Chapter 472: Send Him to Prison, or Have Him Executed!

Chapter 472: Send Him to Prison, or Have Him Executed!

Su Ruiwen had put away his smile, but there was no anger in his voice. He wasn’t interrogating Wu Chen. He wanted to talk. An interrogation would obviously only backfire.

“Spoken like Donghai’s richest man, Boss Su. Nothing gets past you,” Wu Chen said with a smile, as if offering him a little flattery.

But Su Ruiwen didn’t feel praised in the least.

If anything, he sensed that… Wu Chen had known all along he would see through it. That this had all been within Wu Chen’s expectations.

Because Wu Chen’s expression didn’t change at all. It stayed exactly the same, start to finish.

And he’d answered with remarkable directness, without arguing or dodging.

“Young man, you’ve got some nerve!” Su Ruiwen held Wu Chen’s eyes. It almost sounded like praise too, but there was plainly more beneath it.

Whether he meant the nerve to lie to him, or… something else, there was no telling.

“I do all right,” Wu Chen said with a smile. He actually accepted the verdict of “some nerve,” as if tacitly acknowledging Su Ruiwen’s suspicions as well.

They looked at each other. Su Ruiwen’s gaze was deep, and the scrutiny in it never faded. As for Wu Chen…

No one could tell what Wu Chen was thinking from his eyes.

Unless he wanted them to.

The office went quiet for a moment.

Su Ruiwen simply watched him. It was a habit of his. Very few people could meet his eyes with perfect calm. Wu Chen wasn’t the first, but he was certainly the youngest.

Wu Chen’s gaze didn’t give way, yet there was nothing aggressive in it either.

It was simply calm.

So calm it was impossible to read.

“Mr. Wu, you’re only twenty-two this year.” After perhaps ten-odd seconds of silence, Su Ruiwen finally spoke. It wasn’t a question. It was an assessment.

“It’s hard to imagine who trained you into the man you are,” he added, still watching Wu Chen.

Wu Chen smiled and didn’t take that up.

“…So what did you come here for, Mr. Wu? You used a document as an excuse to see my daughter. What surprises me is that Qingying helped you lie to me. I think you owe me an explanation.” Su Ruiwen’s tone was even, but his gaze sharpened a little.

“Miss Qingying was keeping a secret for me. We had an agreement. I’ve helped her, so she can’t betray me,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“A secret? What secret?” Su Ruiwen leaned forward a little, both elbows on the desk, his tone unchanged.

Nothing in his voice suggested he was especially eager to know. But that seemingly natural shift, the lean forward, carried a great deal of pressure.

“I just told you it’s my secret. Is prying into other people’s secrets a hobby of yours, Boss Su?” Wu Chen countered, shutting that line of questioning down completely.

Su Ruiwen was handling this in a way that stopped short of an open break.

Until he understood what was going on, he wouldn’t lightly fall out with Wu Chen. Li Ruobing aside, falling out for no clear reason would simply be absurd. What had happened that warranted it?

Of course, if there really was something between Wu Chen and Su Qingying, that would be more than enough to send him into a rage. But he had no evidence! He hadn’t looked into it!

Since he couldn’t break with Wu Chen for now, even though Wu Chen had openly admitted to having a “secret,” Su Ruiwen couldn’t push any further.

“You still haven’t told me why you came to see Qingying, Mr. Wu.” He found another angle at once.

Wu Chen’s own secret wasn’t his to demand. But Wu Chen had come to see Su Qingying, and as her father, he had every right to ask why.

“Ruobing sent me,” Wu Chen said with a smile.

“To do what?” Su Ruiwen asked.

“To help Miss Su solve a few problems.”

“What problems?”

“Some problems inside Jinfu Group.”

“Hm?!” The sound came heavily through Su Ruiwen’s nose, and his brows drew together for an instant. What problems inside Jinfu Group? He was the chairman and didn’t know about them, but Li Ruobing did? And she meant to help fix them?

The feeling… made him very uncomfortable.

By Wu Chen’s account, Li Ruobing was trying to help Su Qingying. But he himself had known nothing about it.

No word beforehand? Wasn’t she reaching a little far?

Everyone had a sense of territory.

It was like… an ordinary person coming home one day to find a neighbor doing something inside their house. The neighbor explains, “You’ve got mice, so I came in to help you catch them.”

Even if the neighbor were telling the truth and genuinely meant well, the homeowner would still be annoyed. Walking in and doing things without a word first felt like an intrusion.

“Mr. Wu, may I ask what exactly this… problem is?” Su Ruiwen asked after a moment’s thought. It was his company. He had every right to know.

“The second-largest shareholder, Xu Zhenyuan,” Wu Chen said frankly.

“Xu Zhenyuan?” Su Ruiwen’s eyes narrowed by reflex. After a moment’s thought, he asked, “What about Xu Zhenyuan? What has he done?”

For the moment, he couldn’t think of anything harmful Xu Zhenyuan might have done.

Xu Zhenyuan might be a thorn, but… when Jinfu Group first acquired Meiyuan Jewelry and Xu Zhenyuan, Yao Honglin, and the others came over to Jinfu, they had been very well behaved.

It was only in the last two years that he’d become difficult, after Su Ruiwen had been hospitalized with a serious illness and his health had begun its steady decline.

Even so, Su Ruiwen could still keep him firmly in check.

He was very likely to retire early on medical grounds and let Su Qingying take over. Xu Zhenyuan wasn’t the only old hand in the group with ideas of his own. Su Ruiwen had been teaching his daughter all along how to handle the group’s old guard, in every respect.

He had always recognized Xu Zhenyuan’s ability. They weren’t especially close, but they weren’t on especially bad terms either.

Nor did he believe Xu Zhenyuan would do anything to harm Jinfu Group.

“Xu Zhenyuan… hasn’t done anything.” Wu Chen drew the words out a little, smiling.

“Then why did you just call him a problem?” Su Ruiwen asked.

“The problem isn’t anything he’s done. His very presence inside Jinfu Group is the problem,” Wu Chen said bluntly.

“Hm?!” Su Ruiwen frowned again.

“All of Donghai knows the state of your health, Boss Su. After Miss Su won the board’s backing last time, you sped up the handover… I’d guess you’ll have her succeed you before the year is out, won’t you? And transfer your shares into her name,” Wu Chen said.

Su Ruiwen looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded.

There was no point hiding it. Who didn’t know?

“So, Boss Su, once Miss Su is chairman, do you think Xu Zhenyuan will accept her authority? And what will he do then?” Wu Chen asked.

Su Ruiwen didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to. Everyone knew the answer. The moment a twenty-seven-year-old took office as chairman, some of the group’s old hands were bound to make trouble!

It was a problem any giant group with a complicated ownership structure would face!

The company was too big. Factions were inevitable. So was the scramble for power and profit. When a new chairman took over, a major internal shake-up often followed.

Turmoil was entirely foreseeable. At many big corporations, a changing of the guard had led to clashes that brought wholesale executive replacements, mass departures by senior management, plunging share prices, and every kind of operational trouble.

The same could certainly happen at Jinfu Group.

That was why Su Ruiwen had been teaching her all along.

He wanted Su Qingying able to hold the line on her own once he stepped down, so that none of those things could happen.

“So what you mean, Mr. Wu, is that Miss Li sees Xu Zhenyuan as a threat to Qingying’s future…” Su Ruiwen began, then asked, “And?”

“Deal with him,” Wu Chen said.

“Deal with him?” For a moment Su Ruiwen didn’t quite grasp what he meant by that. “How?”

“Send him to prison, or…” Wu Chen smiled. “Have him executed!”

“Hm?!!” Su Ruiwen was utterly stunned.