The boss looked like a martial artist.
With a black compression shirt stretched tightly over his body, Song Tinghuan felt that the two bulging pectoral muscles on his chest could send her flying with a single shove.
The key point was that he also had a full beard and looked ferocious.
The boss swept his gaze around and growled: “Who’s trying to eat without paying?”
Song Tinghuan stiffened all over.
Her guilty expression was instantly locked onto by the boss.
The boss walked over, looked at Song Tinghuan, then looked at Shen Yuqing.
Next, his chest muscles twitched, and his biceps bulged.
Song Tinghuan: !
Don’t come any closer!
The boss said: “You two, right? You ate and now you don’t want to pay?”
“W-w-w-we didn’t!” Song Tinghuan forced out an ugly smile. “We really just forgot our phones.”
“You forgot yours.” the boss jerked his chin toward Shen Yuqing: “and he forgot his too? Do you think I’m stupid? Who goes out without a phone these days? How did you even get here?”
Song Tinghuan answered weakly: “Our driver drove us here from home.”
The boss laughed in anger.
“Keep making things up.”
“I’m telling the truth, Boss.”
The boss glared at her.
“If you don’t pay, then go wash dishes for me! You can leave when you’ve finished!”
Song Tinghuan thought that wasn’t entirely impossible.
“Th-then how many dishes do we have to wash?”
“Fifty cents per dish. Wash twenty-five thousand dishes, and you can leave.”
Song Tinghuan stared.
“Boss, are you joking?”
The boss roared: “Do I look like I’m joking with you?!”
The force of his shout made Song Tinghuan shut her eyes.
Left with no other choice, inspiration suddenly struck her.
“Boss, what if I leave him here and go back to get the money for you?”
The boss glanced at Shen Yuqing.
“Hmph. If I let you go first, then he might run away too when I’m not looking. Who am I supposed to find then?”
“He can’t run away!” Song Tinghuan pushed Shen Yuqing forward for display. “Look, he’s in a wheelchair. Just remove the battery and engage the brakes, and he won’t be able to go anywhere!”
Shen Yuqing: “…”
The boss remained skeptical.
“His legs really can’t walk?”
“Really, really!”
“What if you’re the type to sacrifice your friends for justice and abandon him just to avoid paying? Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Then you can still sell his wheelchair for money! This is the most high-end wheelchair currently on the market. It’s worth over two hundred thousand!”
Shen Yuqing: “…”
Him.
And his wheelchair.
Was that really how they were supposed to be used?
The boss inspected the wheelchair for a long time. Seeing the many high-tech buttons on it, he seemed to believe her a little.
“How about this.” the boss said. “I’ll give you one more chance. Use my phone to call your friend and have them bring the money. After all, if you leave a disabled person here with me, I’d have to assign someone specifically to look after him. If something happened, I’d be responsible. So you can’t leave.”
“Th-that works too.”
Song Tinghuan had managed to secure another opportunity.
After discussing it with Shen Yuqing, she called Shen Heng—
The only phone number Shen Yuqing still remembered.
The phone rang several times, but nobody answered.
Song Tinghuan complained: “Young President Shen sleeps way too deeply!”
After hearing that, Shen Yuqing said nothing.
He simply pressed the only red button on his wheelchair.
The next second, inside a villa more than ten kilometers away—
Shen Heng was lying on the soft bed in his third-floor bedroom. He was dreaming about going to an amusement park with Big Brother and Song Tinghuan.
He had bought a charcoal-grilled turkey leg. Smacking his lips, drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. Just as he was about to take a huge bite—
A sharp, ear-piercing alarm suddenly erupted without warning.
The peaceful villa instantly shook with noise.
Shen Heng jolted awake.
“What happened?! What happened?! Is it an earthquake?! A tsunami?! World War Three?!”
Too panicked to think about anything else, he scrambled off the bed and crawled underneath it, hugging his head while trembling.
The alarm continued for several more seconds before realization dawned on him.
“Wait.”
This was the alarm his brother had set up.
After Shen Yuqing’s accident, he had installed this emergency alert system to prevent a situation where something happened to him while he was alone and nobody knew.
No matter where Shen Yuqing was, as long as he pressed the red button on his wheelchair, the entire villa would sound an alarm, Shen Heng’s phone would receive a notification, and every bodyguard would mobilize simultaneously to protect Shen Yuqing’s safety.
Shen Heng immediately crawled out from under the bed, threw open the door, and rushed outside.
“Brother!”
“Big Brother!”
Barefoot, Shen Heng ran downstairs and discovered that nobody was in the living room.
The bodyguards also rushed in but could not find Shen Yuqing anywhere.
“This is bad! My brother must have gotten into trouble outside!”
“Quick, locate the wheelchair!”
“Everyone, move out with me!”
Six black sedans with consecutive license plate numbers sped across the Jingshi Overpass.
Passersby raised their phones and recorded the scene before posting it online.
【Holy crap, is some domineering CEO going to capture the runaway heroine?!】
【The person above needs to uninstall those tomato romance novels immediately!】
Shen Heng had no energy to care about online comments.
Because he had left in such a hurry, his phone was still in his bedroom.
Using a bodyguard’s phone, he called Shen Yuqing repeatedly, but nobody answered.
Shen Heng was frantic.
“Drive faster!”
Meanwhile, inside the restaurant.
The boss impatiently urged them.
“Hurry up! Did the call connect or not? If not, both of you can go wash dishes!”
Song Tinghuan said: “Boss, don’t be impatient. My friend has been working overtime for several days. He’s probably still asleep.”
“You two aren’t working together to mess with me, are you?”
“How could we?” Song Tinghuan glanced at his massive chest muscles, and her heart trembled.
“I say, you two—”
Before he could finish, a commotion suddenly erupted at the restaurant entrance.
The music stopped.
The diners all stood up nervously.
The employees at the entrance retreated continuously as though facing a formidable enemy.
The boss shouted at them.
“What are you doing?”
Song Tinghuan and Shen Yuqing both looked toward the entrance.
The familiar bodyguards in black suits all wore sunglasses. Moving with practiced precision, they jogged inside and lined up in two neat rows.
Shen Heng, wearing black-and-white cow-print pajamas and no shoes, charged into the restaurant.
After looking around, he threw his head back and howled:
“WHERE’S MY BROTHER?!”
Since opening his business, the boss had never witnessed such a spectacle.
He immediately stepped forward, intending to challenge Shen Heng.
Before he even got close, a bodyguard grabbed the back of his collar with one hand and lifted him into the air.
Like lifting a robust hen.
“H-hey, hey.” the boss said ingratiatingly. “Big Brother, let’s talk this out. No need to get physical. I was just going to ask this handsome young gentleman if he needed anything.”
The bodyguard immediately released him.
The boss staggered several steps before regaining his footing.
Shen Heng pounced over and grabbed the front of the boss’s shirt.
“Talk! What did you do to my brother?!”
The boss looked as if he were about to cry.
“Young Master, I don’t even know who your brother is!”
“Shen Yuqing! My brother’s name is Shen Yuqing! His wheelchair’s location is showing at your restaurant. He must be here! Stop hiding the truth!”
“The wheelchair?”
The boss pointed toward a table near the stage.
“I-is it that one?”
Shen Heng followed the direction of his finger.
He saw Song Tinghuan silently covering her face.
And Shen Yuqing sitting there with complete composure.
Shen Heng released the boss and ran over in tears.
“Big Brother!”
The boss’s collar had already been stretched into an off-shoulder style after being pulled from both directions.
Shen Heng threw himself into Shen Yuqing’s arms and checked him from head to toe.
“Brother, how are you? Did they hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then did they bully you?”
“No.”
“Then did they overcharge you?”
“They didn’t overcharge me.” Shen Yuqing turned his head toward Song Tinghuan. “They overcharged her.”
At this point, Shen Heng was completely confused.
His brother didn’t look like someone in grave danger at all.
“How much did they overcharge?” Shen Heng asked.
Embarrassed, Song Tinghuan answered: “Altogether, more than ten thousand.”
Shen Heng snorted dismissively.
“That’s all? That’s not even enough for me to buy a pair of shoes.”
Song Tinghuan said: “The problem is that we both left our phones in the car, so we couldn’t pay. We were trying to call you to come redeem us…”
Shen Heng felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
He looked at Shen Yuqing in disbelief.
“You pressed the emergency button and summoned me here just to…”
Shen Yuqing nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“To pay the bill.”
“Brother!”
The volume of that shout made Shen Yuqing rub his brow.
“Enough.” He raised a hand, making the instinctive gesture of authority used to stop others from speaking. “Stop talking and settle the bill first. I want to leave this place.”
Shen Heng looked utterly wronged.
“Oh.”
He instinctively reached into his pocket.
His pajamas had no pockets.
Slowly, Shen Heng said:
“I didn’t bring my phone either.”