well beyond anything Li Ruobing could reasonably expect. A handful of others were in the same tier, all of them too famous now to even grant her a meeting.

Their agents would hang up before the conversation started, let alone negotiate.

“You’d find her? How long would that take?” Li Ruobing asked, still not looking up, barely humoring him.

“Depends who,” Wu Chen said.

“Say—Tao Manying.” She still didn’t lift her head. Just going through the motions.

Not that she’d picked the hardest name on purpose. He’d mentioned it first; she was only echoing it back.

“Her?” Wu Chen thought a moment. “Easy. One day’s enough.”

Her gaze paused on the page. She looked up at him, held the pause a beat longer, then asked, “One day?”

“Mm-hm.” He nodded.

“You know Tao Manying?”

“No.”

“Then what are you even saying?” She frowned.

“Not knowing her doesn’t mean I can’t. One day’s plenty.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She tilted her head and gave him the kind of look reserved for someone hopelessly slow. “Tao Manying’s overseas right now. I’ve kept tabs on her—she’s been shooting in Southeast Asia for three or four months, currently in Thailand. Your intel network can be as good as it wants, but if you can’t even get in front of her, what’s the point? One day?”

For the first time, she truly felt Wu Chen had overplayed his hand.

Blown the bluff wide open, past any hope of saving it.

“I never said I’d go straight to Tao Manying herself. What about the people around her?” He was still smiling.

“Heh.” She gave a short, cold laugh, eyes back on the file. “One day. Forget the timeline—Tao Manying already has a cosmetics contract. She can’t take a second one. One day? You really are something.”

She didn’t finish the thought. Her tone made clear she was done talking.

The office went quiet again.

Wu Chen watched her read. He understood how frayed her nerves were right now, and he understood, too, why she didn’t believe a word of what he’d just said. If she had believed him, that would’ve been the strange thing.

By every reasonable measure, it was impossible.

But Wu Chen happened to be exactly the kind of man who turned impossible things possible.

And short of doing something that genuinely shocked her, there was no way to win her over completely.

“Twenty million.” He named the number outright. “Give me twenty million, and I’ll have Tao Manying standing in your office by tomorrow morning.”

Li Ruobing said nothing. She had no interest in talking to him right now.

“You don’t believe me at all, do you. How about a bet, then?” he tried again.

Bet.

The word landed differently on her.

Because right now, she was a woman whose entire fate hung on one.

She looked up, expression blank, and after a pause said, “What kind of bet gets you to shut up and leave me alone?”

“We bet on whether I can get Tao Manying into your office tomorrow morning, signed on as your spokesperson. If I lose, I won’t just skip the fee—I’ll hand you twenty million myself.”

“And if you win?” she asked. She already knew he couldn’t possibly win, but the terms, at least, were fair.

“If I win, you pay me the twenty million first—that’s my fee for finding you a spokesperson, not my winnings from the bet,” he said.

“Then what are you actually betting for?”

“I win… you not getting jealous.”

“Not getting jealous? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that—if I end up with other women, you don’t get jealous over it.” He smiled.

She froze for a second, then looked at him with a deeply strange expression.

“Why would I get jealous? We’re pretending to date. I haven’t fallen for you. What would I even be jealous of? Go find whoever you want—I’ve got no right to say a word about it.” She gave him that same look again, the one meant for someone not quite all there.

“You’re right about all of it. I still want to bet on it.” Wu Chen’s smile stayed easy, unhurried.

He was laying groundwork early. A good opening, and he meant to use it.

She hadn’t fallen for him yet. That didn’t mean she never would.

“So—are we betting or not?” he pressed.

“Fine, fine, fine, we’re betting! Happy now?” She was genuinely running out of patience. Head back down over the files, she added, “You can go. Get to work. Go find her. Just stop interrupting mine.”

“Deal, then.” Wu Chen smiled and rose to go.

He left Huancai Fashion.

Rode down.

Back to the underground lot.

Once in the car, engine running, he pulled out his phone and dialed.

The call connected just as he pulled out of the lot.

“Something wrong with the car, Mr. Wu?” Wang Zhuangyuan hadn’t expected a call so soon.

“Zhuangyuan. Get things arranged. I need your men,” Wu Chen said, straight to the point.

“You—” A note of real pleasure crept into Wang Zhuangyuan’s voice—Wu Chen had called him Zhuangyuan, plain and familiar. He didn’t ask a single unnecessary question, just agreed on the spot. “No problem at all, Mr. Wu. How many do you need? I’ll round up the brothers right now.”