After Becoming a Full-Time Employee, I Signed a Romance Contract with My Ice-Cold Boss - Chapter 29

You Are Too Late

As Jiang Fengyi stepped out of the elevator, she immediately spotted the fresh flowers and cake sitting on the console table outside her door.

She approached and picked up the bouquet. A faint, cool fragrance drifted into her nose; from the first moment she saw the flowers, she found it difficult to look away.

The flowers were beautiful, designed perfectly according to her aesthetic preferences.

Just as Jiang Fengyi was feeling moved by the thought Xu Que had put into this, her gaze shifted upward and caught a square card clipped to the matte wrapping paper with a paperclip.

She opened it to read:

[I don’t know if you’ll like these flowers, but I think they suit you perfectly. I hope they make your day even happier!]

The content on the card was handwritten by Xu Que. At the end of the sentence, she had even drawn a large sunflower smiley face.

Jiang Fengyi could almost picture Xu Que’s expression as she lowered her head to draw—she must have looked incredibly serious.

Has Xu Que returned?

But why leave the things at the door?

Jiang Fengyi carried the flowers and cake into the house, but the place was empty; Xu Que was not home.

After a moment of thought, she dialed Xu Que’s number.

The phone rang for a long time until finally, a mechanical female voice answered.

“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try again later.”

Strange. What is she busy with?

Jiang Fengyi assumed she was back at the outskirts checking on the factory and guessed that perhaps the signal was poor, so she didn’t continue calling to ask when she would be back.

It wasn’t until the housekeeper announced that dinner was ready and served that Jiang Fengyi realized with surprise that Xu Que still hadn’t returned.

Jiang Fengyi knew her; if Xu Que had personally promised something, she would absolutely do it.

She tried calling again, but there was still no answer.

It was only then that Jiang Fengyi realized something was wrong.

When she first saw the items Xu Que had bought left at the door while she was missing, she should have been alerted; she should have sensed something was amiss.

Once Jiang Fengyi snapped to her senses, she immediately contacted property management to retrieve the surveillance footage.

When she saw Jiang Xuan taking Xu Que away, the restraint she had been suppressing could no longer be held back—it erupted entirely.

Jiang Fengyi suppressed her rage: “Mother, where did you take her?”

On the other end of the line, Jiang Xuan deliberately played dumb.

“What person? Who did I take?”

“I have surveillance installed at my door,” Jiang Fengyi said, refusing to go in circles. “Give her back to me first. Tell me directly what you want.”

It had to be said—the two were indeed mother and daughter; in certain aspects, they were strangely similar.

Jiang Xuan remained silent for a few breaths before finally speaking: “Agree to the engagement with Zhao Ruofei.”

“Impossible,” Jiang Fengyi rejected without a second thought. “I have already registered my marriage with Xu Que. Unless you want me to commit bigamy, pick something else.”

“What!”

In the car, Jiang Xuan’s voice broke, nearly waking the unconscious Xu Que in the backseat.

“When did she coax you into registering a marriage! I think you’ve truly lost your mind!”

“Change your conditions and send her back to me,” Jiang Fengyi took the initiative to yield. “I can return that 10% of the shares to you.”

“What use do I have for shares at my age?” She still refused to give up. “If you can marry, you can divorce. Divorce her and get engaged to Zhao Ruofei again.”

“I will go persuade Ruofei. Her heart and eyes are full of nothing but you; I don’t think she’ll mind.”

Jiang Fengyi let out a cold laugh. “Is her heart full of me, or the company behind me? Mother, do you still not understand?”

She said sternly: “I said divorce is impossible. It’s not too late for you to change your conditions now. Once my people find your tracks, you will get nothing!”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Weren’t you the one who threatened me first?”

As the words fell, Ke Fan—the hacker monitoring the call—gave Jiang Fengyi a slight nod.

“If I don’t speak, no one will find her. If you keep hesitating, I’ll make sure you never see…”

Beep, beep, beep…

Having received the prompt from the hacker, Jiang Fengyi no longer bothered to deal with the other side and decisively hung up the phone.

“Found them?”

“I’ve preliminary locked onto the caller’s location. They are currently moving toward the south of the city,” she said, pointing to a red dot on the screen. “There’s an airport in the south. I suspect she wants to transfer her.”

“Send people to pursue. The faster the better.”

Jiang Fengyi gripped her phone so hard her fingertips turned white, though she seemed to have no sensation of it.

“We must intercept them!”

On the Other Side

Furious that her daughter had suddenly hung up on her, Jiang Xuan smashed her phone and glared back at the unconscious person lying in the back seat.

She is the greatest disaster!

Send her away, send her away quickly. Send her as far as possible so she can’t stay here and ruin my plans.

The thought of Jiang Fengyi revealing they had already registered their marriage gave her a headache.

You don’t need both people present to register a marriage, but both parties must be present to process a divorce. This was going to be difficult to handle.

Her mind was entirely occupied with how to get them divorced as quickly as possible; she didn’t notice the subtle movement behind her.

Xu Que struggled to force her heavy eyelids open and cautiously scanned her surroundings. Currently, her hands were tied, and her mouth was taped shut.

The culprit behind her predicament was sitting right in front of her, muttering things like “why is divorce so troublesome these days.”

Fearing that Jiang Xuan would discover she was awake, Xu Que closed her eyes again, squinting through tiny slits to observe the current situation.

Jiang Xuan switched to another phone to make a call: “Is the plane arranged?”

Xu Que couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, only Jiang Xuan continuing: “It doesn’t matter where it lands, just as long as it’s as far as possible. Ideally, she should never come back.”

“I have things under control with Jiang Fengyi, you don’t need to worry.”

“Her interest in Xu Que is just a passing whim. Over time, she’ll lose interest. And I am her mother after all; she won’t do anything to me over an outsider.”

Just… just a passing whim?

Xu Que couldn’t be certain, but even if it were a passing whim, it meant that at this moment, Jiang Fengyi treated her differently than others.

She was a special existence.

Her hands, tied behind her back, began to apply pressure. The person who tied the rope seemingly hadn’t considered the possibility of Xu Que waking up; the rope was only loosely wound around her wrists a few times and knotted.

After a bit of struggling, the rope binding her hands grew looser and looser. Soon, her hands regained their freedom.

She didn’t make a sound, continuing to lie low in the back seat to find the most suitable moment to escape.

Jiang Xuan was still on the phone. Sitting in the passenger seat, she stretched her legs uncomfortably.

“We’re almost there. I didn’t feel at ease, so I’m personally escorting her over,” she said, rubbing her waist which had grown stiff from sitting too long. “Now it seems there was no need to suffer this hardship at all.”

“I was overthinking it.”

“Though, there’s nothing wrong with being cautious.”

Everything happened too smoothly. When Jiang Xuan and her group arrived at the airport, there was still an hour before the flight departure.

The thing Jiang Xuan hated most in life was waiting: “If private flight paths weren’t so hard to apply for, I wouldn’t have to come all the way here to wait.”

Zhao Ruofei, who had received notice and had been waiting at the airport early, consoled her: “A private plane is too obvious. Fengyi would quickly find the landing location and bring Xu Que back.”

“The airport is different. There are thousands of flights every day. Even if she truly finds out the person left from here, she isn’t powerful enough to know where they landed.”

“After all, even we don’t know—it’s being done completely at random.”

While the two were talking, Xu Que was lifted into a luggage crate. What awaited her was a cargo plane specifically for transporting goods.

However, because the “unconscious” Xu Que was not cooperating, it made crating her difficult. The subordinates were also doing this kind of dirty work for the first time on the boss’s orders and were very unskilled.

Seeing the bodyguards acting clumsy, Jiang Xuan waved her hand helplessly: “So clumsy. Forget it, forget it. You guys rest a bit before lifting again. There’s plenty of time before the plane takes off anyway.”

Having said that, she turned back to discuss the details of the engagement banquet with Zhao Ruofei. They would also need to find a master to calculate a date for the engagement.

Upon closer discussion, Jiang Xuan realized that organizing an engagement banquet required a lot of effort.

Zhao Ruofei only had to look at her expression to read what she was thinking. She spoke sensibly: “The engagement banquet can be kept simple. We can’t let you get worn out, Auntie Jiang.”

Jiang Xuan patted Zhao Ruofei’s shoulder. “What a sensible child. Why doesn’t Jiang Fengyi have eyes for you?”

Being poked in her sore spot, even the sophisticated Zhao Ruofei momentarily faltered; a crack appeared in her perfect smile.

But she quickly adjusted her mindset, remaining enthusiastically engaged in small talk with Jiang Xuan.

The thick-skinned Jiang Xuan didn’t notice her momentary abnormality, and even more so, she didn’t notice that one person was missing from the bodyguard team.

The bodyguards guarding the perimeter didn’t find any dangerous factors and relaxed significantly; some even began to chat.

“Why is the Captain taking so long in the restroom? Did she run into an accident?”

“You underestimate the Captain too much. Even if something happens to you, nothing will happen to her.”

“How do you think she became Captain? Did she rely on being popular and winning an election? She fought her way up, punch by punch!”

“Maybe she’s constipated…”

“What are you guys talking about?” The Captain returned. “I thought I heard you mention me?”

“Nothing, nothing…”

Jiang Fengyi, heading toward the target red dot, turned off her phone screen. The coldness in her eyes grew even more piercing as she instructed the bodyguard driving: “Faster.”

“President Jiang, this is already the maximum speed.”

Jiang Fengyi and her bodyguards arrived at the airport in the shortest time possible. Walking at the front, the hacker Ke Fan stared at the red dot on the screen, leading the way for everyone.

The path grew more and more remote, moving from the brightly lit interior all the way to the nooks and crannies of a warehouse corner.

“Almost there. Only a hundred meters from the target…”

“Fifty meters…”

“Twenty meters…”

Jiang Fengyi slowed her pace only when she saw Jiang Xuan’s silhouette, whispering to the bodyguards behind her: “Begin your move.”

She continued walking forward until she appeared openly before Jiang Xuan.

“What a coincidence, Mother. We meet again.”

Jiang Fengyi tilted her head to look at Zhao Ruofei beside Jiang Xuan.

“I didn’t expect the eldest Miss Zhao to be here as well. May I ask where you two are going?”

Zhao Ruofei hadn’t expected Jiang Fengyi to catch up so quickly. She looked helplessly at Jiang Xuan, seeking her aid.

Jiang Xuan glanced past her and looked at Jiang Fengyi with a cold laugh: “I underestimated you.”

“Your capabilities are growing,” she said, appearing utterly indifferent. “But even if you’ve come, you won’t be able to find where she is.”

Jiang Xuan deliberately deceived her: “You are too late. I sent her away long ago.”