Chapter 367: Explosive Scoop!

Chapter 367: Explosive Scoop!

Three men stood outside the presidential suite.

One was a balding middle-aged man of about forty.

The other two were younger, one tall and one short, both around thirty.

The instant An Menglan opened the door, all three went to work with their long and short lenses, firing shot after shot into the room.

An Menglan was in a nightgown, her hair tangled, her face somewhat haggard.

None of that was really a problem.

She did not particularly mind being photographed looking like this.

The nightgown was very conservative.

Perfectly presentable.

And as for her face, An Menglan without makeup photographed beautifully.

Her feminine allure was particularly strong.

The problem was not how An Menglan looked.

The problem was that there was a man in her room.

It was not as though she had no male friends. Ordinarily being photographed with one would not matter.

The real trouble was the hour and the setting.

It was barely past eight in the morning. Surely a male friend had not come over this early purely to eat breakfast with her.

And An Menglan was wearing a nightgown.

That was hardly how a woman dressed to receive a guest.

In truth.

What had actually happened was of no interest to paparazzi.

What mattered was getting photographs that left enough room for speculation.

That was all they needed.

What captions and what story went with those photographs afterward would be up to the paparazzi.

They were plainly here to catch An Menglan in a scandal.

Bang!

She reacted fast. The flashes dazzled her, and she threw up one hand to shield her eyes while slamming the door shut with the other.

Once she had steadied herself she hurried back across the living room and into the bedroom.

She grabbed her phone.

And called her bodyguard.

“A-Li, there are reporters outside,” she said the moment the call connected.

At the same time.

Out in the corridor the three paparazzi were moving fast toward the elevators. As they went they checked their cameras, studying the small screens to be sure they had the shots.

Time to go.

Run, now.

They reached the elevators and pressed the call buttons.

After a quick, low exchange, one of them headed straight for the stairwell beside the elevators.

Fifteen floors, and he chose to run all the way down.

The other two waited and meant to ride down.

The hotel had high-speed elevators.

Very soon both arrived and their doors opened. The remaining two men stepped into separate cars one after the other and descended at the same time.

They had split up for two reasons.

One was to occupy both elevators.

The other was to keep from all being boxed in. Separated, even if someone was caught, they would not all be caught.

At least one of them should get clear.

A major scoop on An Menglan was beyond price. Converted into money it was an astronomical sum none of the three could have earned in a lifetime.

All three were professionals.

They were giving it everything.

As the elevator doors closed.

The door of the executive suite across from the presidential suite opened.

A-Li hurried out.

He looked around, then sprinted for the elevators.

When he got there he saw both cars descending.

Without hesitating he turned for the stairwell too.

He chose to run down.

Inside the presidential suite.

An Menglan had come back to the living room with her phone in hand.

Her expression was badly wrong, and worse still when she looked at Wu Chen.

There was something new in her eyes now.

A kind of.

guilt.

Genuine guilt.

Ordinarily photographs like these would not have troubled her conscience at all. Given her character she would still have had people handle it, but she herself would not have panicked.

Even if one day she really did start dating someone and the paparazzi caught them together and blew it open, she still would not panic.

If she was dating, she was dating.

If it got out, it got out.

She truly would not care that much.

This time was different.

An Menglan had the guilty, caught-out feeling of someone who had done something wrong.

However she turned it over, she was convinced something must have happened between her and Wu Chen the night before.

Her clothes had been gone, after all.

The only question was who had started it.

Had Wu Chen been single, that would have been one thing.

But he was not.

He had a girlfriend.

So.

She was genuinely panicking.

She was thinking not only about the scandal but about Li Ruobing.

If this reached Li Ruobing’s ears, then…

“A-Li is handling it,” An Menglan said to Wu Chen.

She sat back down in the armchair, pressed her lips together, and once again looked as though she had no idea what to say.

“Paparazzi, then,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“Mm.” She nodded.

Silence again.

The living room went quiet.

“Have some breakfast first. Don’t worry, it’ll be dealt with.” Wu Chen smiled and gestured at the food. “It’ll go cold if you wait any longer.”

“Mm.” She nodded again.

It was not coldness on her part.

She simply could not put her unease into words.

Knock, knock.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Boss.”

Liu Jing’s voice came from outside.

An Menglan got up and opened it.

“Boss, are you all right?” Liu Jing asked the moment she came in.

“I’m fine. They just got pictures,” An Menglan said.

Liu Jing grasped the situation at once. She was very familiar with this sort of thing. Photographs of An Menglan alone were not a problem.

Photographs of Wu Chen together with An Menglan were.

“Those bastard paparazzi,” Liu Jing cursed, furious.

An Menglan said nothing more. She went back to the coffee table and sat down.

Liu Jing came over too and took the armchair on the other side.

She greeted Wu Chen as well.

“Morning, Mr. Wu.”

“Morning, Assistant Liu.” Wu Chen smiled and nodded.

Ring, ring…

An Menglan’s phone rang.

She answered immediately.

“Boss, they got away in a car…” A-Li’s voice came through, breathless.

“Where are you?” she asked at once.

“The underground parking garage.”

“Did you see the car? What’s the plate number?”

“A black MPV with Modu plates. The plate number is…”

A-Li recited the vehicle’s details precisely.

In fact he had very nearly caught them. He had run down the stairs, and the slowest of the three paparazzi had taken the stairs as well, but had started down ahead of him.

By the time A-Li reached the garage he could only watch the man dart into the vehicle and the car tear away.

“Come back upstairs. We’ll talk when you get here,” An Menglan said when he had finished, and hung up.

“They got away?” Wu Chen asked, turning toward her.

“Mm.” She nodded and glanced at her phone. “A black MPV, Modu plates. We have the number.”

“Could we ask Miss Song for help?” Liu Jing put in from the other side. “Miss Song’s family is pretty powerful in Donghai, aren’t they…?”

“We could. I suppose we’ll have to trouble Miss Song,” An Menglan said with a nod.

She understood Wu Yurong’s reach in Donghai better than Liu Jing did.

It was only.

Telling Song Xuan about this would feel extremely strange.

The paparazzi had photographed her with Wu Chen, after all.

“What’s the plate number?” Wu Chen asked, reading her face.

“The plate is…” She turned and gave him the number.

“I’ll make the call.” Wu Chen smiled, took out his phone, scrolled briefly, and dialed.

The call connected almost at once.

“Hello, Brother-in-law,” came Li Ruotai’s voice.

“Black MPV. Plate number…” Wu Chen gave him the vehicle’s details first, then said, “It just left Jiazhong International Hotel. Find that vehicle immediately and detain everyone in it.”

“Got it, Brother-in-law! I’ll arrange it right now!”

Li Ruotai asked nothing for the moment.

He handled it first.

The call ended.

Wu Chen looked at An Menglan and smiled.

“Don’t worry. They won’t get out of Donghai.”

Unease still showed on her face, but she nodded.

“Thank you, Mr. Wu.”

“What are you thanking me for? This isn’t only your problem. I don’t want to make the headlines either.” Wu Chen laughed.

A few minutes later A-Li returned, and An Menglan questioned him in detail about what had happened.

A little over twenty minutes later.

Ring, ring…

Wu Chen’s phone rang.

Li Ruotai, calling back.

“Hello, A-Tai,” Wu Chen answered.

“Brother-in-law, we’ve got them. Four people in all. They were in an alley near Jiazhong International Hotel. Hadn’t gone far.” Li Ruotai paused. “It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Well… Zhuangyuan’s men took them. They reported that when they grabbed them the car was parked in the alley and they were using a laptop to send something. An email, something like that. Whatever it was, it had already gone out…”

Li Ruotai sounded uncertain. He had not been there himself.

“I understand.” Wu Chen’s expression did not change.

He knew how paparazzi worked.

So the situation now was most likely this: although the photographers themselves had all been caught, the images they had taken had already been sent to their “superior.”

And Wu Chen knew who that superior was.