Song Shuangxu was surprised. “So you’re planning to hand that prize melon right over to Chenxing?”
“They want it so badly, they can have it.”
“I thought you wouldn’t be able to let this go.”
“It’s my own child, so of course I care about it. I won’t let other people trample on all my hard work—and I won’t do that to myself, either. Chenxing wants a price war, and we can’t beat them. It makes sense for Yundun to choose them. If it were the same product, I’d pick the cheaper one too.”
Over the past two days, Shu Yang had come to terms with things and convinced herself: “It’s fine. If the other side used dirty tricks, then losing just means I misjudged them. I’m not the one who should be ashamed. My conscience is clear.”
“The money you gave me already helped me sort out Feixue’s accounts. We’ve also paid everyone the wages and bonuses they were owed. Worst comes to worst, I’ll start over. Once I’m better, I’ll get my revenge!”
Song Shuangxu suddenly brought up the past. “Do you remember when we first met?”
“Of course,” Shu Yang said. “You were so aloof back then. You had acute gastroenteritis, and I kindly took you to the hospital and ran around taking care of everything. Then you paid me off with a roll of U.S. dollars.”
“I wasn’t paying you off. I was thanking you,” Song Shuangxu corrected her. “I’d just been betrayed by my best friend, so I didn’t want to make any new friends.”
“No wonder you never contacted me again after you left the hospital,” Shu Yang said. “Come to think of it, I should thank my half-breed ex-boyfriend.”
Back then, that boyfriend lived in the same building as Song Shuangxu. One night, he sent Song Shuangxu a harassing text.
Whether or not to tell the person involved about something like that was a difficult question.
After thinking it over, Song Shuangxu still forwarded the message to Shu Yang, risking the possibility that she’d end up blamed by both sides.
“When you stormed over to my place that day, I thought you were going to hit me,” Song Shuangxu said. “I never expected you to drag me off to find him, slap him twice right there—one for yourself and one for me—and then dump him with style.”
“I remember thinking, ‘This woman is so free and easy. I really like her.’” Song Shuangxu turned to look at Shu Yang, her eyes smiling but utterly sincere.
“I’m glad that years later, you’re still the same Shu Yang who knows when to hold on and when to let go.”
Shu Yang opened her arms and gave her a hug. “Then take a page from your senior sister. The most important thing in life is to learn not to take things too hard. Men? They’re everywhere.”
Song Shuangxu froze. For a moment, her expression looked like someone had just uncovered a secret she’d tried hard to hide. “How did you know…”
“I guessed.” Shu Yang smiled, weak but sly. “Song Shuangxu, your eyes are so beautiful. It’s a shame they can only see your brother.”
*
It was nearly ten by the time Shuangxu returned to the Shen household that night.
As she got out of the car, her phone rang in her pocket. It was a call from the Song Residence.
There was no way to keep her return to the country a secret from the Song Residence. After she’d appeared in public at Shen Yu’s birthday party two days earlier, the rumors that she’d returned to Yancheng had become indisputable fact.
She’d come back without their permission. Cui Ning was bound to look for her sooner or later, and Shuangxu wasn’t surprised.
Although Shuangxu bore the Song surname, she didn’t truly fit the role of the Song Residence’s Eldest Miss. She was Song Mianzhi’s daughter, but Madam Song, Cui Ning, was not her Mom.
She had grown up in the Shen household and had never been close to the people of the Song Residence—in fact, their ties could only be called tenuous.
Five years ago, they had forcibly packed her off overseas, making what little affection there was between them even more threadbare.
Standing beneath a tree outside, Shuangxu heard a poised, dignified woman’s voice through the phone. “When did you come back?”
“Last Tuesday.”
“If I hadn’t heard someone mention it today, I wouldn’t have known you were back in the country,” Cui Ning said. “You’ve been back for so many days and still haven’t come home to visit.”
Her words reproached Shuangxu for being unfilial and ill-mannered, but Shuangxu knew better than anyone that if she really went back for a visit, she’d only be treated with disdain.
What Cui Ning was truly reproaching her for was returning to the country without their permission.
“I’ve had a lot going on lately. I’ll come back once I’ve finished everything,” Shuangxu said.
“Come back this weekend.”
Cui Ning issued the order without leaving her any room to refuse, then coldly hung up.
Shuangxu lowered the phone from her ear and, knowing Cui Ning could no longer hear her, muttered, “Whoever wants to go can go.”
She had just lifted a foot to head inside when a horn suddenly blared beside her.
Startled, Shuangxu finally noticed the Koenigsegg parked not far away by the roadside, looking like a giant cockroach.
The window rolled down. He Tingzhou sat in the car, watching her.
Shuangxu didn’t want to deal with him, but she couldn’t be rude.
So the instant she saw him, she swiftly shifted her gaze away and kept walking as if she hadn’t noticed him.
Like a wide-awake blind person.
She had barely taken a step when the man’s cool, faint voice came from behind her. “Don’t pretend.”
With her back to him, Shuangxu took a deep breath, then turned around politely. “Brother Tingzhou, what a coincidence.”
“Not a coincidence. I’m here for you. Come over.”
Shuangxu approached in two tiny, mincing steps, as if her feet were bound, then stopped outside the car, two meters away. “Is there something you need?”
There she went with “you” again.
He Tingzhou looked calmly at her resistance, as though being any closer to him would leave her unable to breathe and on the verge of suffocation.
“I don’t like looking up at people. Get in and we’ll talk.”
So demanding.
Shuangxu no longer needed him to cooperate with her, and wanted to avoid him as much as possible. “I just came back from the hospital. I might be covered in germs. It wouldn’t be good if I infected you.”
He Tingzhou’s thin lips curled with faint mockery. “Get in and see if you can kill me with your bad luck.”
“…”
Shuangxu bit the inside of her lip, but in the end she stepped around to the passenger side and got in.
The matte-black fine leather and carbon fiber were as cold as He Tingzhou himself.
The moment Shuangxu settled into the seat, she was enveloped by a deep, cool scent.
It was some kind of crisp, cool pine-and-cedar fragrance, bracing yet with a hint of life—and something sweet, too.
He Tingzhou had a piece of candy in his mouth. He bit down on it as he glanced at her, unhurried.
“What university did you go to?”
“Stanford.” Shuangxu didn’t know why he was asking.
“Was the school motto ‘Give your life for your senior sister’?”
Shuangxu choked. “Can’t I give my life for myself? I own half of Feixue now.”
“Half the shares were enough to buy Shen Yu’s little sister. President Shu knows how to do business.”
Shuangxu didn’t like the way he said that. “My senior sister has been very good to me. Whether she’s trying to take advantage of me is for me to decide.”
A soft scoff sounded in He Tingzhou’s throat, thick with sarcasm. “Little Princess, are there really so few people who treat you well?”
Did that many people treat her well? Shuangxu didn’t think so.
“My birth Mom abandoned me once when I was little, so being sent away left me with a deep psychological scar. When I’d just been sent overseas, I was in a terrible state. My senior sister was the only one who cared about me.”
“The food overseas really was awful, and it was hard to find an authentic Chinese restaurant. I’d never even touched a stove as a child, and I couldn’t tell when noodles were done.”
“My senior sister often came to keep me company and cook Chinese food for me. One Spring Festival, she went all over half the city, gathering ingredients, just so she could make dumplings for me.”
Shuangxu said, “If you insist on measuring it that way, she didn’t save my life, and we hadn’t known each other very long. But she was there for me through the hardest time in my life. She’s in trouble now. Shouldn’t I help her?”
He Tingzhou clearly couldn’t understand that kind of bond or affection.
“Does your brother know that one meal of dumplings is enough to get you to hand over twenty million?”
Shuangxu had known he wouldn’t understand.
How could a Young Master born into such a prominent family, someone who stood above everyone else, understand what it felt like to be abandoned?
“There are things I value more than twenty million. I don’t feel I’ve lost out.” Shuangxu didn’t want to say more. “Are you done mocking me? Can I go now?”
He Tingzhou dropped a contract onto her lap.
It was the liquid-hydrogen drone contract, with the same terms he’d initially offered Shu Yang.
The trace of displeasure that had creased Shuangxu’s brow turned into suspicion.
“Didn’t you say no? Chenxing is practically chasing you down to give it to you for free. Why choose us when you can get something for nothing?”
With a crack, He Tingzhou bit through the candy in his mouth and chewed slowly. “If I don’t give it to you, you’ll cry, Little Princess. You’ve got such a temper; you’ll go home and tell on me to your brother. I’m afraid your whole family will come over and make me eat cake.”
“I wasn’t going to cry…” Shuangxu started to deny it, then thought better of it. If admitting it would help Feixue secure the deal, she could do that.
She understood why He Tingzhou had changed his mind.
He didn’t mind offending her, but he and Shen Yu were close friends, and Shen Yu doted on her. Though Young Master He looked down on everyone, ruining his friendship with Shen Yu over such a trivial matter simply wasn’t worth it.
For Yundun Group, a small project like this was no more than a single hair on a lion. They might as well do her a favor.
Once she’d figured that out, Shuangxu took the contract and got out of the car. Before closing the door, she bent down and said to him, “Thank you, Brother Tingzhou.”