Chapter 299: Boss Lei, You’re Ruthless!

Chapter 299: Boss Lei, You’re Ruthless!

Lei Cheng read the message right there in front of Ding Ruilong.

There was nothing odd in that. It would raise no suspicion. Everyone had a phone; everyone got texts.

But the message itself was extraordinarily short.

Two characters.

Three-two.

Only two people in the world understood what “three-two” meant: Wu Chen, who had sent it, and Lei Cheng, who had received it. They had agreed on it during their private talk the night before.

Three meant the third option.

Two meant the second pitch.

Together: the second pitch for the third option.

They had never actually worked out the exact wording. There had been no need to plan it in such detail. Once the direction was fixed, a man as sharp as Lei Cheng would know what to say.

Lei Cheng looked at the message for about five seconds.

Then he made a call.

To Wu Chen.

Right in front of Ding Ruilong.

Seeing that something seemed to have come up, Ding Ruilong was in no hurry. He went on drinking his tea at his leisure, refined and perfectly composed.

“Hello… I got the photos. Keep digging. Tell me the moment you find anything.” The instant the call connected, Lei Cheng spoke into the phone and hung up.

Pure theater.

The call really had gone through.

Wu Chen had heard every word.

But he himself said nothing.

He could have called Lei Cheng and told him what to do. But that would not have been safe.

In an enclosed, quiet room, Ding Ruilong sitting across the table might catch a stray word from the earpiece.

And even with the volume turned down, if Ding Ruilong carried a listening device, it could record every sound in the room for later analysis.

Electronic equipment could pick up sounds the human ear could not.

The chance was small.

But Lei Cheng was a cautious man.

So was Wu Chen.

Wu Chen might think very little of Ding Ruilong, but he never underestimated him.

Anyone who could stir up so much trouble and still hold so secure a position in the Ding family had real ability.

“Sorry about that, Young Master Ding. Something came up.” Lei Cheng put the phone away and looked up, then raised his cup. “Let’s go on.”

They drank again.

“It sounds as though… your old man really is unusually biased…” Ding Ruilong said first as he set down his cup, his tone suggestive.

He truly knew how to talk. His command of language was formidable, and he knew how to work on people’s feelings.

Through the whole long conversation he had kept prodding at Lei Cheng’s resentment of his family.

The method was sound.

Unfortunately he was aiming in the wrong direction.

However good the method, it was useless.

“Fuck… Lei You was just born a few years ahead of me, that’s all. Otherwise what the fuck would he be? If the old man weren’t shielding him, I’d have put a bullet in him ten years ago!” Lei Cheng’s voice rose, then he forced it back down and sighed. “Ah…”

He seemed unwilling to lose too much control in front of an outsider.

“I understand how you feel, Boss Lei. I haven’t lived through what you have all these years, but… every family has its own troubles. The Ding family has never been peaceful inside either. If I hadn’t been ruthless enough, I might have… died long ago.” Ding Ruilong’s words were heavy with implication.

He raised his cup and took another sip.

They went back to talking nonsense.

Ten minutes later.

Lei Cheng glanced at his watch.

Time to discuss the real business.

He had held off after receiving the message precisely so Ding Ruilong would not grow suspicious.

“It’s getting late, Young Master Ding.” Lei Cheng looked up from his watch. “About the endorsement, I think…”

He stopped halfway, as though struggling over the final decision.

“Whatever you like, Boss Lei. The initiative is yours. You help me, I help you. If you don’t, that’s fine too…” Ding Ruilong met his eyes and smiled.

That was what he said.

Whether he meant it was another matter.

Ding Ruilong was not a magnanimous man.

“The endorsement can’t be pulled,” Lei Cheng said.

Ding Ruilong’s expression changed.

His hand tightened around his teacup by reflex.

All this time negotiating so pleasantly, all he had offered—and Lei Cheng still refused?

Was he being played?

“Or rather, it can’t be pulled now…” Lei Cheng added.

Ding Ruilong’s face eased again.

He turned the words over, and his expression grew subtle.

“What you mean, Boss Lei, is…” he prompted.

“We’re already at this point. The launch is the day after tomorrow. If I have Manying break the contract now, it’s too obvious. If Miss Li comes asking, I can make excuses, but she may not believe them. She might even suspect straight off that you’re behind it, Young Master Ding,” Lei Cheng said.

“You think I’m afraid of her knowing?” Ding Ruilong cut in.

“You’re not afraid, Young Master Ding. I am,” Lei Cheng said. “Miss Li herself is the small problem. She has principles. Li Ruotai is another story… If he finds out, or even suspects, that I’ve teamed up with you to wreck his sister’s business, he’ll never let me off. And then my position in Donghai would…”

“Didn’t I just tell you? I’ll get rid of your brother for you, and you’ll go home and inherit. What does this bit of property of yours in Donghai even matter?” Ding Ruilong cut in again.

“Right. In principle, sure. But tell me, Young Master Ding—is Lei You that easy to handle? You’ll need time, won’t you? You’ll need to prepare. And I need a buffer too. I can’t break with Li Ruobing right away, or before you’ve finished your part I might already be done for…”

Ding Ruilong was beginning to see his point.

It was mainly a matter of timing. Lei You could not be dealt with overnight. Even a short timeline meant a month or two. A man of Lei You’s standing could never be handled by something as crude as sending a hired killer.

That would make earth-shaking headlines.

But on Lei Cheng’s side, falling out with Li Ruobing and Li Ruotai…

Pulling the endorsement could be done immediately.

If he really did it, Lei Cheng would enter a period of danger. Break the contract today, and for the next month or two, maybe longer, he would face the threat of the Li siblings while still unable to go home and inherit.

And a great many variables could arise in between. Lei You might learn, for instance, that Lei Cheng had offended the Li siblings…

“So what you have in mind is…” Ding Ruilong asked after some thought.

“Manying does the endorsement. Everything goes ahead as planned.” Lei Cheng gestured with one hand, then went on at once. “Then, after a while—a month or two—I have Manying breach the contract and take Huancai Fashion to court.”

“Meanwhile, Young Master Ding, you arrange the media and whip up online opinion, and drag the contract dispute over toward product quality. Say Manying used Huancai’s cosmetics and broke out in acne. It’s only public opinion, we can invent whatever we like. It’ll all be third-party rumor anyway. Even if someone traces it back to the source, we can set up a scapegoat.”

“And with my Darling’s influence, once this blows up it’s bound to be a sensation. Whether the quality problem is real or just a rumor, the public will start doubting Huancai Fashion. There’ll be a crisis of trust. Drag the lawsuit out a year or so and it might even destroy the company. It’ll never get to go public.”

“Young Master Ding, what do you think?”

By the time Lei Cheng finished, Ding Ruilong was stunned.

His eyes had lit up.

Because he knew perfectly well that Huancai Fashion was racing the clock to go public, he actually thought Lei Cheng’s idea might be better than his own original plan of sabotaging the endorsement outright.

Smearing Huancai Fashion was ordinarily a crude tactic.

If the campaign failed to catch fire, Li Ruobing could simply hire a PR team to bury it.

Useless.

But—

Tie it to superstar Tao Manying, amplify it through her influence, and…

No PR team could bury that.

Stirring up opinion would be extraordinarily easy, and it would work.

The longer Ding Ruilong thought about it, the harder it became to hold back his smile.

“Boss Lei, you’re ruthless!” He grinned at Lei Cheng.

A pause, and then: “I like it.”