Chapter 090: These Two High-IQ Women

Chapter 090: These Two High-IQ Women

Li Ruobing announced herself immediately. In truth, several of the Su-family bodyguards already knew her by sight, but once she’d said it, every last one of them knew exactly who she was.

They exchanged glances. As bodyguards of the Su family, they couldn’t bring trouble down on the Su family. The Su family wasn’t afraid of Li Ruobing—but whether Li Ruobing could be offended was not a decision for men in their position.

“Boss Li, we haven’t come to make trouble for you.” A tall, heavily built, bald middle-aged bodyguard stepped forward, his words neither servile nor overbearing.

Wu Chen knew him.

His name was Yang Kuo. He was one of Madam Su’s trusted bodyguards, and he also held the post of deputy supervisor of Jinfu Group’s Security Department. The title was nominal. He generally took no part in Jinfu Group security affairs; his real charge was the Su family.

He could be called one of Madam Su’s confidants. Put plainly, he was Madam Su’s lackey.

Clearly, this group of a dozen or so Su-family bodyguards had come here with Yang Kuo as their leader.

“Then what is it you mean? Blocking me?” Li Ruobing looked furious. With a temper like hers, she truly indulged no one.

“Boss Li, you’ve misunderstood. We haven’t come for you. We’ve come for him…” Yang Kuo raised a hand and pointed at Wu Chen, who stood off to the side with one hand in his pocket. “He abducted our family’s Eldest Miss. I don’t know whether Boss Li is aware of the matter—”

“Abducted? You’re telling me that my man, Li Ruobing’s man, would abduct another woman?” Her anger climbed higher.

“Ah… Boss Li, that isn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean? What does abducted mean?”

“It means…” Yang Kuo was stuck. He hadn’t been one of the two bodyguards attending Su Qingying at the time, so he hadn’t seen the situation himself. All he’d heard afterward was that the Eldest Miss had run off with a man.

How could the Eldest Miss possibly run off with some man just like that?

So he and every other Su-family bodyguard had assumed the man had abducted her somehow, though how he’d tricked her, none of them knew.

Which was why he had used the word abducted.

“Say something!” Li Ruobing pressed him, eyes wide, brows drawn, and took a step closer as she said it. Her presence was frankly menacing.

“Ah… well… Boss Li, the specifics remain to be investigated, but I can confirm it was your boyfriend who took our Eldest Miss away. So… Boss Li, you’re free to go as you please. He is not.” Yang Kuo turned an unfriendly look toward Wu Chen.

Smack!

Extremely loud.

Li Ruobing stepped up and slapped him across the face, then shouted, “You have the fucking nerve to detain my man?!”

The blow knocked Yang Kuo back a step. He was stunned, then furious, and very nearly struck back at her—but he held himself in check.

“All of you, get the hell out of here—” Li Ruobing raised a hand toward them again.

“Ruobing, don’t be like this. Calm down. It’s a misunderstanding. There’s no need to go that far…” A hand suddenly caught her arm, and someone stepped up to stand beside her. Wu Chen, of course.

“They talk about you like that and you’re just going to take it?” She turned her head to look at him.

“It’s only a misunderstanding. Explain it and it’s over,” he coaxed.

“They come here to grab a man without knowing right from wrong, and I’m supposed to explain myself to them?”

“Let it go. Let it go. Calm down. Look how worked up you are.” As he spoke, Wu Chen smiled at her.

Her expression eased at once, and the cold edge in her eyes flattened out into something calm. She hooked her arm back through his, naturally and of her own accord, then turned her head aside and said, “Fine. As you like.”

The two of them hadn’t rehearsed a line of it.

And yet the call and response came off without a single slip.

It even left the group of Su-family bodyguards baffled. A misunderstanding? What misunderstanding? Li Ruobing’s fury wasn’t unreasonable arrogance—she was that angry because she believed there had been a misunderstanding? Because she believed her boyfriend had been slandered?

With a temper and a character like hers, if she had genuinely been wronged, that kind of rage became easy to understand.

Just then—

Inside the pharmacy, Su Qingying finally couldn’t hold back any longer.

She had been hiding there the whole time, standing at the window, watching. At first she’d thought Li Ruobing meant to haul Wu Chen away by force, which would draw her family’s bodyguards off with them.

Instead Li Ruobing had flared up like that, had even struck someone first, and the air out there was now drawn tight as a wire. Leaving would be difficult even if they wanted to.

Afterward Wu Chen had held her back, but Su Qingying couldn’t make out what the two of them said to each other. There was still some distance, and people crowded around them.

She was afraid a real fight would break out.

“What do you all think you’re doing?” Su Qingying came out of the pharmacy, pulled off her mask, and called out loudly.

“Eldest Miss.”

“Miss, are you all right?”

“Miss.”

At the sudden sight of her, every one of the Su-family bodyguards hurried several steps toward the pharmacy door.

“Qingying, they came looking for you, and they’re saying Wu Chen abducted you. They wanted to seize him by force…” Li Ruobing spoke up then, and she and Wu Chen also walked a few steps toward the pharmacy entrance. Her tone was the tone of a woman talking to a friend, with none of her earlier fury in it.

It even carried a faint note of complaining to Su Qingying.

Su Qingying went still for a beat.

Li Ruobing had called her Qingying, and in that tone…

She understood instantly.

The two high-IQ women had exchanged not one word in advance—and both of them truly were… high IQ.

“What nonsense is this?” Su Qingying turned her head and swept her eyes over her family’s bodyguards, displeasure plain on her face. “The matter between my mother and me—is it your place to interfere? Miss Ruobing invited me out for a chat. Abducted? Could you run your words through your heads before you speak? Could you stop offending people on the Su family’s behalf?”

The group of bodyguards was stunned all over again.

Su Qingying hadn’t said anything especially harsh. She wouldn’t dress people down the way Li Ruobing did. But Su Qingying was always good to everyone and never spoke a heavy word to the people around her—she would even give ground to her own bodyguards so as not to put them in a difficult spot.

Because that was how she had always been, that was the impression the Su-family bodyguards carried of her.

So in this moment, mild as her tone was, they had the distinct sense that the Eldest Miss was in an absolute rage.

Li Ruobing had lost her temper first.

Then Su Qingying had appeared, and lost hers at them too.

This…

Could it possibly be… a genuine misunderstanding?

“Eldest Miss, we didn’t mean… Madam instructed us to—” Yang Kuo tried to explain. In the Su family, angering Su Qingying truly was a grave matter, precisely because she so rarely got angry. Once she did, the matter was enormous.

“Is the matter between my mother and me any of your business? Whatever she says goes? Everything she says must be right?!” Su Qingying cut him off before he could finish and threw it straight back.

All dozen-odd Su-family bodyguards were frightened into silence. They didn’t even dare meet her eyes.

The better a person’s temper, the more terrifying they became the moment it broke.

And though Su Qingying’s anger was seven parts performance, three parts of it were real. Because her mother’s restrictions on her, her mother’s control over her, could never have been enforced by one woman alone.

It was this group of bodyguards, obeying her mother, who made it possible.

The tiniest thing, and they went running to report.

Today Su Qingying had stopped holding herself back. She truly, genuinely wanted to lose her temper.

At the far intersection, a motorcade was closing fast on the alley entrance—black Mercedes-Benz cars all in a line, six or seven of them.

Wu Chen noticed first and turned his head to watch.

Because he kept watching, Li Ruobing noticed too and followed his gaze. Then the others noticed, and every head turned.

It was the Su family’s motorcade.

Madam Su had arrived.