Chapter 239: Why Did You Put Your Arm Around Me?

Chapter 239: Why Did You Put Your Arm Around Me?

Wu Chen slotted the key card into the power holder by the door.

Then, one hand in his pocket, he walked alone through the entryway, paused in the living area, and looked the room over.

This was an executive suite, the best room the four-star hotel had. Unlike an apartment-style suite, or one of those enormous presidential suites, its layout was largely open.

The living area held a sofa and coffee table. To the right stood the bed and the cabinets and the rest of the furniture. To the left was a large glass partition, and because it was glass, the small study behind it was plainly visible—a desk, cabinets, room enough to work comfortably at a laptop.

Farther in on the right was the bathroom, walled in electronically controlled privacy glass that could be turned clear or opaque.

The suite also had a wide balcony with a small table and wicker chairs.

All in all, it suited a business trip as well as a couple looking for time together. Either use would fit.

Sixty or seventy square meters, most likely. The finish was luxurious and refined, as one would expect.

Wu Chen took it in, then turned back to He Shiqin at the door.

She was deeply uneasy. Nervous, even.

She could have turned and walked out. Walked out that instant. She did not. Too much was running through her.

She already believed Wu Chen might be blackmailing or coercing her, and that he probably wanted other things besides. But he had brought her straight to a hotel room. He had just put his arm around her.

What he wanted was too obvious to miss.

Back then, He Shiqin had been coerced too.

People were made differently. Some submitted to coercion. Some did not.

He Shiqin was plainly the first kind.

And unlike back then, the He Shiqin of today had someone she could not bear to leave behind.

Her daughter, He Xinxin.

She did not want to be dragged into another unnecessary conflict. Of course she did not want to die. Nor did she want her daughter left with no one to care for her.

She even thought through what would happen if something happened to her. Her fourteen-year-old daughter—an illegitimate daughter of the Ding family, a position so awkward there was no telling how Ding Ruilong would deal with her.

Nothing good, that much was certain.

All these years he had paid child support only because the blood tie existed. He had so much money he did not care about the amount, which was why paying generously cost him nothing. He Shiqin knew perfectly well that Ding Ruilong had no intention of ever acknowledging this daughter. In all these years he had never once come to see her.

And more importantly, during one of their phone calls Ding Ruilong had said something that amounted to a warning.

Do not use the child to make trouble.

Do not interfere with his life.

Or his marriage.

He Shiqin stood in the entryway thinking it through for a long time.

Unable to decide.

One thing was worth noting. The biggest reason she had not simply left was that her impression of Wu Chen before this had been extremely good.

And Wu Chen was young and handsome.

People are visual creatures. Many deny it, but it is true.

Take a girl acting up. A stunningly pretty young thing making a scene and an overweight, unattractive girl doing exactly the same thing would draw entirely different reactions from most men.

Likewise, if a bald, overweight, crude older man and a young, handsome, educated, cultivated one made the same demand of the same woman, her reaction would not be the same either.

What she could bring herself to accept was simply not the same.

A long while passed.

“Why are you standing there? Come over.”

Wu Chen smiled at her.

She pressed her lips together. She lowered her head and thought a moment longer. Then she walked in on her heels, past the entryway, and stopped in front of him.

Her eyes flickered as she looked at him.

“Mr. Wu… are all you men’s heads full of nothing but that? Can’t you just behave like a normal person? Can’t you?”

Her tone was not fierce. But as she spoke, her eyes reddened.

Her life had been too bitter. Far too bitter.

First Ding Ruilong. Now Wu Chen.

“What are you talking about?”

Wu Chen kept smiling, though his brows drew together faintly. His tone said he had no idea what she meant.

“You’re going to pretend? What did you bring me here for? You still won’t admit it?”

“Admit what?”

“You know what! You brought me here, and just now you put your arm around me. What am I supposed to think? I always thought you were a gentleman. A good man. But you—there’s no difference between you and him!”

She was growing more agitated, unable to hold it in.

Wu Chen smiled, paused, and thought for a moment. “I think you may have misunderstood something. And I think you owe me an apology.”

“I misunderstood?”

She threw her handbag to the floor and reached straight for her dress, working at the fastening.

“Isn’t sleeping with me all you want? Fine, then! I’ll give it to you! I will! I only ask that you never come near me again. Whatever you want to do today, just—”

“I wonder what Xinxin would think of you if she could see you now,” Wu Chen said.

Her hands stopped.

She had already loosened the strap of her dress. She looked at him, her feelings raw, and sniffed.

It was pure instinct.

Her daughter mattered more to her than anything.

“I’ve no idea what you’ve been imagining.”

Wu Chen laughed lightly, turned, and walked toward the balcony.

“You don’t know who I am. You don’t know why I came to you in the first place. We haven’t discussed a single thing and you’re already taking off your clothes. Maybe… something I did gave you the wrong idea. But…”

He stepped out onto the balcony as he spoke and sat down in the wicker chair on the left, crossing one leg over the other. Then he turned his head toward her.

“But shouldn’t you at least ask me why?”

The atmosphere had turned very strange.

His words left He Shiqin frozen where she stood, unsure whether she should go on undressing or tie the strap again.

“Sit.”

He gestured at the chair across from him.

His manner gradually brought her back down. She wiped her tears away. Then she retied the strap and smoothed the fabric, and only then walked out onto the balcony, drew out the wicker chair opposite him, and sat down with the small tea table between them.

“You first.”

Wu Chen smiled and motioned for her to begin.

“Why did you put your arm around me? You say I misunderstood, so why did you do it? Are you going to tell me it wasn’t deliberate?”

She sniffed as she asked. She seemed to have seized on this one point and refused to let go.

“I admit it. It was deliberate,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Then what else is there to say? I’m here. I’m not leaving. Whatever you mean to do to me, do it quickly. All I want is for you to leave me alone afterward!”

She really had resigned herself.

“But…”

Wu Chen smiled again.

“I did it deliberately for Ding Ruilong to see.”

She went blank. Then she startled. A second later she was on her feet, looking wildly around the room.

Terribly tense. A little afraid.

“Ding Ruilong isn’t here. Sit down, sit down. Don’t be nervous.”

Wu Chen laughed and waved her back into the chair.

“Then… you said, for him to see. He…”

She looked at him, still deeply unsettled.

“The cameras in the corridor will have recorded me entering the room with my arm around you,” Wu Chen said.

She took a moment with that. It did not come to her right away.

“Sit. Sit down and let’s talk.”

He gestured again, and only then did she sit.

“The room registration carries both our ID details. It’s networked. The right connections can get hold of it.” Wu Chen smiled. “Ding Ruilong has been investigating me all along. Naturally he can’t have people watching that kind of information every hour of every day. What he has on me doesn’t update in real time. But…”

“As long as I remind him in some fashion, he’ll pull my hotel-registration records. And he’ll find that you and I came to this hotel together today.”

“And if he cares enough to send people to Modu to look into it, he’ll get today’s surveillance footage from the hotel as well.”

“So one day in the future, he’ll see it.”

“The two of us, properly dressed, arriving at a hotel together.”

“Registering.”

“Going upstairs.”

“Me putting my arm around you as we go into the room.”

Wu Chen smiled.

“What do you suppose he’ll think?”

The look on He Shiqin’s face was something to behold.