Chapter 103: And Then? That’s It?

Chapter 103: And Then? That’s It?

Yao Honglin was a director of Jinfu Group.

That was Yao Honglin’s value. He remained a member of Jinfu Group’s board of directors, an inside director of the company.

He barely took part in Jinfu Group’s operations anymore and by rights should no longer have held an inside director’s seat, but he hadn’t been elected to it this year. He had been elected two and a half years ago.

A listed company’s board members were elected once every three years.

Two and a half years ago, Yao Honglin had not yet become what he was now. He was already somewhat marginalized, but he was still doing work for Jinfu. His shares were few, but still enough to place him among Jinfu’s top ten individual shareholders. A seat on the board had been no problem.

He had only half a year of his term left, and when Jinfu Group elected its board again early next year he certainly wouldn’t be returned.

But.

As long as he was still a director now, he was useful.

Extremely useful.

Because on the board each person held one vote. Voting rights had nothing to do with how many shares a person owned. Someone could hold no Jinfu equity at all and still serve as an independent director. When resolutions were passed, it was one person, one vote.

Yao Honglin’s greatest value was that single vote.

“J-just that?” Yao Honglin was so delighted that he actually asked Wu Chen whether that was all.

Because Wu Chen had manipulated his psychology.

From the start of the meeting he had assumed Wu Chen meant to extort him, and that Wu Chen was the insatiable sort. Wu Chen had named one dirty deed after another, and his fear had climbed with each one, driving him to raise the price again and again while the intent to kill took shape inside him. He knew Wu Chen knew enough to take everything from him. Wu Chen had to die.

Then Li Ruobing and Su Qingying appeared, and he fell into despair.

There was no way out.

He didn’t dare move against Wu Chen. He didn’t dare touch anyone. Another man held the knife; he was the fish on the block. He had already braced himself for the worst and most extreme outcome.

And in that state of mind, Wu Chen had made only one “small request” of him.

He merely wanted him to follow Su Qingying’s lead at board meetings.

For Yao Honglin this was not a small matter, because on the board he took his cue from the second-largest shareholder—his former boss, the original big boss of Meiyuan Jewelry. The two of them had always moved in lockstep.

He would have to betray him.

But set against the horrors he had been imagining a moment ago, what was a betrayal like that worth?

His fortune and his life had nearly been gone. Everything else was nothing.

So he genuinely felt Wu Chen had made only a “small request,” one that did him almost no harm at all. It required nothing of him but to take the initiative and change his own will.

He was like a gambler who had lost everything and had only death left in front of him, and then the man who had won his money suddenly handed all of it back and asked in return for one small thing, one small favor.

That enormous plunge and surge of feeling would even make him believe he wasn’t being threatened at all—that the other side had let him off.

That he ought to be grateful, even.

“That’s right. That’s all.” Wu Chen nodded to him, and said it with certainty.

Yao Honglin was on his feet at once. One hand caught up the teapot on the table while the other took the overturned cups from the tea tray, righting two more of them, and with brisk, practiced movements he poured tea for all three of them.

A trace of a smile had already appeared on his face. He really was smiling—the smile of a man with a weight lifted off him, a smile of pure relief.

A moment ago he had truly believed he was finished.

Now not only was he not finished, it seemed he had even… made a connection with the Li family’s eldest granddaughter.

He simply assumed Li Ruobing was helping Su Qingying.

He read it from…