After Shang Shao asked that question, the reply he received was not from Ying Yin, but the sound of Lin Cunkang knocking at the door.
Ying Yin stepped slightly aside. When Lin Cunkang pushed the door open, he instinctively sensed that both the atmosphere and the way they were standing felt somewhat off, though he did not think deeply about it. He merely reported truthfully, “The car has arrived at the entrance. Shall we leave now?”
Shang Shao nodded. “Yes.”
The words Ying Yin had gathered at the tip of her tongue, the courage that had risen to her heart, all dissipated with those three words. She gave Lin Cunkang a polite smile. “Thank you for the trouble.” Then she turned back, her expression composed as ever, and inclined herself slightly toward Shang Shao. “And thank you as well, Mr. Shang, for tonight’s hospitality.”
After speaking, without waiting for the man behind her to respond further, she straightened her shoulders and neck and walked out of the beautiful dining room first.
Cheng Junyi had both hands clasped in front of her. The moment she saw Ying Yin emerge, her delight was almost as if they had been separated for ages. Paying no attention at all to Shang Shao, she focused solely on greeting Ying Yin, leaning close to whisper softly. “I asked! That shawl is made from wool from little lambs in Kashmir.”
Ying Yin was distracted and absent-minded, managing only a perfunctory smile. In truth, she had not heard a single word.
Thinking she was disappointed, Cheng Junyi hurried to comfort her. “Don’t worry. It sounds really precious, but couldn’t we just go to Kashmir and buy two lambs?”
Whenever Cheng Junyi got even a little excited, she tended to forget to keep her voice down. Shang Shao heard her clearly enough. His brows knit slightly as he asked Lin Cunkang, “What is she talking about?”
Lin Cunkang had heard it clearly as well. Amused by her wonderfully odd train of thought, he replied with a suppressed laugh, “The shawl. She says Miss Ying treasures it so much she can’t bear to put it down.”
Shang Shao’s footsteps paused for the briefest moment.
They passed through the winding corridor, the glass doors now close at hand, trembling faintly under the force of the sea wind. Outside, two cars were parked one before the other. At the front was a Hong Kong-plated Maybach; behind it, a Mercedes business van.
A waiter pushed open the glass door for them and offered a warning. “Careful of the wind.”
Who could have expected the gust of sea wind that rushed in at that instant to be so fierce? Before Ying Yin could even react, the suit jacket draped over her shoulders was swept away at once.
By reflex, she half turned around, looking toward the direction the wind had carried it.
And in that instant, Shang Shao saw the faint redness rimming her eyes.
The cascading crystal chandelier hanging beneath the portico trembled in the wind, its translucent crystal strands colliding with one another, producing a crisp sound like wind chimes.
Shang Shao stopped, bent down, and picked up the women’s blazer that had fallen at his feet. When he straightened up, he didn’t say a word – his eyes were fixed only on Ying Yin.
The shifting lamplight cast ripples across the floor like a pond stirred by the breeze, the light lapping against her white gown.
It took only a fleeting moment for Ying Yin to go from bewilderment to composure. She gave an instruction to Junyi. “Go and thank Mr. Shang.”
Cheng Junyi had only taken a few quick steps before stopping, because Shang Shao was already walking over. He shook the blazer open and once again draped it over Ying Yin’s shoulders, his expression still perfectly calm.
Once they were outside, the chauffeur had already respectfully opened the rear door of the Mercedes and was standing at attention beside it. Ying Yin instinctively headed toward the Mercedes. Just as she was about to sit down, Shang Shao said flatly, “Take the front passenger seat.”
Not only Ying Yin, but everyone present was taken aback, their confusion plain on their faces.
Ying Yin didn’t move. With both hands clutching the blazer tightly around herself, she looked back at him in bewilderment. But Shang Shao had already walked around the car and pulled open the driver’s door. “I’m driving this myself.”
Lin Cunkang coughed softly to remind him, “But you…”
He had been drinking.
Shang Shao didn’t let him finish. “I know what I’m doing,” he replied.
Lin Cunkang still had a concern. “And over there…”
“Half an hour. Let them wait.”
Lin Cunkang said nothing more, and nodded. “Very well.”
Ying Yin still hadn’t moved. Shang Shao gave her a glance. “Don’t just stand there.”
With a thud, the driver’s door closed, and the car’s engine roared to life.
Ying Yin had no choice but to clutch the blazer’s lapel with one hand, lift the hem of her gown with the other, and lower herself into the seat. Cheng Junyi, baffled, headed for the back seat, but Lin Cunkang quickly stopped her.
“Hmm?” Junyi’s eyes went wide.
Lin Cunkang said, “You take that one. That one’s the expensive one.”
“…”
Lin Cunkang closed the rear door behind her. A second later, the Mercedes’ headlights sliced through the night, and the car glided away gracefully and silently, out of everyone’s sight.
Once Ying Yin was in the car, she didn’t speak. Silently, she opened an app, typed in an address, and started the navigation.
The phone’s automated voice broke the silence, drawing a faint, cool laugh from Shang Shao.
“Half an hour isn’t enough for me to go from your place to my next destination. I never said I was taking you home.”
“What do you mean, Young Master Shang?”
After sharing a meal, she had gone from “Mr. Shang” to “Young Master Shang.”
Shang Shao kept his hands on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “So you’re not afraid of me anymore? Calling me ‘Young Master Shang’ – that might offend me.” His tone gave nothing away.
Ying Yin pressed her lips together. “So what if it does?”
“So nothing. Except I might just pull over halfway and throw you out on the roadside.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The Mercedes came to a firm, abrupt stop. Shang Shao turned his face to look at her. “Get out.”
Ying Yin took a deep breath, then another, and unbuckled her seatbelt without hesitation. Just as she was about to push the door open, Shang Shao seized her wrist, and a click followed – the sound of the doors locking.
Because it was this man who had pressed the button, the act somehow carried an unhurried, deliberate quality.
A surge of injustice and anger, both mixed with the feeling of being toyed with, rose within her. Her eyes reddened further as she glared at him defiantly. “What do you mean, Young Master Shang?”
“Miss Ying,” he said, “someone as proud as you could never do that kind of thing.”
Ying Yin was stunned. Her hesitant, half-hearted attempt at seduction lay before him so nakedly exposed, laid bare for his scrutiny. The moment he saw through her, a tangle of emotions – so complex that even she couldn’t sort them out – overwhelmed her completely.
Shang Shao curved one corner of his lips in a faint smile. His gaze was cool yet pressing, but his tone remained casual. “A woman who can’t pull off that kind of thing – I wouldn’t let her into my bed. You should know, pleasure of that sort requires a certain natural talent.”
Ying Yin parted her lips and let out a soft, breathy laugh. Her expression was one of incredulous amusement, as if she found the whole thing utterly absurd.
Shang Shao smiled silently, then leaned over to pull her seatbelt into place. So close, the clean scent of his cologne mingled with the faint, lingering aroma of a specialty South American tobacco, barely perceptible yet hovering delicately around Ying Yin’s senses.
Her heart felt as though it were adrift on a cloud in the night sky. Though her body was seated securely, a strange sense of weightlessness seized hold of her.
She couldn’t figure him out. She couldn’t find solid ground.
Shang Shao fastened her seatbelt, then lifted his eyes to look at her. The moonlight was dim, casting his gaze deep and obscure.
When he spoke again, his tone was calm, yet somehow, inexplicably reassuring. “I was lying. I’ll take you home.”
The Mercedes started, stopped, then started again, forcing the Maybach behind them to do the same.
Junyi said with firm conviction, “Mr. Shang must not have driven himself in a long time. That’s why he’s so rusty.”
Lin Cunkang smiled. “It has indeed been a long time since the young master last drove himself – especially since the last time he personally played chauffeur for a lady.”
Ying Yin kept her eyes on the passenger-side mirror. The Maybach’s headlights followed them, but always kept a considerable distance.
“Don’t worry about your assistant. Uncle Kang will take good care of her.”
Hearing this, Ying Yin withdrew her gaze and asked, her thoughts in turmoil, “Half an hour isn’t enough to take me home. What exactly are you trying to do?”
Shang Shao curved his lips. The next second, he put the phone to his ear and dialed. “Tell them to start without me. I’ll be there in an hour.”
Ying Yin: “…”
In the Maybach behind them, Uncle Kang paused for a moment as well, looking somewhat resigned, but still replied, “Understood.”
Just before hanging up, Shang Shao instructed, “Take Miss Cheng home first. Don’t follow me.”
Lin Cunkang ended the call, sighed, and asked Cheng Junyi, “Do you have your house keys? Can you get inside?”
Junyi: “…Huh?”
At the next intersection, the Mercedes and the Maybach went their separate ways – one turning left out of the estate gates, the other doubling back to the right.
Ying Yin’s heart, which had just begun to settle, instantly rose again. She jolted upright in her seat, turning her head to watch helplessly as the gates slipped past. “What do you mean by this?”
Shang Shao slowed the car down, resting one arm on the window ledge. “The wine you chose wasn’t enough to get me drunk, but driving under the influence is still illegal, Miss Ying.”
Ying Yin had completely forgotten about that, but she couldn’t find a single reason to argue.
She was silent for a long moment, then gritted her teeth. “Call that driver back.”
“He’s off duty.”
“You…” Ying Yin choked. “You said you would take me home.”
“I said I would – not that I would do it right now.”
Ying Yin’s words turned sharply sarcastic: “It seems your gentlemanliness is only valid for a week. I clearly thought too highly of you before.”
“Is that so.”
Shang Shao slowly brought the car to a smooth stop at the roadside. He then opened the center console and took out a white porcelain cigarette case. With a single finger, he deftly flicked open the lid, and a cigarette tube slipped out along with a metal lighter.
Biting the cigarette between his lips, Shang Shao tilted his head, lowered his gaze, and lit it. After taking a drag, he lifted his eyes and gave Ying Yin an extremely faint, cold smirk. “If you really had thought so highly of me, you wouldn’t have tried to seduce me tonight – not even a little attempt, not even a gamble.”
He rested one hand on the steering wheel and tapped the ash from his cigarette with the fingers of the other. “In the end, you think I’ll take any woman who comes along – if she’s willing and her looks pass muster, then why not?”
Ying Yin said nothing.
This man understood everything. She had no interest in dressing things up – it would only humiliate herself.
“So then,” Shang Shao smiled, “actually, you were still hoping to succeed, weren’t you? Would you rather I take you to a hotel suite, or perhaps somewhere closer?”
Ying Yin’s heart tightened. “You’ve already rejected me. You can’t go back on your word.”
“I rejected you because I thought you belonged to Mr. Song. Since you’ve denied that, why wouldn’t I take the opportunity?”
Ying Yin suddenly felt her mouth go dry. “You just said – this kind of thing requires natural talent… I… I don’t have any talent.”
“I think you do,” Shang Shao refuted her lightly, his tone casual. “Besides, how would you know without trying?”
“Mr. Shang!” Ying Yin sat bolt upright, her hands tightly twisting her clutch. “Please have some self-respect!”
Shang Shao removed his gemstone cufflinks and rolled up his shirt sleeves, the cigarette still perched between his lips. He tilted his head slightly and gave a faint smile. “You were right about me. I am exactly the kind of man you think I am. So now that we both want this, Miss Ying – shall we have another moment of hesitation, or shall we get straight to the point?”
The doors were still locked, and his presence was growing more dangerous by the second. With no way out, Ying Yin yanked off her seatbelt with a sharp sound, then kicked off her high heels and clutched one tightly in front of her like a weapon. “I’m warning you – don’t you dare make a move. I really will…”
Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, and her voice had grown hoarse with tears.
Shang Shao took the cigarette between his fingers and rested his arm along the back of his seat. His gaze traveled slowly and deliberately up Ying Yin’s figure. “Like this, how could you ever be someone else’s caged bird? No canary dares to peck at its master.”
The tears she had been holding back all evening finally broke through the dam. Two clear streams slid down her cheeks as she blinked.
On the verge of collapse, her voice and shoulders trembling, she still spoke with absolute certainty: “Shang Shao, I will call the police! I really will call the police…” Her nose stung, her voice thick with sobs. “Even if it ruins me – even if everyone finds out – I will still call the police!”
Whether it was her desperate, burn-it-all-down threat that finally worked, or whether the man opposite her had simply lost interest, the car fell silent. Only the quiet, lingering scent of the tobacco smoke between his fingers filled the space.
After a long moment, Shang Shao looked at her intently. The smile on his lips was entirely different from before.
“That’s the first time you’ve said my name.”
So this was what he looked like when he genuinely smiled – gentle.
Ying Yin’s body was still trembling, but her grip on the high heel had noticeably loosened.
She didn’t know whether that gentleness was real or just an illusion blurred by her tears.
“That day, you said you were afraid of me – were you afraid of me as a person, or afraid that I am this kind of person?”
Ying Yin’s tears streamed down without pause. With every blink, another line fell. The tip of her nose had turned red, and her face looked as fragile as thin porcelain. She kept shaking her head, but couldn’t utter a single word.
Shang Shao stubbed out his cigarette in the car’s ashtray, held her gaze, and slowly, steadily leaned his upper body across the center console.
“It’s all right. Leave it to me,” he said in a low, reassuring voice. Finally, gently and with certainty, he took the high heel from her hand. “No matter which kind of fear it is, you don’t need to worry.”
For some reason, those words were like a switch. Ying Yin burst into loud, wailing sobs, tears pouring down as she cried like a little girl.
She threw all caution to the wind, clutching Shang Shao’s collar tightly, pressing her forehead hard against his broad, solid shoulder. Between sobs, her words came out broken and halting. “Why do you believe me? I still haven’t… haven’t told you about my relationship with Song Shizhang…”
Shang Shao looked down, his gaze helpless as he watched her thin shoulders heave with each cry.
“I’m listening,” he said, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. “You can tell me now. Personally.”
