Assistant Zhou shook his head and sighed. “Those women have been getting more and more brazen lately. It was bad enough when they used to wait for you outside the company. Now they’ve even started bringing children along to ambush you.”
This sort of thing had happened countless times before. It was all because President Pei was too charming: women kept throwing themselves at him, either hoping to bump into him or ask for his contact information. They came up with all sorts of ways to pursue him.
Pei Sijie was fed up with those women, too. The more often he appeared in the papers, the more admirers he attracted.
He wasn’t interested in women, but he couldn’t stop that crowd of lovestruck women from throwing themselves at him.
Pei Sijie glanced at the woman and child chasing after the car, a trace of disgust flashing in his eyes.
“Drive faster. Lose them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Also, pass down the order to tighten security. From now on, no unfamiliar women are allowed within six miles of Pei Group.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Rolls-Royce floored it and sped away.
Si Si failed to catch up with Dad’s car. Sadly, he blinked his tearful eyes. “Dad ran away. Dad really doesn’t love me.”
He slowly walked back to the roadside, lifted his little face to look at the kind big sister, and asked quietly, “Kind big sister, could you take Si Si back to the bridge underpass again? I want to go find my older brothers…”
The woman looked at his red-rimmed eyes and his aggrieved little expression, and her heart ached.
“All right…”
......
Meanwhile, Wen Mo was so frantic she was about to start smoking.
She paced back and forth inside the police station, walking from one end to the other, then back again. She was about to wear sparks into the floor.
“Ms. Wen, please don’t panic. We’re still doing our best to look for your son…”
The officer hadn’t finished speaking before Wen Mo cut him off. “How can I not panic? My son is missing, and he’s so little! What if something happens to him? What am I supposed to do?”
Wen Mo was drenched in sweat, her hair standing on end.
The officer adjusted his cap and spoke gently. “I suggest you go home and wait for now. What if your son has already gone back on his own? If we hear anything, we’ll call you right away.”
Wen Mo abruptly stopped in her tracks.
That’s right. What if Si Si had gone back on his own?
It was very, very unlikely… but what if?
“All right, then I’ll go home and wait. Please call me immediately if you hear anything!”
“Of course.”
With one child holding each of her hands and another beside her, Wen Mo hurried out with the three little ones.
The good news was that the officers took pity on them and gave them a free boxed meal.
Yi Yi, Er Er, and San San ate their fill.
Wen Mo also wolfed down a whole box of food, going from faint with hunger to fully recharged.
The police station even arranged a free ride to take them back to the bridge underpass.
After they got out, Wen Mo crouched beneath the bridge while the three little ones sat obediently in a row, waiting for Si Si to come back.
Time passed second by second.
Wen Mo was so restless she stuck her head out to look eight hundred times.
Just as she was about to despair, two figures appeared in the distance.
One adult and one child.
Wen Mo leaped to her feet and looked closely. “Si Si!!”
She rushed over and pulled Si Si into her arms, hugging him tightly. “Baby, where did you go? You scared Mom to death! I thought you were lost! Boo-hoo…”
Si Si froze.
Baby?
Mom called me baby.
Wen Mo’s embrace was warm, though it squeezed him a little, but Si Si didn’t want to pull away at all.
This was the first time Mom had called him baby.
Si Si treasured Mom’s embrace and couldn’t bear to leave it.
But Mom was asking him a question. He had to answer, or she would be unhappy.
Si Si spoke softly. “Si Si didn’t get lost. The kind big sister brought me back.”
Only then did Wen Mo remember there was someone else beside them. She quickly looked up to thank her.
“Thank you. Thank you for bringing my son back!”
“You’re welcome.” Seeing that the child had safely found his mother, and that this mother wasn’t going to abandon him as the child had said, the woman breathed a sigh of relief. “Since you’re his mom, I’ll be going now.”
“Thank you so much… But I don’t have any money on me, so I can’t repay you…” Wen Mo said, feeling terribly embarrassed.
“It’s all right.” Before leaving, the woman even pulled a hundred-yuan bill from her pocket and pressed it into Wen Mo’s hand.
Wen Mo was deeply moved. Boo-hoo, there really were more good people than bad in this world.
With this hundred yuan, their family of five wouldn’t starve for the time being.
Still, if they were going to survive in the long run, she had to find a way to make money as soon as possible.
But in her previous life, she’d been an easygoing young woman, working a lousy but stable job that paid less than five thousand a month. Every day, she’d lounged around like a lazy fish, waiting to retire.
She firmly believed that as long as you didn’t casually have children or get married, life couldn’t get that bad. The thirty-day cooling-off period and a baby you couldn’t put back were what really spelled disaster.
So she was still firmly against marriage and having children.
She’d thought this life would be just the same, but she’d never imagined the burden of raising children would one day fall on her.
......
Hidden Palace.
The luxurious private room glowed with bright lights, the air mingling the scents of cedar, agarwood, and mellow whiskey.
Everyone present was an elite of the Capital Circle, powerful members of prestigious families. Any one of them could make the entire Capital tremble with a single stomp.
Naturally, Pei Sijie was at their head.
Hidden Palace was a clubhouse owned by Pei Group, as well as the regular gathering place for their circle.
After work, Pei Sijie had Assistant Zhou drive him there. He took off his jacket and draped it over the sofa armrest, rolled his shirt cuffs up to his forearms, revealing a section of cool, pale wrist.
He sat alone in a corner drinking, barely saying a word. He was there simply to relax.
The few people nearby were chatting animatedly.
After they finished discussing business, Mu Yanchen, CEO of the Mu Group, took a sip of his drink and casually brought something up. “It’s been four years. Is there still no word about that gold-digger?”
Yin Xufeng leaned back on the sofa, his long legs propped on the coffee table, his manner languid and spoiled. “No. If there were, Young Master Pei would’ve dragged her back already. That woman’s slippery. Every bit of information she gave us back then was fake, and after she fled abroad, she vanished without a trace.”
Luo Xinglan clicked his tongue twice and swirled his glass. “I doubt she’ll dare come back. She must’ve been tired of living to deceive Young Master Pei back then. If she dares return, Young Master Pei will be the first to kill her. Right, Young Master Pei?”
Three pairs of eyes turned in unison toward Pei Sijie in the corner.
Pei Sijie lazily lifted his eyelids. His face remained expressionless as he continued drinking.
But everyone understood: Young Master Pei still hated her.
Everyone knew about how he’d been swindled out of money and affection in an online relationship back then.
They’d thought their good buddy would find love, but instead, he’d found a female con artist.
That damned female con artist had made Young Master Pei shut his heart to love all these years. He wouldn’t even date anyone.
She’d left him with a genuine psychological shadow.
Nowadays, Young Master Pei frowned whenever he saw a woman, and people automatically cleared a three-meter radius around him.
Even though the rest of them were perfectly normal, as long as Young Master Pei was there, no one dared invite a woman in.
That female con artist really was damned. So all these years, they’d helped Pei Sijie keep an eye out. If they caught even the slightest trace of her whereabouts or news, they wouldn’t let it slip by.
Every so often, they compared notes and checked whether anyone had found a new lead.
Everyone was waiting to hear Pei Sijie’s response.
Instead, Song Linyan, the class clown, suddenly sprang up from the sofa and let out a yell.
“Holy shit!!”
He held up his phone and shouted excitedly, “The female con artist is back in the country!”
The private room fell silent at once.
Pei Sijie’s finger, which had been tapping the side of his glass, also stopped.