Chapter 088: A Dead End? It Couldn’t Be a Dead End!

Chapter 088: A Dead End? It Couldn’t Be a Dead End!

Li Ruobing looked at Su Qingying as if she’d seen a ghost, unable to produce a single word. Honestly, by now a thread of fear had worked into her, as though she were inside a horror film and had run into something supernatural.

What in the world was wrong with this woman, Su Qingying?

Mental illness?

Impossible. If Su Qingying had a mental illness, there was no way she could be as perfect as the rumors said, no way she could become Jinfu Group’s successor. The more brilliantly a person performed in public, the less likely they were to be mentally ill, because only someone with sufficient self-control could perform that well—could be outstanding to the extreme without ever slipping.

Thinking it through, Li Ruobing slowly turned her head and looked again at Wu Chen’s back.

She had it.

It wasn’t Su Qingying who had the problem.

The problem was still Wu Chen.

She couldn’t work out what method he had used to take Su Qingying down so fast, or to make her love him to the point where she didn’t mind him having other women and was willing to share him with one.

She couldn’t work out how he had managed it.

But the problem had to be Wu Chen.

“Sister, what are you thinking about?” Su Qingying spoke again, even waving a hand in front of her eyes. The reason she called Li Ruobing Sister was that she herself had only come to Wu Chen today, while Li Ruobing had clearly been with him for some time. Li Ruobing had come first, so she ranked ahead. She was the Sister.

“Could you stop calling me Sister?” Li Ruobing finally answered, cutting a look sideways at her.

She didn’t want to hear that word. It made her skin crawl.

“Oh. All right, then. Miss Li.” Su Qingying switched at once. In truth she hadn’t especially wanted to use it either. She had only felt that Li Ruobing had come first and she ought to behave properly about it. If she wasn’t allowed to, so much the better.

“Qingying, don’t forget to take the pill,” Wu Chen said suddenly, reminding her.

“Ah, right. I nearly forgot. Honey, do you have any here?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll run downstairs and buy some.”

Su Qingying stood, and promptly… pulled her top up.

Li Ruobing looked like a woman seeing a ghost all over again, her eyes flying wide.

She was a woman herself, granted, but Su Qingying changing right in front of her like this—was that really all right with her? Li Ruobing watched, helpless, as Su Qingying tossed Wu Chen’s pajamas aside. She truly had nothing else on underneath.

Li Ruobing saw some of the marks on her body.

Because Wu Chen hadn’t used heavy force, most of them had already faded to almost nothing, which made it very hard for Li Ruobing to tell what exactly he had done to her. All she could tell was that the two of them had played very wildly.

Su Qingying dressed quickly.

Tracksuit on, then the sun hat, then the mask.

“You two carry on. I’ll be right back.” She hurried out as she said it. She knew where to find a pharmacy—these days they were everywhere—and when she and Wu Chen had gotten out of the car earlier, she’d noticed one just around the corner to the right, outside the mouth of the alley.

She left the bedroom, and soon came the sound of the front door opening and closing.

The instant Li Ruobing heard the door shut, she stood up off the small of Wu Chen’s back, jumped down from the bed, and took a few steps to one side, rolling her sleeves back down while she stared straight at him.

Wu Chen sat up too and began to dress.

He knew Li Ruobing had absolutely no interest in continuing the massage now.

“Don’t you plan to explain yourself, Wu Chen?” She shook her hair loose again, tossed her head, then folded her arms and fixed him with a stare.

“How about you give me a hundred million yuan and I tell you the truth?” Wu Chen looked up and said it with a smile.

“Is that funny?” Her eyes narrowed.

Of course she wasn’t going to hand Wu Chen a hundred million for information like that.

Because it had nothing to do with her.

She had already lost the bet. Knowing how he’d done it wouldn’t change the outcome.

However Wu Chen had handled Su Qingying, whatever had passed between the two of them—Li Ruobing’s curiosity was at the bursting point, but she was not going to be the sucker who paid him a hundred million for it.

“It is funny. Extremely funny, really.” Wu Chen smiled again.

“I’ll find out whether you tell me or not.” She said it plainly. She would investigate.

“Suit yourself.” Wu Chen didn’t care, because finding out was impossible.

Li Ruobing drew another deep breath, sat with the silence a moment, then looked at him, dressed now, and said, “Fine. I won’t ask what’s going on between you and Su Qingying. But… the Su family is investigating you because of your relationship with her, isn’t it?”

“I took her and ran away from home,” Wu Chen said, standing.

“And what do you plan to do? Marry her? Marry into the Su family?”

“Do I look like the kind of man who marries into a family?”

“Then what? Break it off? Never see her again? Breaking it off won’t make the Su family let you go.”

“Are there no other options?”

“What else are you trying to do?”

“Handle the Su family, obviously. What else?”

“You make it sound so easy.”

She raised a hand to her forehead as she spoke, paced over to the window, and looked out. She was irritated—not only because Wu Chen now had Su Qingying at his side, but because she herself had been dragged into this.

The Su family had already traced Wu Chen.

And she, Li Ruobing, was his girlfriend. Everyone in Donghai’s business circles knew it.

So from the Su family’s point of view, it was Li Ruobing’s boyfriend who had abducted Su Qingying.

Which was…

deeply unpleasant.

What was she supposed to do? Draw a clean line and say the relationship with Wu Chen was fake?

She knew she couldn’t blow her own cover at a time like this. Three times already it had been fake. The fourth had been played so convincingly, and if people learned this one was fake too, then Li Ruobing would never get another chance. However well she acted with whatever man she found afterward, no one would believe it.

But if she didn’t draw the line—

then Li Ruobing both knew and didn’t know. She ought to be furious with Wu Chen, since she’d been cheated on. But the two of them were fake. How was she supposed to be furious with him, or make trouble over it?

She also couldn’t be furious with him. That performance wouldn’t work either, because if Li Ruobing truly lost her temper, people could die.

So what else was left?

Break up? Just break up?

Was Li Ruobing the kind of woman who took a betrayal and swallowed it? If she were genuinely Wu Chen’s girlfriend, she should be joining the Su family against him.

That wouldn’t work either.

And then there was—

as Wu Chen’s girlfriend, tacitly permitting him other women? And then… shouldering the Su family’s fury alongside him? Going to war with the Su family?

Absolute nonsense.

What would that make Li Ruobing?

A dead end.

However she turned it over, it was a dead end with no solution. From her own position, every possible reaction seemed wrong.

Wu Chen was the one who had pulled her into this dead end, and she couldn’t blame him for it. Not one word.

Because she had known in advance that Wu Chen meant to take Su Qingying. Not only had she known, she had bet on it. If Wu Chen lost, he was to kneel and apologize to her. Which amounted to forcing him to take Su Qingying down in order to beat her.

Who was there to blame?

She stared out the window and paced back and forth, thinking for a long, long time.

Then—

Her head came up. She stood blank for an instant, then looked straight at Wu Chen.

She had gotten one thing wrong. This man, Wu Chen… how could he possibly leave himself with a dead end?

How could a man who was practically a ghost or a god ever wall off his own road?

Everything she had been thinking about was how she should respond, and her dead end wasn’t necessarily his. But she knew Wu Chen wouldn’t harm her, wouldn’t drag her into a thing and then leave her holding the wreckage. So Wu Chen could not possibly have left her with a dead end.

Something was off. There had to be a way to break the situation.

“If you’ve got something to say, say it.” Seeing her stare at him, Wu Chen smiled.

“You… just said…” She seemed to have it. “Did you say… you took Su Qingying and ran away from home?”

“That’s right.” Wu Chen smiled and nodded.

“Which means… the Su family still doesn’t know… what your relationship with Su Qingying is?” Her eyes widened a little as she said it.

“So clever. You finally got there.” Wu Chen smiled. Whether that was praise or mockery was impossible to say.

Li Ruobing understood. She understood completely.

And at the same time a chill went through her, because she had felt Wu Chen’s terror again, an extreme, absolute terror. She knew she had become one of his chess pieces, and that she now had to cooperate with him actively—cooperate willingly.

If a man like this were her enemy, if he were her competitor, then she… would probably have been played to death a hundred times over already.

Ring, ring…

Wu Chen’s phone rang.

He walked over, picked it up, and looked. It was an unfamiliar number, but he knew it: the mobile number of the pharmacy owner downstairs.

“Hello?” Wu Chen answered.

“Finally, I got through.” It was Su Qingying, her tone urgent, her voice dropping without her meaning it to. “Honey, I’ve seen people from my family. They’ve found us. They’re outside the alley, right beside your car.”