Chapter 149: Li Ruobing! Are You Acting Cute with Me?

Chapter 149: Li Ruobing! Are You Acting Cute with Me?

Both siblings froze.

Wu Chen and Li Maoren came out one after the other, almost together. It looked as though Li Maoren were personally seeing Wu Chen off, and yet it did not quite feel like that either. They had not stopped at the doorway to exchange a few last words; they had simply walked out together, both of them stepping all the way into the corridor.

Nor was it easy to read from their faces what had passed between them.

Because both looked perfectly normal.

Wu Chen wore his habitual faint smile, relaxed and calm. Li Maoren’s face carried almost no expression at all, which made any emotion impossible to catch. He was always like that.

Too normal.

And that was the abnormality.

The two of them had been talking for a full two hours and more. Both Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai knew their father was hostile toward Wu Chen, because Wu Chen had become an obstacle to the Li–Ding marriage alliance. Li Ruotai knew, too, that his father had been convinced Wu Chen was nothing but his sister’s fake boyfriend. If he had confirmed the fraud, he should not be behaving like this. If he had confirmed it was real, he should be behaving like this even less.

“Dad…” Li Ruotai spoke first when he saw his father emerge.

Li Ruobing simply stepped forward, slid her arm through Wu Chen’s, and glanced at him. “Finished talking?”

“Mm.” Wu Chen smiled and nodded, then glanced at Li Maoren. “Uncle, where are we eating?”

“You decide.” Li Maoren looked at Wu Chen, then turned to his son. “Atai, find somewhere.”

The siblings’ expressions went strange all over again.

They had even agreed to have lunch together?

It was bizarre. The atmosphere between Wu Chen and Li Maoren was neither good nor bad, neither distant nor close. One of them was Li Ruobing’s boyfriend, the other her father. However you turned it over, this was not how it should look.

The siblings exchanged a glance.

“Nanguo Club, then…” Li Ruotai said.

“Fine.” Li Maoren raised his wrist and checked the time. “Let’s go.”

Time to eat.

The ride down in the elevator was eerily silent.

Li Ruobing wanted to ask Wu Chen what had happened.

Li Ruotai wanted to ask his father the same thing.

And with Wu Chen and Li Maoren both standing right there, along with a group of bodyguards, neither of them could very well ask.

They reached the underground garage.

Without a single word exchanged between them, Wu Chen and Li Maoren got into the back seat of the same car and pulled the doors shut on either side. Li Ruobing, who had been about to draw Wu Chen toward her own car, and Li Ruotai, who had meant to ride with his father, both stopped short with peculiar looks on their faces.

The siblings drew off to one side.

“What’s going on?” Li Ruobing asked quietly.

“How would I know…” Li Ruotai was just as lost.

Both of them were dying of curiosity.

“Let’s eat first,” Li Ruobing murmured, and walked to her car.

A little over twenty minutes later, past noon, they arrived at Nanguo Club.

It was a high-end, members-only private club that had opened only a few years earlier. Tucked away in an alley, closed to the general public, it offered exceptional privacy and accepted only a fixed number of dining guests each day. Ordinarily a reservation had to be made well in advance.

Li Ruotai needed no reservation.

He was one of Nanguo Club’s owners behind the scenes.

A private room on the top floor.

Everyone took their seats. Li Ruotai summoned the manager, tilted his head to give a few quiet instructions, then sent him away. He ordered nothing; he had telephoned ahead on the drive over and arranged it all. Calling the manager in had only been to reiterate a few details.

The kitchen served distinctive private-kitchen fare, but at bottom this was not a place people came to for the food. It was a place to socialize and talk business.

Nobody spoke.

The atmosphere was wrong.

Li Maoren seemed weighted with something. Every so often he would glance…