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The kettle on the stove bubbled and simmered.
The water boiled.
Jiang Se picked up the ladle and began brewing tea calmly.
“Not planning anything. Keeping the recording was just for precaution. See, now it’s useful.”
She pushed the freshly brewed tea over and said: “Chairman Lu, this recording only has one copy. If you take it, there won’t be a second copy in the world.”
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyes to the steaming tea bowl, the corners of his lips lightly curled: “A year ago, my third uncle once had designs on Hongsheng.”
Jiang Se’s hand holding the ladle paused. After a moment, she looked up: “I know. The person Lu Jinqin bribed, Xu Zhou and I have been watching. Too bad he didn’t act in the end.”
“He did act, but after receiving my warning, he didn’t mix the problematic products into Hongsheng.” Lu Huaiyan said as he slowly lifted his gaze to meet Jiang Se’s eyes, “So this recording was prepared for my third uncle?”
He asked, but his tone was very certain.
Third uncle Lu Jinqin was a useless lump in the Lu family, with no real power.
Privately, he opened a tech company with other second-generation heirs, using the Lu family name as a brand. It did fairly well until the miraculous resurgence of Hongsheng.
Maybe out of envy for Hongsheng’s momentum, or fear Hongsheng would squeeze their market share, he got dirty ideas and bribed someone inside Hongsheng to tamper with their products.
Back then Hongsheng had been on the verge of bankruptcy because a product had an accident, and that was why the Cen family bought them out. If another problem happened, wanting to turn the tide wouldn’t be an easy thing.
After Lu Huaiyan noticed, he specially made a call to settle this matter.
He didn’t expect the girl didn’t need his help at all. Not only had she set up a trap waiting for someone to jump in, she could even cut off his third uncle’s escape route like taking the firewood from under the pot.
Having an affair with his sister-in-law, not only giving his elder brother a bright green hat, but also letting someone raise his son for him, and later still wanting to rely on that son to take away a portion of the family property.
If these things exploded, would Lu Jinqin still have a way to live?
He had known long ago about his stepmother and his third uncle, and he had quite a lot of evidence of the two of them having an affair.
But now was not the time to expose this scandal.
This scandal could kill his third uncle, but at the same time it would bring unfavorable consequences to the Lu family.
Lu Huaiyan didn’t want to lose the big for the small.
Besides, he had long wanted his father to taste the feeling of being betrayed. The deeper his relationship with Lu Huaixuan, the greater the blow after learning the truth.
How nice.
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyes to look at Jiang Se.
He had to admit, this girl completely broke his previous impression of her.
Not a fool, not a vase.
When she should strike hard, she never hesitated. No wonder the Cen family still wasn’t willing to give her up even now.
“Everyone who knows Cao Xun knows his younger brother is his reverse scale, and Cao Xun never suffers a loss, his methods are also ruthless. Jiang Se, speaking in business terms, this recording in your hand isn’t of much use to me.”
When Lu Huaiyan said Lu Jinqin’s name, Jiang Se already knew the value of this recording had dropped.
Since he knew the one having an affair with Hu Yuping was Lu Jinqin, with his methods, the evidence in his hand was probably even more than hers.
It wasn’t her first time negotiating a transaction; unexpected things always appear at the negotiation table.
Jiang Se picked up the teacup on the table and lightly sipped.
“This recording indeed isn’t of much use to Chairman Lu, but since the recording is in my hand, not releasing it seems a bit of a pity. I want to ask Chairman Lu, what timing would be most suitable to put it out?” Jiang Se lifted her eyes from the tea, smiling as she said, “After all, I’ve found Lu Jinqin unpleasant for a long time.”
Back then Hu Yuping had interfered in the marriage between Lu Huaiyan’s mother Han Yin and Lu Jinzong. Because of that, Han Yin had been bedridden for years, and after the divorce went to the mountains to recuperate.
The whole family broke apart from then on. Jiang Se didn’t believe Lu Huaiyan didn’t hate Hu Yuping.
But he held onto the evidence without exposing the affair between his stepmother and Lu Jinqin, he must have other plans.
At the moment, several Lu family projects in Europe had already started. Lu Corporation was ambitious; already the leader in the domestic new energy field, they now set their sights on the overseas market, wanting to bite off a big chunk of meat from those foreigners.
Right now they were in the spotlight, and naturally at such a crucial moment they couldn’t let any scandal explode.
If the timing of releasing the recording wasn’t chosen well, it might bring some negative effects.
What Jiang Se was discussing with Lu Huaiyan was precisely this “timing.”
Lu Huaiyan of course understood the deeper meaning behind Jiang Se’s words.
On the surface, the girl was threatening him; if today’s deal couldn’t be reached, then don’t blame her for doing something inappropriate at an inappropriate time.
But in just one cup of tea’s time, she had shifted the content of the transaction from the recording in her hand to the “timing” of releasing it.
And this vague and illusory “timing” actually was something that could be traded.
The man set down the teacup, his eyelids lowered as he looked at her.
The girl across from him seemed as if she didn’t feel his gaze at all, sitting upright, brows and eyes gently smiling, looking as harmless as could be.
Lu Huaiyan inexplicably felt like smoking.
But he hadn’t forgotten the cigarette that had been pinched out last time, so he took out a lighter to fiddle with in his hand, suppressing the craving, and along the way he threw out an irrelevant question.
“Besides mixing drinks and snooker, what else do you like to play?”
Jiang Se froze.
She didn’t understand what meaning this question had.
Small talk? But between her and him, what small talk was there to have?
Her gaze swept past the lighter in his hand, and the smile in her brows and eyes faded a bit: “It doesn’t seem necessary for Chairman Lu and me to talk about these things.”
The girl’s dark, clear eyes held undisguised rejection.
Lu Huaiyan looked at her for a moment. “If I say what timing is appropriate, you’ll obediently choose that timing to release it?”
Jiang Se: “Depends on what Chairman Lu is willing to offer in return.”
Lu Huaiyan set down the lighter and let out a low laugh: “Go on, what return do you want?”
—
When Jiang Se went to pay, she learned that Lu Huaiyan had already settled the bill in advance.
She didn’t care.
Just a tea bill, if he wanted to pay, let him pay.
The two had stayed in the tea house for about an hour; the weather had gone from clear skies to a fine, misty rain.
Jiang Se hadn’t brought an umbrella. Pushing open the tea house’s glass door, looking at the raindrops falling from midair, she only hesitated for two seconds before stepping into the autumn rain with long strides.
The parking lot of the commercial area where the tea house was located wasn’t far.
Jiang Se had come in Yu Shiying’s little Golf. The tea house only had four or five exclusive parking spaces; Lu Huaiyan’s black Bentley was parked right beside the Golf.
When she headed to the parking lot, Lu Huaiyan was standing behind the tea room’s floor-to-ceiling window.
That window directly faced the parking lot.
Watching Jiang Se’s figure soaked in the rain, the man’s eyes behind his glasses narrowed slightly.
After the two had settled the “return,” this girl was too lazy to stay even a moment longer; after saying “pleasant transaction,” she didn’t even look back before leaving the tea room.
The rain fell quickly, and she was soon wet.
The thin fabric clung to her skin, outlining slender yet full curves; the strands of hair sticking to her cheeks and neck set off her skin with a milky white.
Droplets slid slowly down from her jaw, and the half-exposed collarbone at her neckline was like a shallow pool, lightly holding the water.
As if sensing his gaze, in the moment she pulled the car door, she looked toward him.
Under the sky thick with dark clouds, her whole person was sunk in the hazy misty rain, and standing beside a shabby, beat-up sedan, she didn’t look in the least cramped or embarrassed.
Her eyes cold, her expression cold.
Like a cold and gorgeous water spirit walking out of a lake.
Two seconds later, she withdrew her eyes, pulled open the car door, got in, and neatly started the car and left.
Lu Huaiyan didn’t pull back his gaze until the car disappeared into the curtain of rain. His head lowered slightly, and he let out a very light laugh.
That bit of cigarette craving flared up again.
He took out a cigarette pack, tapped out a cigarette, and when his eyes fell on it his movements paused.
This cigarette had been lit before; on the flattened tip was a ring of black carbon marks.
The scene of the girl pinching out the cigarette, like an old film slowed down, replayed again in his mind.
Two deathly-white fingers, dark eyes hidden in a depth of smoke where the light couldn’t reach, and strands of hair lifted by the wind brushing past his neck.
A faint coolness and a faint itch.
The man half-closed his eyes, the gaze under his thin pale eyelids dark and unclear. After a moment, he pushed the cigarette back into the pack, fished his phone off the coffee table, and sent Jiang Se a text message.
—
After Jiang Se returned to the apartment and took a shower, she went to “Wangchuan.”
When she went out today, Jiang Chuan had specially reminded her to go to the bar when she came back, saying there was something he needed to discuss with her.
That day Jiang Ye had come back covered in injuries, but said not a word about Cao Liang, only saying he’d gotten into a fight with someone from the team.
Jiang Chuan and Yu Shiying didn’t suspect anything, scolded him twice, and the next day drove him back to the base for training.
When Jiang Se arrived, Jiang Chuan and Yu Shiying were counting the stored liquor in the shop.
Seeing her come back, Yu Shiying quickly picked up a small wooden spoon, scooped some clear wine into a glass, and said, “Come taste this; this is the osmanthus liquor brewed the year before last, it’s matured now, we can use it for cocktails tonight.”
Jiang Se took the glass, finished it in one sip, and immediately her lips and teeth filled with the fragrance of osmanthus.
The wine wasn’t sweet, but very mellow, with an extremely rich osmanthus aroma.
“So fragrant.”
Jiang Chuan was holding a pen, writing and marking on the account book. Hearing this, he laughed and said, “Of course your mom’s liquor is fragrant. Their Yu family has brewed liquor for generations, and the formulas in your mom’s hands were all passed down from her ancestors. How could our ancestors’ liquor not be fragrant?”
“Stop bragging in front of the child.” Yu Shiying chided lightly, then turned to ask Jiang Se, “Meeting with your friend today, was everything fine?”
She asked carefully, a bit of hesitation in her tone.
The first night Jiang Se returned to Tongcheng, Jiang Ye had specially reminded his dad to install a camera in the backyard.
Only then did they learn that Jiang Se’s friend from Beicheng seemed to be on bad terms with her.
It was also a coincidence that the time Yu Shiying went to Beicheng to see Jiang Se, she had just happened to see the group photo of Lu Huaiyan with the Jiang siblings at the Cen family’s place.
In the photo, Jiang Se still looked very young, only sixteen or seventeen. The little girl stood between her brother and Lu Huaiyan, head turned toward Lu Huaiyan, smiling with her brows and eyes softly curved, very pretty.
But the young man in the photo wasn’t looking at her, his clear and refined brows and eyes carried frost, as if he wasn’t very willing to take the photo.
But that face was really handsome, memorably handsome, to the point that the moment Lu Huaiyan walked into the bar that night, Yu Shiying recognized him.
She had always thought that someone who could make Sese smile like that must be someone very important to her.
Who knew their relationship actually wasn’t good.
Hearing the worry in Yu Shiying’s tone, Jiang Se curved her lips a bit and smiled, “It was fine. I just asked him for a favor. We probably won’t meet again in the future.”
Jiang Chuan nodded. “Find some time to have your mom go with you to pick out a car. It’ll be more convenient when you go out to meet friends.”
Hearing this, Jiang Se looked toward the account book on the bar counter.
“‘Wangchuan’ has had good profits these past few years, enough to buy you a better car.” Jiang Chuan closed the account book and mentioned a few car models. “See if you like any of these? Or we can take you to the dealership in a couple days?”
The starting prices of these cars were all over a million yuan. Not as good as the cars Jiang Se used to drive, but still luxury cars, much better than the Golf now.
When Jiang Chuan calculated things with his account book and phone, he never avoided Jiang Se.
She knew the money for this car would basically empty out the savings Jiang Chuan and Yu Shiying had accumulated over most of their lives.
And not only the car, their occasional words hinted that they wanted to leave her the house on Liyuan Street, and then have the three siblings split “Wangchuan.”
To make up for the twenty-three years they lost her, they were practically giving her everything they had.
This wasn’t the life Jiang Se had imagined before coming to Tongcheng.
All the unfamiliarity, the distance, the coldness she had prepared for and was ready to accept calmly, none of it existed.
A faint, strange emotion rose at the depths of her eyes.
Jiang Se slightly lowered her gaze; when she lifted it again, her dark eyes were already tinted with a smile.
“No need to pick. Same as you, I’ll just get a mini electric car.” She lifted a hand to prop her chin and said to Jiang Chuan, “Didn’t you say your little electric car is nimble like a rabbit, and even the narrowest parking spots can’t stump it? I want one like that.”
Jiang Chuan’s mini electric car was specifically for deliveries.
This area was all old residential blocks, the streets narrow and old, and parking was difficult, so he had to buy a small car.
For him it was fitting, but for Jiang Se it was a bit too cheap-looking.
The couple exchanged looks for a moment, then Yu Shiying said, “Your dad’s little car is nimble, but it lacks presence. Tomorrow Mom will take you to a dealership to look, let’s pick something more impressive. You don’t have to save money for us; this money is meant for you.”
“Got it.” Jiang Se gestured with her eyes toward the account book on the bar counter. “After buying the car, the leftover money, can I use it for investment? I happen to be lacking some funds for an investment.”
Hearing this, Yu Shiying didn’t try to persuade her anymore.
The money was for Jiang Se anyway, she could spend it however she liked.
Once the matter of the car was settled, it was almost time for the bar to open.
Jiang Chuan and Yu Shiying were each busy with their own things, and Jiang Se didn’t disturb them, finding herself a quiet corner to sit down.
It was only then that she saw a certain person she thought she would never meet again had sent her a text more than an hour ago.
Lu Huaiyan: [Meeting Cao Xun at Junyue at seven on Monday night, coming?]
