Chapter 150: Are You an Actress?

Chapter 150: Are You an Actress?

Wu Chen was teasing. He knew perfectly well she was not acting cute.

But the remark gave her an idea. After a beat, Li Ruobing arranged her face into a mixture of displeasure, wounded grievance, and pleading, wriggled in his lap, and begged, “Tell me! Come on, tell me!”

She really was going all out.

There was no chance she would have done anything of the kind before. Even now, with their relationship settled, she would never have done something so contrary to her nature had she not been desperate to know.

She had thought it through. First she would coax the substance of the conversation out of him. After that she would play hard to get properly and keep Wu Chen well in hand. She fully intended to hold the initiative in this relationship.

“Don’t. Can you not act? Doesn’t it make your skin crawl? It’s making mine crawl.” As infuriating as ever.

“Darling, darling, tell me. Just tell me.” She wriggled again. The more he mocked her, the harder she pressed.

Wu Chen stopped talking and simply watched her, smiling.

Li Ruobing went still. Her expression cooled fast. “Tell me or don’t. See if I care.” With that she rose from his lap and strode toward the desk as though furious. Before she reached it she turned on her heel and marched straight back to the coffee table.

Bang!

Her palm struck the table. “Wu Chen! I’m warning you! Don’t imagine there’s nothing I can do about you just because you carry on like this!”

She looked genuinely enraged.

“Are you an actress?” Wu Chen asked instead, in the tone of a man who found her performance hilarious.

Li Ruobing raised a hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, then paced back and forth before the coffee table.

“Ah…” Wu Chen let out a sudden sigh, as though something ached. Still in the armchair, he lifted both feet onto the coffee table and settled into a comfortable sprawl, then reached up to knead the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, as though his whole body were sore.

Li Ruobing stopped and glanced at him.

She understood what he meant.

“You’re the actor, aren’t you?” she said coolly.

“No.” Wu Chen smiled. “I really haven’t been comfortable these past couple of days. Qingying’s too clingy. She wore me out rather badly.”

“Could you possibly be more shameless?” She gave him a sidelong look.

“Shameless? Am I?” He smiled. “Jealous?”

Li Ruobing said nothing.

What could she say? She had already lost the right to “be jealous” to Wu Chen in their earlier wager.

She could not settle. It was not mere curiosity. This touched her too closely—you could say it was bound up with the largest matter in her life at present.

“You really can’t tell me?” she asked after a silence.

“It’s not… entirely impossible.” Wu Chen smiled. He paused, then said, “All right. No more teasing. I gave your father dirt on Ding Ruilong. Extremely lethal dirt. And… a few things concerning the Wei family.”

Li Ruobing’s expression finally came back to normal.

She thought a moment, then asked, “Ding Ruilong… specifically…”

So he told her.

In truth Wu Chen saw no real harm in telling her this. She rarely involved herself in the Li family’s internal affairs.

She was not Li Ruotai. Li Ruotai truly would dare anything. He had acted first and asked permission later more than once. He got things done—and he also made messes when things went wrong. He lacked Li Maoren’s steadiness. He was still growing.

Wu Chen knew Li Maoren would certainly not tell Li Ruotai any of it, chiefly for fear Li Ruotai would tip their hand.

Li Ruobing carried no such risk.

Even so, Wu Chen did not tell her everything. He and Li Maoren had talked for over two hours, and most of the latter part had concerned the Wei family. The dirt he had handed Li Maoren on the Weis was not one item but many, touching several core members of the Wei family and several other great houses, the Xie family among them.

Wu Chen meant to use the Li family’s hand to break the Wei family.

He had no feud with the Weis and virtually no connection to them. But the Wei family was one of the principal reasons the Li family had pursued a marriage alliance with the Dings in the first place.

The Dings and the Weis were enemies.

And the Lis and the Weis had once fought so savagely they were all but trying to dash each other’s brains out. Even Li Ruotai’s present crisis had the Wei family behind it.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Which was why the Li and Ding families had come together so smoothly.

Wu Chen’s aim, however, was to split them apart. Several years of cooperation across multiple fields would take time and careful planning to sever in one stroke with the least possible loss. He had also planted a bomb between the Dong and Ding families. If that bomb went off, all-out conflict was inevitable, and the Li family would have to align with the Dongs—which meant the Lis would not merely break with the Dings but might well become their bitter enemies.

And then, as the Li family’s foremost enemy, would the Wei family sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight, or set aside its lesser grudge with the Dings and join them in besieging the Lis? That was hard to say.

Because—

There are no eternal enemies, only eternal interests.

The pie was only so large.

So whenever an upheaval threatened to reshuffle the great families, no one could stand outside it. No one could watch an enemy destroy a rival and grow stronger still. Everyone had to choose a side. Everyone had to come down into the field.

Therefore, if Wu Chen was set on destroying the Ding family, he had to destroy the Wei family as well.

But of all this he told Li Ruobing nothing.

He did not so much as mention Qu Qiangmin or the Dou family.

There was no need.

In a few minutes he laid out the matter of Ding Ruilong, Dong Yuantao, and He Shiqin. Naturally he mentioned Dong Yaoguang too. Nothing else. Letting Li Ruobing guess was more entertaining. Nor did he mention that he had already contacted He Shiqin.

“…If that time bomb goes off, Dong Yaoguang will destroy Ding Ruilong. Absolutely,” he finished.

“So that’s it…” She had listened in a slight daze, but she followed all of it. After a pause she asked, “That’s all? What about the Wei family? You told my father—”

“Does that have anything to do with you?” Wu Chen cut in.

The words caught in her throat.

Infuriating.

The reason he had told her only that fragment—and it truly was a fragment of the whole conversation—was that this fragment was the part bound directly to her. It touched her too deeply for her not to want it, and refusing would have damaged the relationship, might even have bred a crisis of trust.

So he had teased her briefly and then told her.

The rest he could keep. She remained enormously curious, but she would not keep digging at it the way she just had.

Because the rest bore no direct relation to the forced marriage hanging over her life.

“Fine. Don’t tell me!” Sure enough, she did not press much further. She tossed the words out, turned, and headed for the small lounge.

To change.

She needed to be back in her business suit.

A little while later:

“Wu Chen, come here a moment,” she called from inside.

“Hm?” Wu Chen, scrolling through his phone, turned his head. “What is it? Can’t get the zipper up again?” He stood as he spoke and walked toward the lounge.

The door stood ajar.

He pushed it open, and his brows rose. His smile turned peculiar as his gaze traveled over her.

“Come here. Over here…” Wearing nothing but her underwear, Li Ruobing lay on her side on the bed. Smiling, she beckoned to him softly and patted the empty space in front of her.