Chapter 083: Fake! It’s Fake Again!

Chapter 083: Fake! It’s Fake Again!

Su Qingying truly could not follow Wu Chen’s thinking. From the moment Wu Chen had held her, that had become leverage against him. Each of them held something over the other; each would keep the other’s secret.

Which meant this whole matter had never been a threat to her from the start.

She also understood that a woman as proud as Li Ruobing, genuinely wronged by her own boyfriend, would take her revenge on him and then kick him out of her life.

She would be clean about it. She might not even bother going after the woman who’d taken her man.

Because she was a very forceful, controlling woman. Her man was either held tight under her hand or, the moment he disgusted her and wronged her, thrown out like garbage.

A woman like that had nothing but contempt for messy entanglements.

So… what was Wu Chen thinking? Had he lost his mind?

Su Qingying stared at him, wide-eyed, waiting for an answer.

“Actually…” As he spoke, Wu Chen reached over, pinched her cheek, tugged it gently, then let go. “Li Ruobing and I aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend at all. That’s a secret between the two of us.”

Su Qingying’s eyes widened further. Then she lifted a finger and waved it, understanding breaking across her face. “Ah… I know. You two are fake as well!”

“Correct.” Wu Chen smiled and nodded.

He explained nothing further. There was no need. What he’d said was the truth, and Su Qingying would believe it the instant she heard it, without a shred of doubt or any lingering confusion.

Because Li Ruobing had a record. Three times over.

Everyone in Donghai’s business circles knew that Li Ruobing had once been pushed toward marriage by her family, and had come to Donghai to hide and start a company of her own. Three separate times she had run the fake-boyfriend trick. That way she wasn’t single, and a fake boyfriend made a serviceable shield.

But her fake-boyfriend performances had been so thin they were painful to watch.

At banquets those fake boyfriends trailed behind her like flunkeys. If Li Ruobing didn’t introduce them, everyone assumed they were her assistants. That was how bowed and careful and deferential they were.

If that was them in public, they were certainly worse in private. They likely treated Li Ruobing like an empress, an ancestral tablet to be worshipped.

That was a boyfriend?

Would Li Ruobing want a man like that?

All of them were fake.

So this time, when Su Qingying learned that the man who had texted her was Li Ruobing’s boyfriend—and set that against the rumors running through Donghai these past few days about Li Ruobing’s boyfriend—she had naturally concluded what everyone else had. That it was real.

Far too real.

She had never imagined it was fake this time as well.

“Only Li Ruobing and I know about it. To play the part properly, even her younger brother doesn’t know. You have to keep the secret. Understood?” As he said it, Wu Chen reached out and struck her.

Smack! Very crisp.

It landed on Su Qingying just below the small of her back.

“Of course I won’t say anything. I’d only be making trouble for myself.” She shifted a little closer to him as she said it. Li Ruobing’s relationship with Wu Chen was bound to her own relationship with Wu Chen, and that was bound to her own secret. She wouldn’t dare speak even if she had a hundred times the nerve.

Besides, she was not the kind of person who leaked secrets.

“Oh… so in that case, you lied to me!” It came to her all at once. She had settled onto her knees beside him, and now she narrowed her eyes at him. “The leverage you handed me was fake! You aren’t afraid of Li Ruobing at all!”

“Didn’t you already know that I knew your secret, and came to upend your life on purpose? Do you regret it?” Wu Chen smiled, and didn’t deny a word.

Su Qingying’s eyes narrowed further. Then, suddenly, she smiled.

She twisted around and lay across his lap, arms circling his waist, chin lifted, and answered obediently, in two words. “I…