After Breaking Up with the Stoic CEO - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: No Appointment

The sudden noise shattered the peace of the early morning; it was the alarm set yesterday that she had forgotten to turn off.

Lying on her side, Lu Wu reached for the phone on her nightstand. After a few random taps, she finally managed to shut it off before the ringtone started again.

The screen dimmed, then lit up once more after a split second, accurately displaying the current time.

06:55.

The faint light outlined the numbers and, in the darkness, reflected a particularly haggard face with deep panda-like dark circles under the eyes.

Lu Wu’s working hours were typically from afternoon to night; usually, at this time, she would still be catching up on sleep. But today she was awake—more accurately, she hadn’t slept all night.

“Wait a minute, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that after getting drunk last night, you scribbled all over a luxury car, and now you’re likely facing a massive compensation claim?”

Lu Wu replied: “Yes.”

The person on the other end of the line laughed shamelessly. “Scammers these days are getting stupider. If you want to swindle money, at least make up a decent story. Why use such an absurd excuse?”

Lu Wu felt a tightness in her chest as she tried to shut the person up. “Tan Xingxue!”

Tan Xingxue wasn’t listening, gloating to herself: “Sorry, Miss Scammer, even if you know my name, I won’t fall for it~”

Lu Wu: “…”

When Lu Wu was studying at C University, she lived in a mixed-major dormitory; three people were already living there before her. The person currently speaking was one of those three, Tan Xingxue.

Tan Xingxue was two years senior to Lu Wu and, after graduation, became a geography teacher at a municipal experimental middle school. She had the standard look of a Sichuan beauty—a round oval face, smooth and radiant skin, and a healthy, well-proportioned figure. She looked gentle and approachable, making people instinctively want to get close to her, but inside she was a bit sharp-tongued, possessing a natural sense of deadpan humor.

The price of looking too easy-going was that Tan Xingxue was forced to blend in with her students, her authority completely eroded. Unable to accept this Waterloo in her teaching career, she had recently been learning from Ji Youyan on how to become someone who looked strict and “intimidating.”

Speaking of Ji Youyan, she was the eldest of the three and had joined the Municipal Procuratorate after graduation. In university, Ji Youyan was the law department’s famous “Cold Beauty.” She had the bone structure of an Oriental beauty—delicate and ethereal—but because she rarely smiled and spoke succinctly, coupled with the cold metal-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose, she gave off a feeling of being unapproachable.

Despite their different grades and majors, years of day-and-night companionship meant the group got along famously; they remained very close friends to this day. It’s worth noting that Tan Xingxue and Ji Youyan worked near each other, so for the past two years, they had simply rented a place together.

At this moment, the two on the other end of the phone were sitting at a dining table.

Tan Xingxue hadn’t laughed enough yet, so she cued Ji Youyan sitting opposite her: “Hey, Ji Youyan, you tell her—would you believe such a bullsh!t excuse?”

Ji Youyan didn’t look up, only stating a conclusion: “The one on the phone is indeed Lu Wu.”

Tan Xingxue didn’t believe it, waving her hand vigorously: “How is that possible?”

Ji Youyan was eating breakfast and waited a few seconds before replying: “There’s the sound of a blender in the background. Did you forget Lu Wu likes making rice paste to nourish her ‘Qi’ and blood?”

The sound of a blender?

Half-doubting, Tan Xingxue held her breath to listen. It seemed… there actually was.

It was a well-known fact that Lu Wu liked staying up late. She kept all sorts of health-conscious grains at home, and every day upon waking, she would use the blender to make a cup of thick paste, claiming she was replenishing the vitality she had stayed up all night losing. Some time ago, when Lu Wu moved into her new home, Tan Xingxue and Ji Youyan had gone to help and were “privileged” enough to taste it once. It was a sticky, gooey mess; the memory still gave Tan Xingxue goosebumps.

In that case, the person on the phone really was Lu Wu.

“Oh, so the thing about drawing on a luxury car with lipstick is real.”

After a brief silence, Tan Xingxue’s voice suddenly surged in volume.

“Lu Wu, are you crazy!?”

The explosive sound hurt Lu Wu’s ears. She moved the phone further away and said sheepishly: “I’m not crazy, I was just simply drunk.”

Tan Xingxue laughed out of anger. “Fine, fine, ‘simply drunk.’ Trying to declare war on capitalists through a primitive and direct form of art? Interesting.”

Lu Wu leaned against the window sill; the leaves of the green plant in front of her had already been plucked clean by her idle hands. She said weakly: “I’ve been reflecting on what happened for the whole night.”

Tan Xingxue wished she could take a taxi over just to knock on this person’s head to see if it was filled with water. “Is this a problem that can be written off just by ‘reflecting’ for one night?”

Ji Youyan didn’t join the condemnation, instead quickly capturing the key information: “You just said the car owner was injured? What happened?”

Lu Wu didn’t dare to dwell too boldly on the memory of Li Jin’s lips. She only vaguely remembered that the wound wasn’t deep; after the skin broke, pinpricks of blood appeared like dark red pearls. To a third party, it would probably look very conspicuous.

Her gaze flickered as she said vaguely: “It’s just a small scratch, not as serious as you think…”

“To what extent? How was it caused? Think clearly before you answer me. This question concerns whether your compensation needs to be doubled on top of the original base.”

Ji Youyan was merely asking normally, but perhaps because she had been immersed in the legal field for so long, her words naturally carried the aura of a prosecutor.

Lu Wu felt a chill down her spine and gave a dry laugh. “Just a small cut on the lip. We fell accidentally.”

What kind of high-difficulty maneuver could cause a wound on the lip during a fall? And only a single cut at that. This explanation might fool Tan Xingxue, but it was hard to get past Ji Youyan; even Lu Wu herself found it absurd. But there was no choice—she couldn’t exactly say that the wound on the corner of Li Jin’s mouth was nipped out by her own canine teeth, could she?

Ji Youyan paused, and for some reason, asked tentatively: “That person—is she easy to talk to?”

‘No, you cannot.’ ‘Let go!’ ‘Lu Wu, are you this presumptuous with everyone?’

The frames flashed through her mind one by one, and Lu Wu quickly reached a conclusion.

“…Not very easy to talk to.”

As the words fell, the air lapsed into a strange silence.

After a moment, Tan Xingxue said gloomily: “Let’s not talk about that for now. The lipstick on the car might be removable, but just in case, I’ll ask: what model of car was it?”

Lu Wu whispered: “Bentley Mulsanne…”

Tan Xingxue didn’t hear clearly: “What did you say?”

Ji Youyan sighed and looked up at her. “Bentley Mulsanne.”

Tan Xingxue never followed car news and knew nothing about the Bentley brand, so she had to use her phone to look it up. There wasn’t much in the web encyclopedia; she skimmed through the text until her eyes hit a certain sentence:

‘The Bentley Mulsanne Special Custom Edition debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show and was officially released in the Chinese market with a price tag of—9.28 million RMB.’

Tan Xingxue inhaled sharply on the spot. “Lu Wu, you aren’t going to tell me the car you drew on… is this 9.28 million one, are you?”

The progress reports from the heads of all departments had been completed, and the work items had been coordinated and arranged. The conference room returned to a state of dead silence.

On any other day, this would be the time to dismiss the department heads to get back to their work and implement the remaining details. But today, Li Jin, sitting at the head of the table, did not speak. The people below remained in their seats, not daring to move.

After an unknown amount of time, the silence was finally broken.

“Vice President Tu.”

The woman’s voice was clear and faint. Like the first snowfall of early winter, or a gust of chilly wind, it made it difficult to guess the emotional fluctuations hidden behind the tone.

Everyone present was an expert at reading the room; their expressions remained stoic, but their gazes inadvertently converged on the man in the suit sitting on the right.

Tu Wei stood up and bowed his waist. In his heart, he had already cursed this woman to death, but on the surface, he maintained a humble and sincere appearance: “I am here, President Li. Please speak.”

“I have nothing to say. Perhaps, do you have anything you wish to tell me?”

In Li Jin’s eyes was a sharp scrutiny. A storm was brewing, and the air in the conference room seemed forced to contract and stagnate, making people feel inexplicably suffocated.

Hearing this, Tu Wei’s heart uncontrollably surged with waves of shock. Was the transaction with the Hua Group last night exposed so quickly?! How is that possible?

His hand gripped his pen so hard that the veins bulged. He tested the waters, unwilling to give up: “President Li, what do you mean by this? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand? That’s fine.” Li Jin smiled, but her tone when she spoke was cold and cruel. “You can just pack your things and leave.”

‘Leave.’ Meaning—he was fired.

This bolt from the blue turned Tu Wei’s face pale. He stared fixedly at the successor of the group who sat in the main seat, stepping over a crowd of men, and asked unwillingly: “You want to fire me?”

Li Jin casually flipped through the documents in her hand, her thin lips parting to deliver the final verdict.

“Someone sent a report to the public mailbox accusing Vice President Tu Wei of engaging in an improper exchange of benefits regarding certain confidential information with Wang Zeguang, the R&D head of the Hua Group. The evidence has been collected and integrated. The decision has now been made to dismiss him from his post.”

Tu Wei’s emotions completely spiraled out of control. He lunged toward Li Jin at the head of the table.

“By what right!?” “By what right do you fire me!?” “I know the programming of this project best! I am still useful to the company! You cannot fire me!”

Security guards, who had been waiting nearby, swarmed forward to restrain him. From beginning to end, Li Jin maintained her poise, not even looking up at the farce. Only after Tu Wei was hauled away did she finally stand up, her gaze calmly sweeping across the various faces before her.

“The legal department will organize the evidence to prosecute Tu Wei for infringement of trade secrets. The results will be announced at a later date. I hope you will all take this as a warning.”

“Meeting adjourned.”

“President Li!”

“President Li!”

As she walked out of the conference room, people along the way bowed respectfully to greet her. Li Jin merely gave a slight nod.

Her assistant, Du Lin, came forward and naturally took the documents from her hand, reporting visitor information: “President Li, there was a phone call for you just now.”

Li Jin’s pace remained steady, her expression composed. “Who?”

The assistant hesitated for a moment. “She didn’t have an appointment. She said her name is Lu Wu.”

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