Chapter 070: The Rich Woman and the Pretty Boy

Chapter 070: The Rich Woman and the Pretty Boy

The handsome middle-aged man had gone stupid with fear on the spot. The instant he saw the wealthy-looking middle-aged woman, his mind simply emptied.

She’d fixed her eyes on him the moment she stepped out of the car. Her expression was calm; her eyes held murder. She walked toward that table, and all dozen-odd bodyguards closed in around her.

Everyone present could see something was badly wrong.

Li Ruobing turned to look, and surprise flickered across her face—because she knew this woman. In fact, this was one of the earliest local businesspeople she’d met after arriving in Donghai.

Zhan Xiumei, forty-five, chairwoman of Donghai Guifeng Group, owner of Donghai Haichao Club, vice president of the Donghai Chamber of Commerce, secretary-general of the Donghai Entrepreneurs Association… Her personal net worth at present sat somewhere around a billion yuan.

Purely in terms of money, Zhan Xiumei didn’t rank especially high in Donghai. She was nowhere near the city’s top ten richest.

But her position in Donghai’s business world was extraordinarily special.

Her father, Zhan Jianyi, had been among the very first patriotic overseas Chinese businessmen to return and invest in China after reform and opening-up, and he had restored his Chinese nationality in the early 1980s.

He was the founder and first president of the Donghai Chamber of Commerce, and the first president of the Donghai Entrepreneurs Association. He had also single-handedly brought the Donghai Overseas Chinese Chamber of Commerce into being. He had given both money and effort to help Donghai attract investment, and had made a contribution to the city’s commercial development over the past several decades that nothing could erase.

Zhan Jianyi had served two terms as a National People’s Congress delegate and one term as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. These days, though, he was nearly eighty and had long since settled into retirement.

Even so, he still held titles like honorary head of the Donghai Chamber of Commerce and honorary head of the Donghai Entrepreneurs Association.

Zhan Jianyi had five children in all. His eldest son was nearing sixty now and was the principal heir to the family business, though for the sake of growing the family enterprises he had long ago moved company headquarters to the capital.

The second and fourth sons had both entered officialdom, and of the two the fourth had risen furthest. He currently served as mayor of a city in the northwest, and he wasn’t yet fifty. If nothing went wrong, by the time he stepped down he’d likely reach at least deputy provincial-level rank.

The third and fifth children were daughters. The third had married long ago, to the son of one of Zhan Jianyi’s old friends, and lived in the United States.

As for the fifth—

That was Zhan Xiumei.

Of Zhan Jianyi’s five children, Zhan Xiumei was the only one still at his side.

She hadn’t inherited the family business, but she’d gone into business herself in her twenties with the family’s backing, and had carved out her own path as a formidable businesswoman.

Li Ruobing had known her for four years.

In a place like Donghai, the Zhan family no longer commanded the absolute voice it once had, not since the branches divided. Even so, it remained the family of highest standing in the city. Not the one with the most money—but without question the one with the most status.

And for as long as Zhan Jianyi drew breath, that would not change.

When Li Ruobing first arrived in Donghai, she and Li Ruotai had gone together to call on Zhan Jianyi. There was a touch of paying respects to the local power in it, though they hadn’t wanted anything from the Zhan family. They’d simply gone as juniors, to offer greetings and make themselves known, so as to avoid unnecessary friction later.

Zhan Jianyi and the old master of the Li family were acquainted.

Even at the height of Zhan Jianyi’s standing, he’d never been in the same league as the Li family’s old master, but they at least knew each other. The whole reason Li Ruotai had come to Donghai to build his position in the first place was that thin thread of connection between the two old men.

Having visited Zhan Jianyi, Li Ruobing had come to know Zhan Xiumei through him.

But the two women had little business between them, and Li Ruobing had no taste for private socializing, so they hadn’t met many times. She had never met Zhan Xiumei’s current husband at all.

She did know Zhan Xiumei had been married three times. The first two had ended in failure. For the third, she’d recruited a man to marry into her family.

Her husband was pure pretty boy, far younger than she was—only in his twenties when he married her.

“Pretty boy” wasn’t Li Ruobing’s own label. That was simply what everyone called him.

Word was that over a decade ago, when the third marriage was new, Zhan Xiumei had often brought her husband along to events. After that she’d mostly stopped.

Li Ruobing looked at Zhan Xiumei, thought for a moment, then whipped around to look at Wu Chen. Then she turned the other way and glanced at the handsome middle-aged man, whose face was now bloodless with terror.

He was Zhan Xiumei’s husband?

The pretty boy who’d married into the Zhan family more than ten years ago?

Wu Chen had just texted Zhan Xiumei to come catch him cheating?

The more Li Ruobing thought it through, the more everything lined up.

This face-obsessed, swaggering, ill-mannered man looked to be in his thirties. Married over a decade ago, he’d have been in his twenties then. And even now, middle-aged and softening around the middle, he still gave off a certain handsomeness.

From which it wasn’t hard to imagine what he’d been in his youth—the kind of devastatingly good-looking… pretty boy.

She even remembered his name. She’d heard people mention it. Wang Weijun, if she recalled correctly.

Zhan Xiumei hadn’t noticed Li Ruobing.

Or rather, she hadn’t looked at anyone else at all. From the moment she stepped out of the car, her eyes had locked on the handsome middle-aged man—her husband, Wang Weijun.

She came at him with a group of bodyguards in tow, her momentum terrifying.

Sensing that something was very wrong, the heavily made-up girl pressed closer to the man, clutched his arm, and asked, “Hubby, who are these people? Do you know them?”

It hadn’t occurred to her that Zhan Xiumei might be his wife. The age gap between them was too obvious—ten years, at a glance.

Wang Weijun nearly went out of his mind with panic. He shoved the girl away in a frenzy.

He even stood and stepped clear of her.

He avoided her the way a man avoids a plague spirit.

“What the fuck? What are you doing? You shoved me, you—” This girl was no pushover either.

“Little girl, none of this concerns you. Get lost.” Zhan Xiumei said it as she walked, in a tone that left no room for argument.

She had no wish to make trouble for the girl, because this was hardly the first time she’d caught Wang Weijun cheating.

Once, she’d been furious. Once, she’d hated the women who seduced her husband.

Then she’d come to understand.

It wasn’t anyone else’s fault.

Every debt had its debtor. She knew perfectly well who deserved the beating.

“Who the fuck are you, you fat hag? Telling me to get lost? Let me tell you something, don’t try to scare me, we live under the rule of law now—” The girl turned and started right in on Zhan Xiumei.

Crack!

A ringing slap.

Zhan Xiumei’s arm swung full and sent the girl flying. She pitched headfirst, knocked over a chair, and hit the ground completely stunned.

“Get. Lost.” Zhan Xiumei said it coldly, from the corner of her eye.

The girl wasn’t only stunned. She was terrified.

She lay crumpled on the ground and shrank backward.

Several of Zhan Xiumei’s bodyguards moved in, hauled her up, dragged her more than ten meters to the roadside, and dumped her there like a bag of garbage.

Zhan Xiumei didn’t spare her another glance. She took two more steps toward Wang Weijun, still standing beside the table.

“Wife—wife, listen, let me explain—”

Thud. Wang Weijun, who’d been strutting and swaggering since the moment he arrived, dropped straight to his knees.

In the same instant, Zhan Xiumei picked up the glass pitcher of lemon water from the table. He’d barely finished speaking when it burst against the top of his skull with a crack, splitting his scalp open and drawing blood.

“How many times now? What number is this? I spend my money keeping you, and you go out and spend it keeping other women. How many times?! I’d be better off keeping a dog!” Zhan Xiumei erupted. She stepped in and kicked him in the face, then hoisted a chair up with both hands and swung it down on him.

The customers around them, inside and out, were badly frightened.

Restaurant staff came running out to intervene and were blocked by Zhan Xiumei’s bodyguards, who were also watching the perimeter with hard, careful eyes. Anyone who so much as reached for a phone to film would be dealt with immediately.

Zhan Xiumei didn’t have her men do it. She did it herself, beating Wang Weijun for a solid five minutes.

Beyond clutching his head and begging, he didn’t dare do a thing. He didn’t dare resist. His head, his hands, his face—all of it ran with blood.

At last, Zhan Xiumei had beaten him enough.

“Take him away.” She gestured to the bodyguards.

They went over, hauled him up, and started for the car.

Zhan Xiumei paid the surrounding stares no attention whatsoever. She simply took out her phone and dialed a number.

An unknown number had tipped her off to come catch the affair.

She didn’t know whose it was, but she guessed the sender had to have been nearby just now, so she called it to see whether the person was still around.

Ring, ring, ring—

A few meters away, Wu Chen’s phone began ringing on the table.