Chapter 177: I Have Designs on You

Chapter 177: I Have Designs on You

The smile on Wu Yurong’s face froze.

It lasted only an instant before she relaxed again, but Wu Chen caught it.

Wu Yurong blinked, looked at him, then let her gaze drift away. She nudged her glasses up out of habit, folded her arms, and studied him with appraising eyes—though the enchanting smile never left her face.

To her this was a secret, and also a secret that no longer mattered. So many years had passed. Everything from those days was long since finished, and nearly everyone who had known was dead. She hardly cared anymore whether the outside world learned of it.

What puzzled her was simply this—

How did Wu Chen know?

She studied him for a full ten seconds and more.

“How did you know?” Wu Yurong asked him outright, her voice soft, the question delivered with a smile.

“Does it matter?” Wu Chen asked, smiling back.

Wu Yurong went on studying him.

At this point the matter itself truly no longer mattered, and how Wu Chen had come by it mattered even less. But Wu Yurong hated anything she could not work out, and right now she genuinely could not work this out.

It had happened twenty years ago, and even then only a tiny handful of people had known. At present, apart from Wu Yurong herself, not one other member of the Wu family knew.

So how could Wu Chen know?

He was only twenty-two, wasn’t he?

Naturally Wu Chen could not tell Wu Yurong what he had done in order to investigate her.

And that some of it had come from Wu Yurong’s own mouth.

During the loop.

Back then—

At twenty-one, Wu Yurong had been forced into marriage by her family. The family business was in trouble as well, and needed the alliance to save it.

In those days Wu Yurong had been like the kindhearted heroine of a television drama. Pressed from every side, after one attempt at resistance and then another—

She “turned dark.”

That was when she understood something.

For a woman, being too beautiful could bring endless trouble. There was an old saying about great beauty bringing disaster. The fault might lie with men, but the woman was always the trigger.

But—

It was also a woman’s advantage.

She made a plan.

Or rather, she laid a trap.

Wu Yurong reached an agreement with her father, Wu Weidong: she would consent to the marriage on the condition that once she had a child, he would never interfere in her life again.

In present-day Donghai that was only a rumor.

Wu Chen knew the agreement had been real.

That was the first step of Wu Yurong’s plan.

Then she married Song Xiang.

But Song Xiang could not touch her.

Wu Yurong even slept with a knife hidden under her pillow. In their newlywed villa the two slept in separate rooms. Once Song Xiang had tried to force himself on her in the middle of the night, and Wu Yurong drove him off with the knife.

That situation did not last many days.

From the very first day of the marriage, both the Wu family and the Song family began pressing them for a child. Song Xiang came close to losing his mind in that period, and still there was nothing he could do about Wu Yurong. There was a word for men like him: a simp.

That was exactly what Song Xiang was where Wu Yurong was concerned.

And he did not really dare provoke her either.

In those days Wu Yurong had been a perfect ten, a goddess at the absolute summit. A single smile from her could turn a man’s bones to water.

And after turning dark, Wu Yurong deliberately learned to wield that advantage.

With both families pushing hard for a child, and with Song Xiang losing face because he could not manage his own wife, the two of them finally sat down and talked it through properly.

Wu Yurong softened.

By the end of the conversation she had broken down completely and wept.

According to what Wu Yurong herself told Wu Chen during the loop, she had told her husband Song Xiang that she was not ready, that the pressure was too much for her, that she did not want to give birth because she would grow heavy, get stretch marks, and no longer be beautiful.

At the end she even produced a diagnosis of depression she had prepared in advance and told him she wanted to kill herself.

A peerless beauty in tears could be devastating to a man.

In that conversation the newly hardened Wu Yurong used every ounce of her advantage to perfection.

She said she hoped he could give her more time.

Song Xiang fell for it.

His heart ached for her.

He agreed.

But that created a new problem.

What were they to do about the families demanding a child?

Wu Yurong suggested they use a surrogate in secret and have the baby first, telling neither family.

At the time she created the impression that if Song Xiang would only give her more time, she would eventually accept him.

She simply needed time.

Song Xiang, already softened, already captivated, wanted to be a good man. Surrogacy would answer the families’ demands and let him keep his face in public.

So he agreed.

Afterward the two went abroad for their honeymoon—

And arranged IVF surrogacy overseas.

They came home after two months of honeymooning, and soon word spread that Wu Yurong was pregnant.

Wu Yurong put on an elaborate performance for it, padded belly and all.

Two months later, citing the nausea and discomfort of morning sickness, she moved out of her husband’s family home and went to a scenic southern city with clean air to recover.

Song Xiang followed her the whole way, of course.

He was legally Wu Yurong’s husband, and yet under her handling he had somehow become something like a spare tire orbiting a goddess.

He played the simp willingly, full of hope for what was coming.

Less than half a year later, Song Xuan was born.

Song Xuan’s birth date was arranged to fall two weeks before Wu Yurong’s supposed due date, making her officially premature.

The reason was simple. They had to keep both families from arriving early and waiting outside the delivery room to witness the birth. If that happened the chances of exposure were enormous.

So they deliberately arranged a “premature birth.” The moment the surrogate gave birth, Wu Yurong and Song Xiang, away from home, telephoned their families and announced that the baby had already come.

A girl.

Song Xiang had genuinely cooperated with Wu Yurong at every step.

They had deceived both families and used a surrogate in secret, and it all went smoothly.

He even imagined that after everything he had done for her, and now that Wu Yurong truly was a mother—even if she had not borne the child herself, the child really was theirs—she would begin to accept him, for the baby’s sake and for the sake of all he had done.

What he never expected was—

Wu Yurong turned on him without a moment’s hesitation.

She separated from him publicly and told Song Xiang to get as far away from her as he could.

Song Xiang went mad with rage. He even threatened to expose the surrogacy.

Wu Yurong did not care.

She was not the one who would lose face.

The one who would look like a fool was Song Xiang—the man who had been played for an idiot and had never so much as touched his own wife.

Wu Chen knew every detail of the surrogacy from those years.

Wu Yurong had told him all of it herself during the loop.

During the loop, Wu Chen had slept with her.

Many times.

“It really is strange that you know. Song Xiang is dead…” Wu Yurong said with a gentle laugh. A trace of puzzlement showed on her face, and even that expression alone carried a teasing allure.

“It doesn’t matter.” Wu Yurong paused, then smiled at him again. “If Mr. Wu wants to tell other people, tell them. I don’t mind. Let’s get back to… Xuanxuan.”

“Mr. Wu.”

Wu Yurong straightened, leaned forward slightly, and turned in her chair. She set one elbow on the desk and propped the side of her face lightly on the back of her hand, settling into an easy, comfortable pose, head tilted toward him.

“I should warn you. Whether or not I gave birth to my daughter myself, she is still my own flesh and blood. My blood runs in her. So if you have any improper intentions toward her, I would advise you… not to.”

She was still smiling.

In one respect she and Wu Chen were very much alike.

Composure.

Whatever the situation, whatever the problem, whatever she was saying, she could smile.

“President Wu loves her daughter a great deal,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Of course. She’s my daughter.” Wu Yurong smiled too.

“So you buy off her friends? Plant people around her? Wang Xiaomei, Qian Xu, Wei Qi… You even bought her closest friend, and you have a whole group of bodyguards watching her in shifts every day.”

Wu Chen met her eyes and smiled.

“You monitor her like that. If she found out, do you think she would call it love?”

Wu Yurong’s eyes narrowed. She was silent a moment.

“Wow. It seems Mr. Wu knows quite a lot.” Her smile remained soft and lovely. “So—are you threatening me?”

“I only want President Wu to understand something.” Wu Chen kept smiling. “I knew you would discover that I had approached your daughter. So the point was never your daughter.”

He paused.

“It was you, President Wu.”

His smile deepened a fraction.

“I have… certain designs on you.”

The office fell silent.