Chapter 010: I Know Everything About You

Chapter 010: I Know Everything About You

Li Ruobing’s eyes had gone wide, uncertainty flashing through them.

She replayed it in her head. When he’d first walked in, he’d wandered the room, circled the desk exactly once. That single pass was the only time he’d come anywhere near it.

But how? The gun had been in a drawer. How had he even known it was there? And even granting that he had—how had he removed the magazine in the instant he walked past, while leaving the gun itself in the drawer?

“Boss Li. Calm down. This isn’t like you at all.” Wu Chen tossed the magazine onto the coffee table with a lazy flick. “No ill intent here. I came for the money. This is business. I’d like you to understand that.”

Slowly, she lowered herself back into her chair. It hit her all at once—she’d lost her composure. In front of a total stranger.

He was right. That wasn’t like her.

“Can we talk now?” he asked.

“…The traitor.” She’d steadied herself completely. “You said someone close to me is a traitor.”

“Ten million, and I’ll give you a name.” He repeated the price.

The truth was, bringing up money first, framing this as a transaction—it was calculated, meant to lower her guard. Every action needed a motive people could believe in.

Wu Chen showing up like this, out of nowhere, needed some kind of explanation. Greed was the easiest one to sell.

Building fast intimacy with someone required more than just knowing them inside and out. It required the right moment—the one precise opening where everything lined up.

First impressions counted for everything.

Across that endlessly repeating July 7th, he’d slept with one newly met beauty after another, and he’d succeeded because he could study each woman first and find the exact opening that worked.

They’d never had reason to be wary of him. Never seen him coming.

This time, with Li Ruobing, there’d been no room to plan ahead—and he had no interest in burning through resets of July 8th just to set the stage properly.

So this called for a different approach entirely.

It meant she was far more guarded around him than any of his usual targets. But given how completely he understood her, sleeping with her again would still be easy enough.

The last time he’d had her had been, by his count, over a hundred years ago. Strange to think about. He found, turning the thought over, that he actually missed it.

“Ten million.” She let out a confident, edged smile. “What kind of traitor do you imagine is worth ten million yuan to me? And even granting you’re telling the truth—even granting there is a traitor near me—I can find them myself. I don’t need you for that.”

“You’ve been hunting for that traitor for a while now, haven’t you? And you still haven’t found them.”

Her expression shifted again. “You—”

She had. She’d known for a long time someone close to her was compromised. She’d been digging for the answer without success.

“Two weeks until the product launch. Before then, this person is going to get their hands on your R&D files. Your rival gets there first, wrecks your launch before it happens. You don’t want to lose that bet, do you?” He said it like a man who already knew he’d won.

A woman with Li Ruobing’s temperament could only be won over by someone who matched her force—never blind arrogance, but pressure backed by reason, evidence, real capability. Pressure that held its ground.

She stared at him, face unreadable.

“Ten million, and you get the traitor’s name,” he pressed. “Add another ten, and I’ll tell you something about your brother. Something involving his safety. He’s about to walk into serious trouble. Did you know that?”

“Trying to frighten me?” She arched a brow, adjusted her glasses.

“No, no. I know exactly who you are. Threats don’t work on you, soft or hard—you cursed out the head of your own family in front of everyone. I couldn’t threaten you if I tried.” He kept smiling.

“You seem to know me rather well.” Her eyes narrowed.

“Of course. I’m an information broker. Anyone I decide to approach, I know inside and out.”

“Then go on. What else do you know?”

“You sure you want to hear it?”

“Speak.”

“Li Ruobing. Twenty-seven. Chairwoman and president of Huancai Fashion Group. Harvard Business School. Returned to China at twenty-three, founded Huancai—high-end cosmetics, mainly. Net worth somewhere around two billion yuan.” He said it like he was finishing up.

“That’s it?” A note of mockery crept into her voice. That was public information. Anyone could pull that off a search engine.

“You’re the eldest daughter of the Li family’s main branch. Being a girl meant you were never the favorite. Your grandfather values sons over daughters, and you knew it from the time you were small—knew exactly where you stood, and refused to accept it. You decided you’d make something of yourself. Prove to every last one of them that a woman could outdo any man in that family.”

What came next made her expression shift, again and again, no way to keep it still.

“You were tough as any boy growing up. Kids in street fights were scared of you—even your own brother, favored his whole life, was scared of you. You wouldn’t bow to what was handed to you, so you buried yourself in your studies instead, and it paid off.”

“But you couldn’t outrun the family in the end. At twenty-three, they lied to get you home—said your mother was gravely ill.”

“It was a marriage trap. Your grandfather had already decided you’d marry the Ding family’s young master from Guangdong—Ding Ruilong.”

“Your mother had always taken your side before. She came from the Sun family in the Northwest and married into your father’s family the same way—an alliance between houses. Her family carried real weight, which gave her a voice under your own roof.”

“But that time, even she turned against you. She wanted you to marry Ding Ruilong. You refused. When they tried to force it, you flipped the table in front of the whole family, called your grandfather an old bastard who wouldn’t die fast enough, and when your uncle slapped you for it, you slapped him right back.”

“Honestly,” Wu Chen said, smiling now, “I have real respect for that.” He continued. “You meant to just walk out for good. Your mother threatened to end her own life to stop you. So it settled into a bet instead—you and Ding Ruilong.”

“Each of you builds a new company, something outside your families’ existing businesses. No help from home. Five years. Bigger company wins. That’s how Huancai Fashion was born.”

“You once swore you’d never marry—not ever, that marriage ruined women. Later you softened that, just slightly: if you ever did marry, it would only be to a man stronger than you.”

“So if you lose, you marry Ding Ruilong. If you win, you’re free—free of every last person trying to run your life for you.”

“You’ve worked yourself to the bone these past years. Maybe there really is talent in you, because you’ve carved out real territory in cosmetics and fashion.”

“On top of that—over these four years, you’ve had three boyfriends. All three eventually gone. One took his own life. The other two saw their families ruined.”

“None of them were real, of course. You brought them in yourself, as cover. But Ding Ruilong is a petty man. He knew perfectly well they were fake, and he went after them anyway. Which is exactly why no man alive will get close to you now.”

Wu Chen paused there, watching her face cycle through an expression too complicated to name.

“You’re not actually nearsighted, by the way.” He studied her again. “The glasses are just distance—a prop. Same as the coldness, the command, the refusal to smile. All of it’s real to a point, but a good deal of it is performance too.”

Her fists clenched. Something dangerous flickered behind her eyes.

“I know,” he went on, “that after everything I just said, there’s really only two ways this ends. I understand you too well now—that alone makes me a threat. So either you bring me under control, or you make me vanish. Which is it?” He said it like he’d already read the answer off her face.

“You know that, and you’re still talking?” she shot back.

“Fortune favors the bold, doesn’t it?” He smiled wider. “One more thing—I know you usually keep three guns in this office. Want to guess whether the other two are on me right now?”

Her knuckles had already gone white around her clenched fists.

She hated this feeling. Being read like an open book. Being handled.

Knock, knock.

The door interrupted them. Tension bled out of the room in an instant.

“Come in,” she said, flat and cold.

A tall, lean, middle-aged man entered, folder in hand, moving with the brisk energy of someone with somewhere else to be. He gave Wu Chen a passing glance, nothing more, and crossed straight to the desk.

“Boss, this needs your signature—”

This was Feng Yan, her senior assistant. Only someone she trusted completely could interrupt a private conversation like this one.

She skimmed the document quickly, flipped a few pages, and picked up her pen to sign.

That was when Wu Chen moved.

He was up off the sofa, magazine snatched from the coffee table, gun lifted from the desk—all in one motion.

Magazine seated. Round chambered. Safety off.

All of it, in the time it took to blink.

He grabbed Feng Yan by the collar, drove his face down onto the desk, and pressed the muzzle to the back of his skull.

“How much did that Ding bastard pay you to sell out your own boss? Huh?” He cracked the gun against the back of Feng Yan’s head hard enough to draw blood on the spot.

Li Ruobing flinched back a step, shouting, “Get in here!”

The door burst open. Bodyguards flooded in, guns already drawn, leveled at Wu Chen’s back.