Chapter 012: Your Brother Is About to Be in Serious Trouble
by cnwebnovelsChapter 012: Your Brother Is About to Be in Serious Trouble
Li Ruobing picked the gun back up and walked out from behind her desk, closing the distance to Wu Chen one deliberate step at a time.
Knowing her the way he did, Wu Chen put the odds of her actually pulling the trigger at roughly fifty-fifty. Meaning she might genuinely put a bullet through his skull right now—or she might not.
He kept smiling regardless.
He didn’t even bother preparing to reset the instant she fired.
No need. She wouldn’t hit him. The closer she got, the less likely it became. Inside three meters, he could disarm her before she finished the thought. No one—no one—got within three meters of Wu Chen and landed a surprise attack.
A thousand years of training hadn’t been wasted on nothing.
“I have to admit,” she said, and she hadn’t stopped smiling since it started, “you’re something else. Bold. Reckless in a way that takes real nerve. And so young. It would be a genuine shame to watch you leave this world so soon.”
Hard to say whether that was a threat or something else entirely.
She’d already crossed inside three meters.
Two.
One.
Half a meter.
She lifted the gun in one motion and pressed the barrel flush against his forehead.
He held her gaze, smiling, perfectly calm.
Reading people was second nature to him—he could tell in an instant whether a raised gun meant real intent. The moment she lifted it, he already knew: she wasn’t going to kill him.
Someone with her temperament, if she truly meant to end a man’s life, wouldn’t bother with theater. She’d fire immediately, and she’d empty the whole magazine without slowing down. The fact that she’d stopped here, gun raised, finger steady but still—that told him everything. She wasn’t going to pull that trigger. Not now, not in the next minute.
“Not scared?” she asked, tilting her head, something playful creeping into her voice.
“If you actually wanted me dead, you’d have called your people in the second you felt threatened. You didn’t. This is just a game. Why would I be scared?” he said, unbothered.
Her eyes narrowed—then she smiled again, bright and sudden, like sunlight breaking across an April morning.
“I really, really like you.” She set the gun down on the coffee table and pulled a hair tie from her pocket.
She caught it between her teeth first, both hands reaching back to gather her hair, then tied it into a single ponytail.
She normally wore it down. Always straight, always falling without a hair out of place.
That, too, was a kind of performance—same as the glasses she didn’t need. She’d spent years hardening a certain image for the world: cold, commanding, untouchable.
Tying her hair back meant something different. It was the way she wore it at home—or, more precisely, when she was relaxed.
Hair secured, she turned and settled herself directly into his lap, left arm draping around his neck, head tilting so her lips brushed near his ear—the picture of an intimate couple.
Her right hand came up with her phone, camera already open.
Click.
The flash caught them both.
She checked the photo—and something in her expression flickered. Only now, looking at the image, did she notice what he’d done in that exact instant: two fingers raised, flashing a peace sign.
In the photo, he looked as unbothered as ever. Smiling straight at the camera.
He understood exactly what a photo like this was for.
Ding Ruilong, again. She’d find the right moment to send it—partly to enrage him, partly to prove Wu Chen hadn’t been one of his men all along.
“Good. Starting today, you’re my boyfriend.” She stood as she said it. “I’ll have someone process your paperwork shortly. You’ll be my assistant—nothing demanding, just accompany me to the occasional business dinner. Full salary, of course.”
She pulled the tie loose, let her hair fall, and gave it a shake.
Then she retrieved the gun and returned to her chair behind the desk.
“Now. Tell me about my brother.” Her voice had gone cold and quiet again.
Just like that, the two of them were strangers once more.
That was simply who she was. Her defenses ran deep, and they never stayed down for long.
This was the first time Wu Chen had ever actually been Li Ruobing’s boyfriend. He’d slept with her before, countless times, across countless July sevenths—but none of that had carried anything real behind it.
Before this, he’d never invested genuine feeling in a woman. Every pursuit had one destination, and he never pretended otherwise, even to himself.
Dating her, though—genuinely dating her—was harder by far than getting her into bed.
Because to Li Ruobing, when she took a man to bed, it wasn’t him using her. It was her using him.
And for a long time now, she’d wanted to rid herself of her so-called purity. She’d never been certain she would win the bet, so she’d already decided that if she truly had to marry Ding Ruilong, she’d have all the fun she wanted beforehand—just to disgust him to death.
She’d simply been waiting for the right chance to finally let go.
Wu Chen had handed her that chance. And she’d chosen him.
“Donghai Crown, Zhongyuan Grand Fortune, Guangdong Red Sea—the three top entertainment clubs in the country. Donghai Crown is your brother’s operation,” he said.
“Mm. And?” she asked.
“Donghai Crown has crossed the line. Wealthy elites, celebrities, officials—plenty of them tangled up in it. The higher-ups began investigating three months ago. Based on what I know now, they’ll close the net within a month at most.”
Her expression cycled through several emotions at once, landing somewhere close to stunned.
This was serious. Genuinely serious.
“And it’s not only your brother,” Wu Chen went on. “This is aimed straight at the Li family name. Once that net closes, prison for him is the least of it. Your family might need to cut him loose entirely—make a clean, public break, just to survive the fallout.”
She stood, smoothed her hair back, paced twice across the room.
Agitation radiated off her.
None of this touched her directly—she was, by any measure, the cleanest member of the Li family. But she and her brother had always been close. Genuinely close.
“Is this information solid?” she stopped and demanded.
“You’re questioning my intelligence now?” He smiled back at her.
She held his gaze, steadying herself, then grabbed her phone and dialed.
Elsewhere, at that same moment, in the top-floor private room of Donghai Crown.
“Not one of yours? Huh. Now that’s strange. Man’s got some nerve, using your name, knowing my number like that. Courting death, he is. Tired of breathing, clearly.”
A middle-aged man, long-faced, goateed, leaning on a cane, spoke with careful deference to the sharp-looking young man across from him in a crisp white shirt.
Behind the older man stood a bearded figure, one hand wrapped thick in bandages.
The man on the cane was Crooked Zhao—known across Donghai’s underworld as Master Guai. Across from him sat the man whispered about in every corner of the city as Young Master Li.
Behind Crooked Zhao, silent, stood Bearded Liu, missing a finger since the night before.
Crooked Zhao hadn’t slept a wink. He’d come rushing over at dawn to apologize, dead certain he’d offended one of Young Master Li’s men.
Except Young Master Li had no idea what he was talking about—hadn’t sent anyone, didn’t have a single trusted man in his circle who was barely past twenty.
“Someone dares use my name?” Young Master Li glanced at Crooked Zhao. “What exactly did he say yesterday?”
“He—” Crooked Zhao started.
Ring, ring, ring…
A phone interrupted him. Young Master Li raised a hand for quiet, checked the screen, and his cold, guarded expression cracked instantly into a grin.
“Sis.”
“Where are you?”
“At the club.”
“Come over to my—no, forget it, I’ll come to you. Wait there.”
“Something urgent, Sis?”
“Don’t waste my time.” Click.
He listened to the dead line for a second, laughing helplessly. Hung up on again.
“My sister’s on her way,” he said, turning back to Crooked Zhao.
“Then we should let you—” Crooked Zhao started to rise.
“Sit. Stay till she gets here.” He waved him back down. “Now finish telling me about this kid. Using my name, that little bastard. I’ll cut him up myself.”