“Madam?” Xu Fei’s voice cut through her thoughts. “What design would you like? Would you like me to recommend a few?”
Wen Li came back to herself and looked down at the nail art catalog.
In her last life, all her manicures had been plain colors. Nude pink, pale apricot, muted bean paste. Painted on, they looked from a distance like nothing at all. Gentle and understated, fitting her persona as a virtuous, gracious wife.
Heaven only knew how much she actually loved the fancy, ornate designs. Every time she scrolled past a pretty manicure online, she’d look twice, then quietly save it.
This time, she didn’t have to pretend anymore.
Without hesitation, Wen Li flipped the catalog open and tapped a page with a slender, snow-white finger. “This one.”
Xu Fei glanced at it and blinked.
It was an extremely lavish design, studded all over with crushed diamonds and crystals. The nail shape was filed sharp and long. To put it bluntly, it was the kind that could leave bloody scratches on a person.
It really didn’t match this madam’s status.
“Madam, are you sure about this one?” Xu Fei ventured.
“Sure.” Wen Li smiled faintly, and there was a hint of anticipation and excitement hidden in that smile. “This one.”
She remembered. Tomorrow evening, Ji Zongting would be back from his business trip.
Tonight was also, in the truest sense, their wedding night.
When the time came, these nails would have their use.
Even now, Wen Li remembered just how terrible Ji Zongting’s technique had been at the start.
And back then, she had still been playing her part. She hadn’t dared show the slightest hint of disgust. She’d even had to blush on cue, shy and demure, and praise him for being so amazing, like a weary wife facing an incompetent husband.
This time, let’s see if she couldn’t scratch him to death.
Xu Fei was a professional, after all. Despite her private misgivings, her hands never wavered. She filed and buffed carefully, applied the base coat, set the stones, sealed the top layer, working through each step with meticulous care.
Two hours later, a flawless, exquisite set of nails sat on Wen Li’s hands. The crystal-clear crushed diamonds caught the light and scattered it in brilliant sparks, making Wen Li’s already pale, slender fingers look even more lustrous, like polished jade. The curve of each fingertip was elegant and sharp at once, every finger like a carefully carved work of art.
The manicure was lavish to the extreme, yet not the least bit gaudy. Instead, it complemented that dazzling face of hers perfectly.
Xu Fei looked at those hands, and a look of undisguised awe rose in her eyes. She had done the nails herself, but the finished product turned out better than the retouched photos of the models in the catalog. The stones glittered, the fingertips were long and fine. It was an aggressively showy design, yet on Wen Li’s hands it somehow looked noble, as if such splendor had always belonged there.
Of course. There wasn’t a single part of a beauty that wasn’t beautiful.
Xu Fei sighed inwardly, packed up her tools, gave a slight bow, and took her leave.
The door clicked shut, and the villa fell quiet again.
Wen Li sat on the sofa and admired her new nails for a while. Then she picked up her phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
The call connected after two rings.
“Lili?” A middle-aged man’s voice came through, tinged with a note of pleased surprise. “What made you think to call your dad?”
Wen Li held the phone, and her eyes stung at once. She opened her mouth, barely managing to keep the choke out of her voice. She took a deep breath before she could make herself sound normal. “Dad, I missed you. Can I come home for dinner tonight?”
In her last life, her father, Wen Xiyue, had suffered a sudden stroke in the third year of her marriage from overwork. They’d gotten him treatment in time and saved his life, but his health had never recovered. He walked with a cane after that, and his speech was slurred.
Only then had Wen Li understood, belatedly, that from the day she married into the Ji family, her father had felt he had to give his daughter enough backing, so the Ji family would never look down on the Wen family’s daughter. So he’d worked himself to the bone, taking on social engagements and overtime day and night, until he’d worn himself down.
This time, she would never let that happen.
A cheerful laugh came through the phone. “Yes, yes, of course. I’ll have Auntie Liu make your favorite sweet-and-sour ribs. Oh, right…”
His voice hesitated, suddenly cautious. “Will Mr. Ji agree?”
Wen Li’s heart ached, but she kept her tone deliberately light. “Ji Zongting’s away on business. He’s not home. Dad, if I want to come back, I come back. Do I need his permission?”
Wen Xiyue hurried to placate her. “Right, right. A daughter going back to her family home. Only natural.”
After hanging up, Wen Li tidied herself up briefly and headed out.
The Wen family lived in a small villa in the east of the city, one that had seen better days. The house covered about two hundred square meters, which looked a bit modest compared to Ji Zongting’s five-hundred-square-meter villa on the hillside. But it was the home Wen Li had grown up in.
In the yard grew the gardenias Wen Li’s mother had loved most when she was alive. They were in full bloom now, their fragrance drifting through the whole courtyard.
Wen Xiyue was already waiting at the door. When he spotted his daughter’s car in the distance, his face broke into a smile.
The moment Wen Li stepped out of the car, he came up to her and looked her up and down. “Why have you gotten thinner? Haven’t you been eating properly at the Ji house?”
“Dad, I’ve only been married three days.” Wen Li didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Wen family’s situation was very simple.
Wen Xiyue had started out as a poor young man. Later, by chance, he met Wen Li’s mother, Shen Ruoqing, and the two fell in love at first sight. The Shen family was a family of scholars, the kind with imperial examination graduates in their ancestry. Even in modern times, they were a whole clan of professors and academics, and they had always held themselves in high regard. They looked down on Wen Xiyue, a poor boy of humble origins.
But Shen Ruoqing had set her heart on marrying him. The Shen family couldn’t talk her out of it and eventually let her have her way.
Sadly, a beautiful woman is often ill-fated. When Wen Li was fifteen, Shen Ruoqing passed away from a serious illness. The Shen family, having buried their own child, grew ever more distant from the Wen family in their grief. Wen Xiyue’s parents had long since passed away too. The vast Wen household had only the father and daughter left, leaning on each other.
The dining table was covered with all of Wen Li’s favorite dishes. Auntie Liu had taken care of Wen Li since she was small and was overjoyed to see her back, cooking up a whole spread.
Wen Li picked up a piece of sweet-and-sour rib and ate it slowly, her mind elsewhere, thinking about how to bring up what she wanted to say.
“Dad.” She set down her chopsticks, her tone casual. “Do you think… Ji Zongting and I are a good match?”
Wen Xiyue’s chopsticks paused midair. “Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
Wen Li bit the tip of her chopstick and ventured, “I was thinking… if, and I mean if, I wanted to divorce him…”
The clatter of a bowl nearly hitting the table. Wen Xiyue caught it just in time, his face full of shock. “Divorce?”
Wen Li’s heart lurched.
The family company, Qingxin Entertainment, had been founded by her mother, Shen Ruoqing, while she was alive. It had started as a small cultural media company, and under her mother’s care it had flourished. After her mother passed, the company passed into Wen Xiyue’s hands.
Her father came from a technical background. He was steady and hardworking, but he truly had no head for business. Over the years, the company had been on a downward slide, its funding chain long since precarious.
In her last life, exactly one month after she and Ji Zongting got their marriage certificate, the Ji Group had injected a sizable sum into Qingxin Entertainment through a capital increase and equity stake. To the Ji Group, that money was a drop in the bucket, but it was enough to bring Qingxin Entertainment back from the brink.
And Ji Zongting had transferred every share corresponding to that capital injection into Wen Li’s name alone. He hadn’t taken a single cent, effectively gifting the Wen family a lifeline for nothing.
Probably, it had counted as her bride price.
Now they had only been married three days. That cooperation agreement hadn’t been signed yet. Bringing this up now really was too early.