Chapter 032: The Slap That Stunned Everyone

Chapter 032: The Slap That Stunned Everyone

They’d been married for years now—long enough that Liu Caixiu knew Lu Guangnian well. Whenever his face went this blank, this utterly devoid of expression, it meant he was pressing down fury that had reached its absolute limit.

Lu Guangnian’s temper had run hot and quick in his younger years. He’d deliberately trained himself out of it as he’d risen in the world—this blankness was the method he’d built for controlling himself.

“What… what’s wrong, husband?” Liu Caixiu asked, unease creeping into her voice.

She had no idea what that pretty boy had whispered to Lu Guangnian.

No one else in the room knew either, and the curiosity was almost unbearable—a fight had seemed seconds away, and then that one murmured conversation had not only stopped Lu Guangnian from turning on Wu Chen, but had also left Lu Guangnian’s mood twisted into something strange.

The whole atmosphere had turned eerie.

“Where did you go yesterday afternoon?” Lu Guangnian asked, his face blank.

“I… I was at the office.” Liu Caixiu’s expression shifted, visibly uneasy, and Lu Guangnian’s eyelid twitched at the sight of it. “I was in the office the whole time, with my cousin—we spent the whole afternoon working on a marketing proposal. Why are you suddenly asking about this, husband?”

Under ordinary circumstances, no one faced with such a simple question would offer this much unprompted detail.

It already carried the flavor of an excuse rehearsed in advance.

But Lu Guangnian hadn’t actually been interrogating her. He’d only asked, offhand.

“You and your cousin—together at the office the whole time?” Lu Guangnian asked again.

“Yes, we were in the office together the whole time, right up until the end of the workday. Ask my cousin if you don’t believe me,” Liu Caixiu said.

“I already did. Asked him this morning, just in passing.” Lu Guangnian’s words made Liu Caixiu’s face drain of color instantly. “He told me the two of you went out yesterday afternoon to meet with a client. Weren’t at the office at all.”

He was bluffing her.

In truth, Lu Guangnian had asked nothing of the kind.

Wu Chen had suggested it to him—bluff her a little, see if she would lie. A man of Lu Guangnian’s standing was no fool; he understood well enough how to extract the truth through indirection.

Deep down, Lu Guangnian hadn’t wanted to believe a word Wu Chen had told him. He still had no idea where this Wu Chen had come from, or when exactly Li Ruobing had picked up a boyfriend.

But this wasn’t the moment to dwell on any of that.

What Wu Chen had told him mattered too much to ignore.

He’d harbored suspicions for a long time already, sensing something was wrong between these supposed “cousins,” without ever pinning down exactly where the wrongness lay. He’d guessed, at most, that Liu Caixiu might be quietly funneling money to Liu Ligang, helping him skim a bit extra on the side.

That much, in Lu Guangnian’s eyes, hadn’t seemed worth confronting. He’d simply looked the other way.

But something had stayed lodged in him regardless—too many small things he’d never been able to reconcile, and that unresolved thorn was exactly what had left him willing, now, to test what Wu Chen had told him.

“Oh… is that so? That’s what my cousin said? He must be misremembering.”

Liu Caixiu was genuinely panicking now. She and Liu Ligang had slipped away together too many times to count—there was no way they’d coordinated a cover story in advance for every single occasion. And in all these years, they’d never once been caught.

Precisely because Lu Guangnian had never suspected the true nature of this “cousin” relationship, the two of them had grown careless, almost brazen about it.

“Misremembering? I’ll call him right now and ask,” Lu Guangnian said.

“I—I mean… oh, right, now I remember. We did go out yesterday afternoon to meet a client, but we were back by two or three, and after that we were in the office the whole rest of the time working…