Chapter 092: We’re Both Women. You Don’t Have to Lie to Me

Chapter 092: We’re Both Women. You Don’t Have to Lie to Me

The phrase “a pleasure to meet you” meant, It is an honor to meet you. It was properly a social formula for a first encounter with an elder or someone of higher standing, and it carried respect toward the person addressed.

For Madam Su to say “a pleasure to meet you” to Wu Chen gave everyone present a strange feeling.

More than strange. Li Ruobing caught a thread of danger in her tone.

Wu Chen had taken Su Qingying and run all over the city for an entire day, and only now had Madam Su managed to find him. That truly was… a tremendous “honor.”

Madam Su was a noblewoman who never lost propriety in public. Many of the demands she placed on her daughter were copied straight from her own habits. So as she shook Wu Chen’s hand there wasn’t a trace of anger on her face. She remained as dignified and graceful as ever.

“Mr. Wu is indeed as handsome and impressive as the rumors say. Miss Li, you have a good eye.” Madam Su actually paid him another compliment, then turned her gaze to Li Ruobing.

There was meaning behind her words.

“Madam Su flatters me,” Li Ruobing said.

Wu Chen kept smiling and couldn’t be bothered to speak.

“This isn’t the place to talk.” Madam Su looked left and right, her gaze traveling back and forth over Wu Chen and Li Ruobing. “Why don’t we find somewhere and talk properly? What do you say, Miss Li?”

In the end she put the question to Li Ruobing, because she judged Li Ruobing to be the one running things.

“Of course. As it happens, there are a few things I’d like to discuss with Madam Su as well…” Li Ruobing said with a faint smile.

They got into the cars and left.

Wu Chen didn’t ride with Li Ruobing. He went straight over and got into his own Lamborghini.

Li Ruobing had driven the Bentley Continental today, and with Wu Chen gone the passenger seat sat empty. Su Qingying, who had been about to get into her mother’s car and had already braced herself to weather the storm inside it, saw this. Once her mother was in, she suddenly shut the door and hurried after Li Ruobing.

The window of the Mercedes-Maybach came down at once. Madam Su twisted around and leaned out, ready to call her daughter back—only to see that Su Qingying had already gotten into the same Bentley as Li Ruobing and hurriedly shut the door.

Her expression shifted. She said nothing more.

More than a dozen cars took to the road together. The Su family’s motorcade led. Li Ruobing and her bodyguards’ cars followed. Wu Chen drove the Lamborghini at the very rear.

He had stayed out of Li Ruobing’s car on purpose.

He knew Su Qingying was afraid, so all he had to do was leave the seat open and she would go to Li Ruobing without fail.

He didn’t want anything uncontrollable happening with Su Qingying alone in a car with her mother.

Her fear of her mother wasn’t something that could be reversed in an afternoon. Under interrogation she really might say the wrong thing, so it was better to be careful.

Inside the Bentley Continental.

Only Li Ruobing and Su Qingying.

“What exactly is going on between you and Wu Chen?” Li Ruobing asked abruptly as she drove.

Su Qingying glanced at her and began, “Sister, I—”

“Could you stop calling me Sister? You’re older. You’re the older one. You’re the sister!” Li Ruobing was close to a stress reaction. Back in Wu Chen’s bedroom, Su Qingying’s bizarre behavior had genuinely frightened her.

Su Qingying sensed something was off.

“Then… Miss Li, may I ask you something first?”

“What?”

“You and Wu Chen… are you in that kind of relationship?”

“What kind of relationship?” Li Ruobing didn’t follow, and glanced over at her.

Su Qingying realized at once that she might have gotten it wrong. She was about to ask something else, and stopped, afraid that a badly chosen question would expose her instead.

After a pause, she asked, “Then, Miss Li… have you slept with Wu Chen?”

Extraordinarily direct.

“No. Of course not.” Li Ruobing’s head snapped toward her, then back to the road ahead. “Our being a couple is fake. Didn’t he already tell you that?”

Su Qingying had her confirmation. Li Ruobing was not an M, and she and Wu Chen were not in a Master-and-slave relationship.

Which made all of it… stranger still.

“Then why were you massaging him?” Su Qingying asked. She had said one question. She was up to three.

At the mention of it, Li Ruobing’s face went considerably cooler and more severe.

Annoying.

She still had ninety-nine massages left to give him.

“You can’t say?” Seeing her fall silent, Su Qingying pressed again.

“I lost a bet to him.” Li Ruobing said it flatly. It was a reasonable explanation, and it suited her reputation for keeping her word. As long as she didn’t say what the bet had been, there was no problem.

Of course she wouldn’t reveal the wager, least of all to Su Qingying.

If Su Qingying learned that Wu Chen had used whether he could take her down as the stakes, it would inevitably damage the relationship between them.

Li Ruobing couldn’t do something that low.

In fact she was overthinking it. Saying it wouldn’t have damaged anything.

“A bet? So the two of you make bets, and you use things like massages as the stakes?” A trace of amusement came into the way Su Qingying looked at her. Her tone was unmistakably hinting that there was something between Li Ruobing and Wu Chen.

“Miss Li.” Seeing her go quiet again, Su Qingying went on, “Do you like Wu Chen? We’re both women. You don’t have to lie to me. I can sense certain things… You were giving Wu Chen a massage, I walked in on it, and you didn’t explain a thing. That was to irritate me, wasn’t it?”

“Miss Su, aren’t you asking rather a lot of questions?” Li Ruobing turned her head, her tone weighted. Then she looked back at the road, and her voice loosened somewhat. “When you’ve nothing better to do, don’t study me. Let’s discuss your problem instead. You need to be clear about the position you’re in. You don’t want… never to see Wu Chen again after today, do you?”

“Oh—right, right. The serious matter.” Su Qingying said it at once.

Very subtle.

The two women had crossed swords again, faintly.

And both of them were using things connected to Wu Chen to stir the other’s feelings.

“Tell me. What’s going on between you and Wu Chen? How did he get you to run from home?” Li Ruobing asked.

“There isn’t much to it, really… We met, and then today we met at Tangsha’s golf course. Some of what he said was quite right, actually. My mother, she…” Su Qingying laid out the situation.

She hid an enormous number of important circumstances and details, and blurred even how she had met Wu Chen.

Because she had to hide the fact that she was an M.

She put her decision to follow Wu Chen and run from home down entirely to his persuasion and her own awakening. Her mother truly was too strict with her. She wanted to resist.

Listening, Li Ruobing felt something was wrong. That simple?

Was Su Qingying an idiot? Would she be talked into leaving by a few words from a man she’d hardly known any time at all, then leave with him, become his woman outright, wash his clothes, and cook for him?

Of course Su Qingying was not an idiot.

There had to be something inside this that Su Qingying had deliberately hidden.

Li Ruobing didn’t press that part, because for the moment it wasn’t important. What mattered was handling Madam Su.

Li Ruobing understood what came first. So over the following stretch of the drive, she asked Su Qingying a great many things about her relationship with her mother…

Twenty minutes later.

Jinfu Teahouse, top-floor private room.

The place was a Su-family property in Donghai. The Su family’s business was jewelry, but locally in Donghai they held a few other interests as well.

The private room was very large and heavily furnished. It served for tea and for discussion, and also for resting a while—more like a large hotel suite than a room.

Four people in it.

Madam Su, Su Qingying, Li Ruobing, and Wu Chen.

“Miss Li, I wonder whether you can explain something to me. Why were you with my daughter? Don’t you think it was extremely discourteous, sending your boyfriend Mr. Wu to take my daughter away by force without so much as a word to me? And I can’t say whether Mr. Wu’s conduct broke the law. Perhaps I ought to consult my lawyer.” Madam Su held her teacup with perfect elegance and asked it in a tone neither warm nor cold.

When she’d finished, she cast a glance at Wu Chen.

A direct attack.

And this was only the opening. Wu Chen was the real target.

The harsher questions were still to come.