As Fu Sijue sat down, Gu Ran brazenly settled onto his lap, leaning her entire body against his chest.
“Brother Jue, have you had breakfast?”
Fu Sijue shook his head. Because of last night’s sleep, a glimmer of anticipation had grown in his heart. He had specifically declined the breakfast prepared at Elegant Garden, waiting all along for any movement from the main building.
Seeing this, Gu Ran served Fu Sijue a bowl of porridge, added some refreshing side dishes to his plate, and placed the bowl before him.
“Let’s eat together.”
After saying this, Gu Ran glanced at their current position. Well, they were intimately close, but it definitely wasn’t convenient for eating. After a moment’s thought, she tried to slip out of Fu Sijue’s embrace, but with just a slight movement, a force tightened around her waist. Fu Sijue’s hand firmly held her in place at his side.
“Um, this way it’s not convenient for you to eat.”
With this explanation, Gu Ran clearly felt Fu Sijue relax. She roughly guessed what he had been thinking and smiled slightly, then gently pecked the corner of his mouth before leaning close to his ear to whisper:
“Brother Jue, everything I said last night was true. I won’t run away anymore. From now on, I’ll always stay by your side, forever and ever.”
Fu Sijue suddenly felt his nose sting. His silent heart gradually warmed, as if a beam of light had pierced his dark world, allowing him to see hope.
“Ranran, can I trust you?”
Looking at Fu Sijue’s cautious expression, Gu Ran sighed inwardly. She had truly hurt this man deeply. Even though she was being so proactive in approaching him, why didn’t he believe her yet?
Gu Ran directly wrapped her arms around Fu Sijue and said:
“Brother Jue, I like you. Trust me one more time, okay? I really won’t run away. Even if you try to drive me away, I won’t leave you anymore.”
Gu Ran spoke softly. She was grateful to heaven for giving her a second chance. This time, she would stay by this man’s side always. She would protect this man and everything he cared about. She would make everyone who hurt her and Fu Sijue in their previous life pay the price—she would make them die without a burial place.
“Alright, I believe you, Ranran. Remember, this time it’s your own choice to stay by my side. If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll break your legs. I don’t care if I have to keep you confined.”
Hearing these somewhat vicious words, Gu Ran wasn’t angry at all. This man always said one thing but meant another.
Break her legs? Probably not going to happen. As for confining her… well… she actually wanted this man to confine her heart.
But if she said that now, this man probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. They had a lifetime to entangle with each other—let time bear witness to everything.
The two of them fed each other as if no one else was around—her feeding him a bite, him feeding her a bite—making Xiao Ya, standing to the side, blink repeatedly and rub her eyes, wondering if there was something wrong with her vision.
Just then, hurried footsteps came from outside the dining room, accompanied by a man’s anxious voice:
“Milord, our goods…”
Before he could finish his sentence, the man saw the intimate couple in the dining room, and all sound abruptly ceased.
The man instinctively rubbed his eyes and stared at the two people at the dining table, his mouth slightly agape, eyes wide, his face flashing with a strange, almost horrified expression.
“What’s the matter? So flustered and restless—have you forgotten the rules here?”
Fu Sijue’s good mood had been disrupted, and it was no surprise that his expression darkened. He looked at the man standing frozen before him, frowned slightly, and spoke in a cold tone.
The man immediately snapped back to attention, lowering his gaze and not daring to look at the two people in front of him anymore, but he remained silent.
Fu Sijue noticed the urgency in the man’s eyes, withdrew his gaze, and reached out to gently stroke the fluffy head of the petite woman in his arms. His voice instantly softened with tenderness.
“Ranran, I need to go handle something. You go ahead and eat first, alright?”
Gu Ran was very understanding. She knew the man beside her had many identities unknown to others. Judging by the assistant’s hesitant expression, she could tell something had happened that she wasn’t supposed to hear.
Gu Ran nodded, but as she was getting off Fu Sijue’s lap, she said something.
“Brother Jue, could you buy me a phone?”
Gu Ran’s phone had been confiscated by Fu Sijue half a month ago after she was caught trying to escape, and all her connections to the outside world had been severed.
In this day and age, it’s almost impossible to get by without a phone. Since she had decided to stay and build a life with Fu Sijue, she needed to reclaim some of her identity.
Hearing Gu Ran’s request, Fu Sijue’s expression shifted slightly. The relaxed mood from moments ago tensed up again, and his gaze toward Gu Ran carried a hint of wariness.
Gu Ran knew exactly what he was worried about. She kissed the corner of his lips again and said with a smile, “Brother Jue, I won’t cause any more trouble. Since I’ve promised to stay here with you, I won’t run away. Trust me, alright?”
Fu Sijue was completely defenseless against such a soft, obedient Gu Ran. With just a few gentle words, he surrendered completely, casting aside all his worries and tension.
“Alright, I’ll have someone bring you a phone later. Is there anything else?”
Gu Ran thought for a moment and shook her head.
“No, that’s all. You can go attend to your matters.”
With that, Gu Ran finally got off Fu Sijue’s lap and sat down in a nearby chair.
Fu Sijue didn’t linger any longer. He affectionately ruffled Gu Ran’s hair, then stood up and left the dining room with the man, heading straight out of the main building.
“Milord, Miss Gu… do you really believe what she said?”
The man followed cautiously behind Fu Sijue. As Fu Sijue’s most trusted aide, he had watched his lord suffer both physically and emotionally because of this woman over the past few months.
All the subordinates found it hard to bear and had almost unanimously advised Fu Sijue to let the woman go. But Gu Ran was Fu Sijue’s taboo—anyone who tried to persuade him had been punished, and he, as the special assistant, was no exception. The whip marks on his back hadn’t fully faded yet.
“Enough, Dan Zuo. Remember, Ranran is the lady of this house and the only woman for me, Fu Sijue. I expect you all to respect her.”
Fu Sijue’s tone was icy. After speaking, he narrowed his cold eyes at Dan Zuo beside him. Dan Zuo stiffened, feeling a phantom pain on his back as he recalled the three lashes from not long ago. The words on the tip of his tongue were forcibly swallowed back.
“I’m sorry, Milord. We’re just worried about you.”
“I know what I’m doing. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that this time, but don’t let it happen again. Now, tell me, what’s wrong with that shipment?”
Dan Zuo immediately shifted to the matter at hand.
“Someone is trying to hack into our internal system to steal the core data of that shipment. Dan You’s side is struggling to hold them off.”
Upon hearing Dan Zuo’s words, Fu Sijue quickened his pace slightly. Soon, the two entered Elegant Garden directly and went straight up to the second-floor study.
Fu Sijue opened the laptop on the desk, clicked on a black-and-white webpage, entered a long string of code, and then accessed a website codenamed “l”.
Meanwhile, Dan Zuo made a video call. Shortly after, a face with stern features appeared on the phone screen.
“Milord, our brothers can barely hold on. It seems the other party has hired several top-ten experts from the hacker ranking to jointly attack our system.”
Fu Sijue’s gaze was sharp, his eyes focused straight ahead as he calmly uttered a few words.
“Thirty seconds.”
Then, his slender fingers flew across the keyboard so fast they almost created afterimages. With rapid tapping sounds, in twenty-eight seconds, three red dots appeared on the computer screen, which Fu Sijue quickly captured.
Just as he was about to capture the final IP address, the opponent detected it in time, quickly withdrew, and immediately cleared all traces. Fu Sijue slightly furrowed his brow, a cold glint flashing in his eyes. Not bad—he had encountered a true expert.
Fu Sijue didn’t prolong the engagement. He simply said to Dan You through the phone:
“Send the three captured identities to the Dark Web. Someone will take care of them.”
Both Dan Zuo beside him and Dan You on the video call simultaneously mourned for those three hackers.