Her Imperfection for Wifehood - Chapter 24

Chapter 24

A few days later, Xu Weiqiang sent Bai Yang to relay a message to An Jing. To avoid trouble, Bai Yang waited for her on her usual route to the company.

“Boss Jing, Master Qiang sent me to tell you that the pregnant woman tragically killed outside the hospital that day has been confirmed not to be the work of the sniper he hired. We may be a gang, but we haven’t reached the point of insanity. Boss Jing, please believe Master Qiang.”

“I don’t disbelieve him,” An Jing didn’t get out of the car. She asked Bai Yang, who was outside, “What about the pregnant woman’s identity?”

“A small business owner, running a massage parlor. Her man skipped town after owing loan sharks. The debt collectors wanted her shop, and she wouldn’t give it up.”

“Killing her would get them her shop? Bai Yang, do you think I, An Jing, am stupid? Or easily fooled?” An Jing’s emotions were conflicted. She wanted to know the truth but also didn’t want to know it. She spoke with a hint of anger, “Fine. Since Xu Weiqiang had you tell me this, I’ll believe it. I will not get involved in your shady, life-and-death gambles. Lu Cheng, drive.”

She had a brother, a lover, and a family business. She couldn’t be a desperado.

If Xu Weiqiang wanted to distance himself from her, then so be it. She was finding it increasingly difficult to disregard her own life and death. She had to live for a long, long time to secure a future with Yinyin.

On the back seat of the car was a newspaper with a report about a murder—Former Marine Corps Sniper Killed in Gang Vendetta.

An Jing arrived early, but someone who arrived even earlier than her, and whom she hadn’t seen in days, was Qin Zhe.

In the initial days after his divorce, Qin Zhe frequently came to the company to socialize with An Jing. After An Jing gave him the cold shoulder and explicitly stated her utmost dislike for persistent men, his visits gradually decreased.

“What important matter has brought Young Master Qin here?” An Jing merely glanced at him and continued walking toward her office.

“It’s a serious matter.”

Unlike his usual gentlemanly demeanor, Qin Zhe’s face was particularly grim today. Lu Cheng noticed his abnormality and, worried about his boss’s safety, tried to follow them into the office.

Qin Zhe blocked him at the door and stated bluntly: “I have something important to discuss with your boss. You shouldn’t be present.”

An Jing motioned for Lu Cheng to step back. She was also a trained fighter, and on her own turf, even if a fight broke out, the well-mannered Qin Zhe might not gain the upper hand. In any case, she didn’t see how Qin Zhe could harm her.

The boss’s office was on the second floor. It was spacious and extremely well soundproofed.

“Speak. What is it?” An Jing asked after sitting down.

Qin Zhe walked heavily to the desk, looking down at the woman opposite him: “What exactly is the relationship between An Xi and Wei Yinxia, and between you and Wei Yinxia?”

An Jing tapped the desktop with her pen: “Young Master Qin, you are overstepping your boundaries concerning my family affairs.”

The confrontational atmosphere pushed Qin Zhe to the brink. An Jing hadn’t given him a kind look many times before. He could tolerate it then because he knew An Jing was heartless toward most people. But today, he couldn’t take it.

He forcibly suppressed his anger, pulled an envelope from his suit pocket, took out the contents, and threw them on the desk. For the first time, he questioned An Jing’s tone: “An Jing, don’t tell me this is the real reason you avoid men and reject me.”

What Qin Zhe threw on the desk were five photographs.

An Jing was intimately familiar with the people in the photos. They were the affectionate moments captured a few days ago when she and Wei Yinxia were out on the street.

They showed deep gazes, the gifting of the little tin frog at the stall, hands touching during the meal, sharing a coat in the rain, and tightly embracing in the rickshaw.

If their eyes hadn’t betrayed their feelings, the interactions in these photos would have been no different from those of sisters.

But she and Wei Yinxia were in the early stages of a blossoming romance. As long as they looked at each other, the affection in their eyes was impossible to hide.

An Jing stood up in anger: “You sent someone to follow me?”

“I am not that despicable,” Qin Zhe denied. “The photos were sent to me anonymously.”

“Qin Zhe, you had better be telling the truth,” An Jing picked up the photos and put them in her drawer. “Otherwise, you and I will be enemies from now on.”

Aside from the truly dishonorable way he unilaterally divorced his wife, he was generally a decent person in other aspects.

So, when he wasn’t going crazy, she was still polite to him. Since they couldn’t be lovers or a couple, they had settled for being business partners. Who would turn down money?

“Don’t you have anything to explain to me?” Qin Zhe insisted on an answer.

“My affairs are none of your concern,” An Jing circled the desk and walked toward the door, saying, “Young Master Qin, we have nothing to discuss other than the budget department store business. I advise you to stop wasting your time on me. What you want, you will never get from me.”

“An Jing!” Qin Zhe was provoked by An Jing’s absolute rejection. He fiercely grabbed and hugged her from behind, “I don’t believe you like women. Will you just try it with me?”

Just as An Jing expected, although Qin Zhe was taller than her, his actual strength wasn’t very great. With a single elbow strike and a hard stomp of her foot, Qin Zhe cried out in pain and let go. She twisted around and delivered a punch that sent Qin Zhe staggering back to the edge of the desk.

Not hitting his face was already An Jing’s mercy.

Qin Zhe braced himself on the desk with one hand and clutched his stomach with the other, looking at An Jing in pain.

He would rather believe that An Jing was simply too preoccupied with the An Corporation to care about personal feelings than to believe that An Jing preferred women and that he had lost to another woman.

“You just treat her like a sister, right? Like you do Miss Tang,” Qin Zhe asked, clinging to a desperate hope, “If so, I apologize to you. If that’s not enough, you can hit me one or two more times.”

An Jing pressed her lips together, silent.

She couldn’t admit it, and she couldn’t deny it.

It wasn’t that she lacked the courage to admit it, but now was absolutely not the time to reveal her relationship with Yinyin.

Same-sex love was frowned upon by society. Yinyin was already suffering enough in the Wei family. She couldn’t be nailed to the pillar of shame by the Wei family and the public just for loving her. The An Corporation also couldn’t be drowned by public scorn because of her.

“Qin Zhe, I don’t need your apology. From now on, we go our separate ways. I will transfer the shares of the budget department store as soon as possible.” Having said that, An Jing opened the office door. “Young Master Qin, please leave.”

The order for a complete break had been given. Qin Zhe was heartbroken.

No matter how much he liked An Jing, he couldn’t tolerate her being involved with a woman, especially the woman his brother wanted to marry. Incest and immorality—she was guilty of both.

What was the point of fighting anymore?

He had to give up.

Qin Zhe walked to the door with his head held high: “You better not regret your decision today.”

“I, An Jing, never do things I regret.” To avoid suspicion and to successfully navigate the Board of Directors election, she had to maintain some distance from Wei Yinxia.

After seeing Qin Zhe off, An Jing fell into deep thought. Who sent these photos to Qin Zhe? And what was the purpose of sending them to him?

To make her break up with Qin Zhe? And after the break-up? Who benefits the most?

Her mind was in chaos, yet she couldn’t have her most trusted Lu Cheng investigate. The more she investigated, the more it would prove her concern, and the more concerned she was, the easier it would be for others to use it as leverage.

The enemy was in the dark, and she was in the light. She was too passive.

The questioning from Qin Zhe just now caught her off guard, and she impulsively cut ties with him. Thinking about it calmly, she shouldn’t have left no room for retreat.

A smooth operator like Qin Zhe often harbored a hidden, dark side. Once angered and unleashed, his methods could be even more ruthless than hers.

She had to meet him privately again and stabilize him before he could act.

The Wei Residence.

In the study, Wei Zhengqing sat in the main seat, puffing on a traditional pipe. Opposite him sat a man wearing a black Western gentleman’s hat—Kahn.

Kahn was from Europe. He held a cigar in his right hand, took a puff, and then spoke in fluent Chinese: “Boss Wei, what’s that saying you have here? Oh, yes, ‘Raise an army for a thousand days, use them for a moment.’ The Second Miss’s line has caught a big fish. It’s time to reel it in.”

“When will the funds you promised arrive?”

“Twenty thousand in circulating funds is no small amount,” Kahn said with confidence. “Toppling the An Corporation is you solving a future problem for yourself. That can’t be part of our deal, can it? Our deal is for you to help me get on the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.”

Wei Zhengqing was constrained by him and needed his help. He had no choice but to tolerate his repeated unreasonableness: “As long as you don’t spook the snake again, we still have a seventy percent chance of success.”

Kahn seemed dissatisfied with the answer, flicking his cigar ash: “I heard that woman is a ruthless desperado. If she were to find out that the tragic deaths of her parents at the Fuhe Hotel were not an accident, do you think she would stop at nothing to avenge them?”

When he set the bomb, he was aiming for Chen Dong’s life. As for An Jing’s parents, An Father and An Mother, Wei Zhengqing had bribed a street beggar to lure them to the hotel with a false message from a Taiwanese businessman.

At the time, he and An Father were both vying for a huge investment from the businessman.

The businessman was staying at the Fuhe Hotel. The meeting with An Father was originally scheduled for the day after the explosion, but An Father and Mother were tricked into going to the hotel on the day of the explosion, leading to the tragedy that separated them forever from An Jing and An Xi.

The beggar was sent out of Shanghai by Wei Zhengqing after delivering the message. With the An couple dead, there was no evidence or witness to contradict the official report.

The explosion occurred in the early morning. The Taiwanese businessman’s escape was not fate. Wei Zhengqing had bribed two small thieves to fake a burglary, keeping the businessman at the police station.

Those two thieves were naturally also sent out of Shanghai after receiving a hefty reward.

Wei Zhengqing became the biggest beneficiary of the explosion.

If Chen Dong hadn’t survived, the major shareholder behind Zhengqing Department Store would have been Kahn. Wei Zhengqing went to the extreme of plotting the demise of the An couple to secure the Taiwanese businessman’s funds, all so he could be the sole major owner of Zhengqing Department Store, instead of working for foreigners and giving away his hard work.

With An Father dead, the An Corporation was leaderless. Sympathy aside, how could the Taiwanese businessman risk such a large sum of money? He invested it in Zhengqing Department Store instead.

Kahn, meanwhile, had to flee Shanghai to save his own life, which allowed Wei Zhengqing to smoothly overcome the first major challenge faced by Zhengqing Department Store.

Given a chance to breathe, he ruthlessly went all the way, breaking off his daughter’s engagement to sever ties with the An family.

“Mr. Kahn, we are allies on the same boat. I have things I cannot let them know, and so do you—and probably more. I don’t want to hear such talk from you again,” Wei Zhengqing was not one to tolerate everything.

“Good. I admire an ally like Boss Wei who grows stronger when challenged. Cheers to our renewed cooperation,” Kahn said, laughing instead of getting angry.

Downstairs in the bedroom, Xu’er was tidying up Wei Yinxia’s bed, putting on thicker bed linen and quilts for her.

“Miss, so many foreigners have moved in recently, and they especially like to throw parties at night. They’re so loud. You must not go out casually when there’s no need.”

Due to the global economic crisis, foreign merchants focused their attention on China, and the number of foreigners in the Concession villas increased.

The An residence was a top-tier private estate, and the An family owned large tracts of land around it. But the Wei residence, being in the Concession, was not as wealthy. It was located in the villa area where many foreigners lived.

In Xu’er’s mind, the tall, large foreigners were all terrifying creatures.

“Loud, but also happy.”

Wei Yinxia couldn’t help but recall the birthday party An Xi threw for Ruyue at the An residence.

It was the first time she had socialized with so many peers as “friends,” listening to them talk freely, drinking, eating, and playing games. It was a rare and valuable experience.

Thinking of the An family inevitably brought An Jing to mind. She hadn’t seen An Jing for several days, but what made her feel even more uneasy was that that person had also moved into the villa area and was currently talking business in Wei Zhengqing’s study.

Xu’er walked out of Wei Yinxia’s room and saw Wei Zhengqing approaching. She heard him ask, “Is the Miss in?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Mm, you may leave.”

“Yes, Master.”

As Xu’er passed Wei Zhengqing, she noticed a man in a dark grey suit, tall and thin, with his face obscured by a hat, behind him.

From his build, she could tell that person was definitely a man.

Xu’er didn’t dare to linger, hurrying forward with small steps.

Behind her, she heard the sound of a door opening and then closing. She couldn’t resist glancing back, only to see Wei Zhengqing still standing outside the door.

That person had come to the Wei residence more than once or twice. Every time, it was late at night, and he went straight to the Master’s study. No one was allowed in to pour tea or attend to them in between.

In Xu’er’s recollection, only the Second Miss had been called into the room by the Master during those conversations.

But for him to enter the Second Miss’s room—this was the first time today.

What could he possibly have to say to the Second Miss?

Or, would he do something improper to the Second Miss? Xu’er couldn’t help but recall what had happened at the teahouse that day.

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