Chapter 270: Neither of Them Is Clean

Chapter 270: Neither of Them Is Clean

By the timing, Hu Xilin had probably driven straight to Zhizhen Manor the moment he hung up with Lei Cheng.

Zhizhen Manor was an established top-tier luxury community. No one who lived there was ordinary, and management was extremely strict. An outside vehicle could not possibly get in unless a resident had notified security beforehand.

“I’m out. I’m not home,” Lei Cheng said into the phone, glancing at Wu Chen as he spoke.

“Don’t lie to me, Old Lei.” Hu Xilin called it at once. “You don’t send someone out to fetch me, I’ll block the gate.”

He was threatening to block the entrance to the whole community.

Lei Cheng genuinely did not know what to do with the man. Had Hu Xilin been nothing but stubborn and nosy, the two of them could never have become friends.

Hu Xilin was consistent in temperament and conduct. He was not the sort who ran his mouth over trifles and then pretended not to see when something serious came along.

He was loyal.

He liked to help.

In Lei Cheng’s ten years in Donghai, besides chairing Fumao Group he had also built businesses of his own in the city, and made a success of them. Hu Xilin’s help in that had been considerable.

“Fine, fine, all right… wait there.” Impatience in his voice, and resignation folded into it.

He hung up.

“Old Hu—Hu Xilin is at the gate. He wants in.” Lei Cheng looked at Wu Chen. “He said earlier he wanted to meet. I told him I had no time, so now he’s come straight here.”

“He’s an impatient man.” Wu Chen wore his habitual smile, nothing in his expression shifting.

Neither startled nor surprised.

Hu Xilin was a man of standing in Donghai. He had not reached the level of Lu Guangnian or Mu Sihai, but he was not a tier beneath them either.

Wu Chen knew Hu Xilin, and knew his temperament.

More than that, he knew Hu Xilin would come to Lei Cheng at precisely this hour, because on the previous “July 20” Hu Xilin had come at precisely this hour.

On that July 20 Wu Chen had not met Lei Cheng in person; the meeting they had originally arranged was canceled. But they had spoken by phone many times, so Wu Chen knew everything that happened.

He gave no particular reaction to Hu Xilin’s arrival.

Nor did he say whether it was convenient for him to be seen.

Saying nothing meant it was fine.

Lei Cheng stood, crossed the study to the desk on the other side, picked up the walkie-talkie lying on it, pressed the button, and brought it to his mouth.

“Leizi, Boss Hu is outside the main gate. Go bring him in.”

Having given the order to the bodyguard outside, Lei Cheng stepped out of the study for a moment and called down from the top of the stairs to Tao Manying.

“Darling, Old Hu’s coming over. When he gets here send him straight up to the study…”

Wu Chen stayed on the study sofa without moving. He could hear every word.

Lei Cheng came back quickly and sat down again.

He glanced at the phone on the table—Wu Chen’s—then looked up, gesturing toward it.

“Brother, that video… what are you planning to—”

The video of Qian Ruiling and Zhu Haobo.

“Show it to Hu Xilin,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Just show him outright?” Lei Cheng asked at once.

Something about it felt cruel.

Hu Xilin and Qian Ruiling had been married twenty years. They had a son and a daughter, and their marriage had always looked harmonious.

Hu Xilin was coming here to talk Lei Cheng around.

To drop it on him out of nowhere, to let him learn he had been cuckolded—

it was too abrupt. There was no telling how hard it would land.

And doing it this way could easily give offense. It was not only that an outsider had uncovered and exposed the family’s ugliness before he had. The whole thing would cost Hu Xilin enormous face.

A man’s face, gone entirely.

But the larger question was—

why had anyone been secretly filming Qian Ruiling in the first place?

Hu Xilin himself had never suspected his wife enough to investigate her. Why had an outsider started first?

It was strange.

Abrupt.

It would make anyone suspect a motive at once.

“Yes. Show him outright.” Wu Chen nodded.

“Wouldn’t that be… a bit much?” Lei Cheng asked, discomfort in his tone.

He was weighing it as a friend. Now that he knew Hu Xilin was being cuckolded, of course he had to warn him, had to let him know.

But how to warn him—and how to make the truth easier for him to swallow—was another matter entirely.

Lei Cheng did not think dropping it on him cold was the right choice.

He understood perfectly well that once Hu Xilin saw the video he would have no time left to pester anyone. He would go home and start fighting over a divorce.

Even so, as a friend, simply handing over the truth without regard for the man’s feelings would be a deeply disloyal thing to do.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it.” Wu Chen glanced at him, smiling. Then, after a pause, “You think Hu Xilin himself is clean?”

Lei Cheng needed a moment before he understood.

“He has other women?” he asked.

“Mm-hm.” Wu Chen nodded.

Lei Cheng still looked stunned.

Ten years of friendship, ten years of frequent contact. Beyond business they met privately every month.

And he had never known Hu Xilin had other women.

He had never even heard a whisper of it.

Some wealthy bosses loved to play. Others did not.

Hu Xilin had always seemed to be the latter. His marriage to Qian Ruiling had always been good. The two could fairly have been called a model couple in Donghai’s business circles.

“He’s keeping a mistress? Brother, you’re certain?” Even after Wu Chen nodded, Lei Cheng still found it hard to accept.

Not that he doubted Wu Chen.

It simply did not make sense.

As for Qian Ruiling’s affair, Lei Cheng had seen the video and thought no further. He did not question the footage, and he did not wonder why she might cheat.

He knew Qian Ruiling, but only to a point. She was his “sister-in-law,” after all; Lei Cheng would never get too close to her. So with hard evidence in front of him, he had no cause to speculate or doubt.

Hu Xilin was different.

Lei Cheng knew him far too well.

Ten years of friendship, and he had neither known nor heard that Hu Xilin had other women. Not the faintest rumor, not the faintest sign.

If he really did, how had he kept it so completely sealed?

And why go to such lengths to keep it sealed?

Lei Cheng could not work it out.

Between men there was usually no need to hide that sort of thing. They covered for one another and helped each other keep it quiet.

“I can be certain.” Wu Chen nodded again, then smiled. “Hu Xilin has no intention of divorcing Qian Ruiling. He still has feelings for her, and the household has always been harmonious. But he does have other women. More than one.”

Lei Cheng’s expression stayed strange.

Hearing that made showing Hu Xilin the video outright seem far less objectionable. He would certainly be furious, but the blow would not necessarily break him.

He was cheating himself, after all.

Still, Lei Cheng could not understand it.

How had Hu Xilin kept it so airtight?

And it was not only Hu Xilin.

Qian Ruiling had done the same.

Husband and wife both cheating, and both concealing it with extraordinary care. Not a breath of it had escaped.

It was uncanny.

One look at Lei Cheng’s face told Wu Chen what was going through his head.

He did not make him guess.

“Hu Xilin and Qian Ruiling signed a prenuptial agreement,” Wu Chen said plainly. “If either party cheats after the marriage, that party leaves the marriage with nothing.”

Lei Cheng’s eyes went wide.

Stunned again.

He had never heard about the prenuptial agreement.

But with what Wu Chen had just said, the reason both of them guarded their affairs so ferociously became obvious.

Each was terrified of the other finding out.

By what Lei Cheng knew, the Xirui Electronics shares Hu Xilin currently held, worth more than three billion yuan, were in fact marital property. Husband and wife had built the business together over twenty years; the shares merely stood in Hu Xilin’s name.

Looked at from another angle—

the video Wu Chen had recorded was evidence of Qian Ruiling’s affair.

It could very well leave her walking away from a divorce with nothing.

Which put the value of this video at—

one and a half billion yuan!