Chapter 065: Want to Make Another Bet?

Chapter 065: Want to Make Another Bet?

“The Su family…” Wu Chen smiled, an odd edge to it. Of course he knew who was investigating him. Su Qingying.

He’d crossed paths with her convoy on the road yesterday afternoon and sent her a text afterward. He could just imagine the panic that must have stirred in her—she’d probably barely slept last night.

His phone number was registered under his real name. With the Su family’s reach, digging up his basic background would take them all of a few minutes.

But clearly Su Qingying hadn’t stopped there. A man from that kind of family background had no business driving a Lamborghini Aventador.

She was probably already digging deeper—into his connections here in Donghai, into anything that might explain the contradiction.

“What? You don’t know?” Li Ruobing asked, turning back after putting on her high heels.

How would anyone know they were under investigation? And yet Li Ruobing simply assumed Wu Chen would. He was an information broker, after all. He always seemed to know everything.

“I know,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Who? Who’s investigating you?” Li Ruobing asked.

“That’s…” Wu Chen smiled at her, clearly with no intention of answering. “Not really your business, is it? You’d better stay out of it.”

He didn’t want any complications getting in the way of his dealings with Su Qingying.

“Stay out of it? You think I have nothing better to do?” Li Ruobing shot back.

She crossed to the coat rack in the corner and shrugged into her blazer. “There’s a new Italian place that just opened near New Century. Want to try it?”

“Let’s go,” Wu Chen agreed, standing up.

Jacket on, Li Ruobing checked herself in the mirror. When she saw Wu Chen step up beside her, she turned and reached up to straighten his collar—she’d noticed in the glass a moment ago that it was crooked.

She seemed to be reaching for something. The feel of being someone’s girlfriend. Only with that in place could the two of them step out together without a single crack showing.

“Tell me,” Wu Chen asked softly, smiling, his tone even though the words themselves were needling, “how did it feel? Kneeling to a man five years younger than you, from an ordinary family, and nowhere near as rich as you?”

How did it feel, indeed.

Li Ruobing’s hand, still adjusting his tie, froze for two full seconds. Then she smiled—and in that instant, the smile bloomed bright as spring sunlight.

“Are you trying to provoke me on purpose?” She tipped her head up, and the smile on her face was lovely.

Li Ruobing was already tall to begin with. In heels, she stood only a little shorter than he did.

“No. No, I’m not.” Wu Chen shook his head, then smiled again. “I only wanted to interview you. In my line of work, you have to study people—get at what’s really inside them. So I’m curious. On the surface you look like you turned around and forgot the whole thing. But underneath—what are you actually thinking?”

He was provoking her, of course. He simply wouldn’t admit it.

Her eyelid twitched.

She gave his tie a sudden tug, leaning in until her face was nearly against his, chin lifted. Smiling brightly, eyes dark, she asked, “Wu Chen—you think there’s nothing I can do about you?”

“I never said that.” Wu Chen felt her breath against his skin and kept his smile calm.

“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen for me?” she asked, pleased with her own cleverness, flashing him a look somewhere between surprise and mockery.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Wu Chen said with a soft laugh.

“Is that right?” Li Ruobing looked as if she’d seen straight through him. “You knew perfectly well I didn’t want to talk about it. So why bring it up yourself? Trying to get more of my attention, or—”

“I’m already your fake boyfriend. We see each other every day. Why would I need to work for your attention?” Wu Chen cut in. “You’re not the prettiest woman I know, and you’re not the richest either. On top of that, you walk around every day wearing that frigid, sour little face, radiating a keep-your-distance chill that would send cats running. So tell me—where exactly does this confidence come from, that I’d fall for you?”

Her eyelid twitched again. The man really did have a talent for saying the ugliest possible thing.

Wu Chen would never admit that he’d actually practiced this—the art of arguing, of cutting someone down with words. To him, eloquence was simply part of the toolkit, and it mattered enormously.

In dealing with people, how you spoke could decide everything. Say something pleasant, and people relaxed, felt good. Say something cutting, and you could pluck straight at their nerves—shift their mood, even provoke the streak of defiance in them.

This time, Li Ruobing was genuinely angry.

“Listening to you, you must have all kinds of women, huh? Every last one of them some devastating beauty?” Li Ruobing wanted to hit back. Wu Chen had done her an enormous favor these past few days, true, but right now she was simply irritated—and she needed to get the upper hand on him, one way or another.

She kept the big picture and the personal grievances in separate boxes.

On matters of substance, she naturally stood shoulder to shoulder with Wu Chen. Li Ruotai had handed him a hundred-million-yuan house, and she thought that was perfectly fair—Wu Chen had earned every bit of it.

But right now she also had a “private grudge” against him, and that needed settling too.

What she hadn’t noticed at all was how far her composure had slipped—that she, always so steady and cold, could be thrown into this much turbulence by a handful of Wu Chen’s deliberately barbed words.

“Women…” Wu Chen mused. “I’ve slept with my share, in the past. These days… it’s fine, I suppose.” He finished, and smiled again.

“All prettier than me?” Li Ruobing asked.

“Of course there are some prettier than you.” Wu Chen kept smiling.

“Who? Give me a name! I’ll look her up myself and see if she’s really prettier than me—and richer!” There was no give in Li Ruobing’s voice at all.

She’d twisted his meaning on purpose, of course. Wu Chen had said “women I know.” She’d bent that straight into “Wu Chen’s women.”

Wu Chen didn’t bother correcting her. Somewhere along the way, without either of them quite noticing, things had reached the point where Li Ruobing got worked up and bickered with him like this—no point setting the record straight now. Better to go along with it and see what else she’d say.

And now she’d actually cornered him.

Since his new life began, the only woman he’d slept with was Mu Qianqian. She and Li Ruobing were entirely different types, and looks-wise, she didn’t outshine Li Ruobing either.

“You’re fishing for my private information. Not falling for it,” Wu Chen said with a soft laugh.

“Can’t come up with a single name, can you?” Li Ruobing smiled and pressed the needle in further. “Listening to that big talk of yours, I almost thought you were something else. For a second there I nearly believed even Su Qingying was one of your women—every last one of them prettier than me. Careful you don’t sprain your tongue bragging that hard.”

She’d just said the name Su Qingying.

That gave Wu Chen a moment’s pause. His first instinct was to wonder whether she knew something, whether she’d found something out. But he dismissed the thought immediately. Impossible.

So why had that name come up at all?

He thought it through and understood.

Probably because the two of them had already brought up Jinfu Group and the Su family earlier that morning. Once the name was in the air, it was only natural her mind would drift to Su Qingying.

Besides, Su Qingying really was that famous.

Within Donghai’s business circles, everyone knew Li Ruobing’s name. Outside those circles, far fewer people did—she kept a low profile.

Su Qingying, on the other hand, was known across the whole of Donghai—practically a household name.

Among ordinary people, she was even more famous than her own father. Most people couldn’t tell you the name of Jinfu Group’s chairman, but nearly all of them could tell you the name of his one and only daughter.

She wasn’t just the daughter of Donghai’s richest man, or Donghai’s number-one heiress. She also carried the title of Donghai’s number-one beauty.

Four years in Donghai was more than enough for Li Ruobing to know all this.

And Wu Chen had just claimed that, among the women he knew, she was neither the prettiest nor the richest. Put all of that together, and it was only natural her mind had gone straight to Donghai’s number-one beauty.

In this city, Su Qingying might genuinely be the only woman who fit both criteria.

Li Ruobing’s own standing was already absurdly high to begin with.

The women richer than her weren’t as beautiful. The women more beautiful than her—she’d barely met any at all. In all of Donghai, there was exactly one. Su Qingying. Only Su Qingying was both prettier and richer.

She was, after all, the sole heir to Jinfu Group. Purely in personal assets, Su Qingying currently outstripped her.

Of course, when Li Ruobing brought up the name, it had only been a passing thought, a jab aimed at Wu Chen.

Wu Chen, though, followed the thread further.

“Su Qingying?” Wu Chen smiled. “She’s not my woman. Not yet.”

“Yet?” Li Ruobing caught it at once.

“That’s right. Yet.” Wu Chen said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Not for now. But give it a few days, and who knows—maybe she will be. What’s that look for? Don’t believe me? Want to make another bet?”