Chapter 035: Do I Have Some Shameful Secret?

Chapter 035: Do I Have Some Shameful Secret?

“Ha, Boss Li, we’ll have to find a way to work together sometime,” Mu Sihai said, laughing.

“When the chance comes along,” Li Ruobing said, holding a polite, even smile. It wasn’t idle talk on her part, either.

A cosmetics company and a pharmaceutical company genuinely had grounds to cooperate—in cosmeceuticals, specifically.

Huancai Fashion was only four years old. It had grown fast, but its research capacity was nowhere near Mu Biopharmaceutical’s, which ran laboratories and research bases both at home and abroad.

If Huancai ever wanted to move into cosmeceuticals without the in-house science to back it, teaming up with a company like Mu’s would make plenty of sense.

Wu Chen caught the tail end of the conversation as he approached.

He worked out at once that Wan Jianmin had likely made the introduction himself.

Wan Jianmin and Li Ruobing had been business partners for years and knew each other well. But as far as Wu Chen knew, she and Mu Sihai barely had any connection at all—not strangers exactly, but little more than aware of each other’s existence.

“What’s the topic?” Wu Chen asked with a smile, arriving at the table.

“And this would be—?” Mu Sihai looked him over.

“Boss Mu, Boss Wan, this is my boyfriend, Wu Chen,” Li Ruobing said.

“Mr. Wu.”

“Mr. Wu, a pleasure.”

Both men shook his hand.

“Quite the impressive young man, ha ha!”

“Boss Li has an eye for these things. Mr. Wu here looks every bit the part—a dragon among men…”

The warmth in their voices went well beyond what Wu Chen expected. Something was off. It was as if they already knew something about him—neither man seemed remotely surprised that he was Li Ruobing’s boyfriend.

“Well, we won’t keep you two from your evening.”

“Boss Li, we’ll be off. Enjoy yourselves.”

They’d only stopped to say hello, and after a few words they left—not toward the private rooms upstairs, but straight for the entrance, clearly on their way out. Watching them go, Wu Chen understood at once why their manner had struck him as strange.

They hadn’t just arrived at Lao Pinxuan.

They’d already finished dinner upstairs and were on their way out when they’d spotted Li Ruobing and stopped to say hello.

Which meant that while they’d still been upstairs, they’d almost certainly heard exactly what had happened down here.

Lu Guangnian might not be the richest man in Donghai, but no one in the city’s business circle had a bigger name, or more friends.

And what had just gone on downstairs…

Liu Caixiu picking a fight with Li Ruobing. Her boyfriend firing right back. Lu Guangnian storming over ready to explode—only to be talked down by a few quiet words from Wu Chen, ending with him slapping his own wife and apologizing to every table on the floor…

In a restaurant this exclusive, even the smallest disturbance drew every eye in the room.

Let alone one involving a man like Lu Guangnian.

That was why neither Mu Sihai nor Wan Jianmin had blinked at Wu Chen’s identity—they’d already known he existed before they ever came downstairs.

No doubt they’d already spun up their own theories about who he really was. They’d simply keep those theories to themselves.

Wu Chen sat back down across from Li Ruobing.

Their first “date” had turned out to be full of twists.

“Do you know them?” Li Ruobing asked.

“Mu Sihai. Wan Jianmin.” Wu Chen named them without hesitation—she’d only said Boss Mu and Boss Wan earlier, never their full names.

“You really are an information broker, aren’t you,” Li Ruobing said, half teasing, half something closer to grudging respect, her voice low.

“Of course. It’s my profession.” Wu Chen smiled and lifted his glass.

She raised hers as well.

They clinked glasses.

Li Ruobing tipped her head back for a sip, set the glass down, picked up her chopsticks, then set those down too without touching the food. She propped both elbows on the table and studied him. “Nothing you’d like to tell me?”

“About what?” Wu Chen smiled—deliberately, letting her see plainly that he was playing dumb.

“What did you say to Lu Guangnian?” she asked outright.

She wasn’t hiding her curiosity. She was burning with it.

Once again, Wu Chen had shown her exactly what it meant to seem almost impossible.

“You really want to know?” He smiled, pulled out his phone, and typed with one hand at a startling speed.

Ding.

Her phone buzzed.

She picked it up, frowning slightly.

A text message, when they were sitting face to face?

The moment she read it, her expression changed completely.

—His son isn’t his. We’ll talk when we’re back home.

Wu Chen had told her he’d say something—Lu Guangnian had all but given his blessing to it, back outside.

Li Ruobing looked up at him, then quickly tapped her screen a few times and deleted the message.

Lu Guangnian’s son, not his own child. If word of that ever got out, it would be the scandal of the decade.

It might even hit Juli Group’s stock price directly.

She understood, instantly, that this could never leak.

Not from her, at least. She owed her friend that much.

She understood, too, why he’d sent it as a text rather than said it aloud—too many ears in a place like this. A single overheard fragment could do real damage.

“No wonder he hit her that hard,” she murmured, half to herself, her thoughts drifting elsewhere.

It took her a moment to surface again and bring her eyes back to him.

Something in her expression had shifted once more.

“Is there anything you don’t know?” she asked.

“Plenty,” Wu Chen said easily. “But I know quite a lot, yes. Everyone has secrets. It’s my business to know them—including the ones people would rather keep buried. I don’t waste time on people who aren’t worth knowing about. But if someone’s worth it, I’ll find out everything. That’s just the job.”

“Then you know my secrets too?” Her eyes had gone dark and unreadable.

“Mm. Of course.” He nodded, smiling.

“All of them?” she pressed.

“All of them,” he said, without a shred of doubt.

“Then tell me,” she said. “Do I have any secrets I’d be ashamed of?”

She wanted to see, once and for all, just how far this man’s reach truly went. Could he really know everything? Every secret a person carried? It seemed impossible.

“You want me to actually answer that?” Wu Chen asked.

She only nodded.

“You do. You have one,” he said.

“What is it?” she asked again. She genuinely couldn’t think of a single thing that would qualify.

“That would go back ten years. Do you remember the summer you turned seventeen? The girl with her hair in a bun.”

Li Ruobing froze. Her expression shifted.

If he hadn’t said it, she never would have thought of it on her own.