Volume One, Chapter 110: Underestimating Sang Wan’s Presence

“Mu, hurry up!”

At a glance, she caught Lu Xiaomu hiding his smart watch.

A flash of irritation flickered in Lin Zhaozhao’s eyes.

Lu Jinnian had changed, and even Lu Xiaomu, the easiest of all to handle, had changed too.

The Mrs. Lu who had once seemed within reach was suddenly beyond the farthest horizon, impossible to grasp.

Still, there was one saving grace.

Su Baohui had been sufficiently useful.

“Mu, Grandma hasn’t seen you in a whole week. She misses you so much... And Auntie said she brought you the Bumblebee Lego you like best. Come on, it’s time to go!”

Lin Zhaozhao held out her hand.

Lu Xiaomu glanced at the darkening sky outside the window. “Can I wait for Dad to come back and have him take me there?”

“Be good, Mu. Dad’s already tired after a full day of work, and we don’t even know when he’ll be back tonight. If we go to Grandma’s earlier, we can watch Tiga earlier too, okay?”

“But I don’t like watching Tiga anymore.”

“...”

Looking up, Lin Zhaozhao kept her gentle smile and held out her hand, waiting for him to take it.

But for some reason, Lu Xiaomu felt afraid.

Aunt Zhaozhao was smiling.

Yet there was not the slightest warmth in her eyes.

She seemed angry.

Very angry.

Before Lu Xiaomu could ask any further questions, before he could ask whether he might call his father, before he could ask why Lin Zhaozhao had changed her mind when he and his mother had already promised to go to the amusement park tomorrow and instead sent him to Grandma’s, Lin Zhaozhao was already pushing open the door.

“Mu, come on. We need to get going now... or we’ll hit traffic in a little while.”

She seized Lu Xiaomu by the arm and dragged him outside.

“Aunt Zhaozhao, you’re hurting me...”

Her slender nails dug into his flesh like a row of needles.

But Lin Zhaozhao seemed not to hear him at all.

The more Lu Xiaomu struggled, the more it hurt.

She pulled him all the way out of the villa and stuffed him into the child safety seat in the back.

Bang.

The door slammed.

The car turned around and drove off.

Watching the dark red taillights vanish completely into the deepening night, the breath Lin Zhaozhao had been holding in her chest slowly eased away.

Beep.

Beep, beep.

As the car headed to Su Baohui’s place, Lu Xiaomu called Lu Jinnian. The phone rang for a long time, but no one answered.

His eyes stung.

He turned his head away and curled up in the seat, unwilling to admit that he was crying.

...

In the living room of the apartment, Sang Wan removed Lu Jinnian from her blacklist and called him.

It rang for quite a while before it connected. A strange voice came through. “Hello, Miss Sang. Mr. Lu is in a meeting right now and cannot take your call.”

“Please tell him to call me back.”

She waited until ten o’clock, but Lu Jinnian still had not called.

Then Sang Wan called Lu Xiaomu, only to find that the watch had already been turned off.

Before entering the apartment, Lou Ye had deliberately lightened his steps, but the moment he opened the door, he saw Sang Wan sitting on the sofa, eyes on the television, though her mind was clearly somewhere else entirely.

Wash up.

Lights out.

When darkness came, Lou Ye drew Sang Wan into his arms from behind and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Sang Wan did not know how to put it into words.

Reason told her that although Lu Jinnian was not a good husband, he was still, by and large, a good father.

Even if he was not home, Lin Zhaozhao would not, and would not dare to, wrong Lu Xiaomu.

But emotionally, Sang Wan could feel that Lu Xiaomu had been hurt.

She even felt this was not really a topic she ought to discuss with Lou Ye.

Still, at that moment, he was the only one she could tell.

“Xiaomu seems... not quite all right,” she said.

In the dark, Lou Ye was silent for a long while.

When he finally spoke, his voice was very soft. “Did he cry?”

“No. But I can feel it.”

Lou Ye stroked her back. “At five, he’s already a little man. Since he didn’t cry and didn’t say anything, give him a little time. Suffering is something you either give to others, or others give to you. The sooner he sees it clearly, the sooner he can become the kind of person who never has to suffer it.”

He made it sound as though he too had once been a child who had been wronged.

Sang Wan’s attention drifted before she even realized it. “Then what about you? When did you see it clearly and become the kind of child who never has to suffer wrong?”

Clearly unwilling to continue the subject, Lou Ye answered perfunctorily, “I don’t remember.”

2S slipped into the bedroom without a sound, landed lightly on the bed, and, while enduring Lou Ye’s rebellious rhetoric, padded over and settled into the embrace of Sang Wan and Lou Ye.

Thinking of how Lu Xiaomu had wanted to pet the cat last time, Sang Wan decided she could try letting him get acquainted with 2S next time.

Thinking of Lu Xiaomu saying he already knew addition and subtraction within a hundred, Lou Ye’s gentle kiss fell on her shoulder, and he held her close, stroking her back with steady tenderness.

Sang Wan did not even know when she had fallen asleep.

When she woke again, it was to the sound of her phone.

Seeing “Lu Jinnian” on the screen, she thought instead of Lou Ye, and became instantly alert.

Sitting up, she found that Lou Ye was no longer beside her.

Sang Wan let out a breath of relief and answered, “Lu Jinnian, Xiaomu and I had already agreed to go to the amusement park today. Why did you stand me up at the last minute?”

Lu Jinnian seemed to know nothing about it. “When was this?”

Sang Wan: ...

She could hear him asking Lin Zhaozhao, and Lin Zhaozhao explaining that Su Baohui had called and told the driver to send Lu Xiaomu over to her place.

When Lu Jinnian spoke again, his tone had softened. “My mother may have had something urgent going on. I’m sorry. Then let’s do next week. I promise I won’t stand you up again.”

“Okay.”

Sang Wan answered and hung up.

Lu Jinnian then looked at Lin Zhaozhao, and his expression immediately turned colder than before. “I told you the day before yesterday that Xiaomu was going to see Sang Wan this week. Why didn’t you tell me in advance after sending him to my mother’s yesterday?”

“Honey, I’m sorry...”

Lin Zhaozhao clung to Lu Jinnian’s arm and pouted coquettishly. “You were in a meeting at the time, so I didn’t want to bother you.”

She had her own reasons.

If Lu Xiaomu went to see Sang Wan and Lu Jinnian went off to socialize, then in the end, if it happened to be mealtime, it would no longer just be a matter of one dinner.

A man and a woman alone.

With a chattering little boy calling for Mom and Dad.

What if...

Lu Jinnian’s feelings for her were obviously not as fervent as before.

And toward Sang Wan, he no longer carried that sharp, impatient anger he once had.

Even when Lu Xiaomu called Sang Wan, he would appear casually, just to remind everyone he was there.

And then there were those two H-brand handbags delivered by errand service.

Only belatedly did Lin Zhaozhao realize she had overestimated her own charm and underestimated Sang Wan’s presence.

No matter how much Lu Jinnian disliked Sang Wan, they still had the bond of childhood sweethearts and six years as husband and wife.

Not to mention Lu Xiaomu.

In the circles of Beijing’s wealthy elite, divorce and remarriage were common enough to be unremarkable.

She had worked so hard to get where she was today, and she would never leave Sang Wan even the tiniest opening.

“Honey, the time’s about right. Let’s get going...”

Lin Zhaozhao sweetly ushered Lu Jinnian into the dressing room.

Old Master Jiang’s birthday banquet was being held at the Jiang family’s ancestral residence.

Though they had not made a grand show of it, the Jiang family was a recognized power among Beijing’s wealthy circles, and Old Master Jiang’s standing in both high society and the construction industry spoke for itself.

By the time Lu Jinnian and Lin Zhaozhao arrived, the banquet hall was already bustling with people.

Back when she was still the executive assistant to the CEO, Lin Zhaozhao had accompanied Lu Jinnian to similar banquets and business gatherings before, but none had been as grand as this one, and the people she met then had never been nearly as distinguished.

She even spotted several first- and second-tier actresses from the entertainment world.

Back when she was only a secretary, she had had no choice but to follow at Lu Jinnian’s side step by step.

But today, she could openly take his arm and let those society ladies and starlets size her up however they wished.

Lin Zhaozhao was in an ecstatic mood.

“Young Master Lou has arrived!”

No one knew who shouted it, but the entire hall turned at once toward the entrance.

Lin Zhaozhao instinctively looked back. After a brief moment of stunned silence, her eyes widened round with shock.