Chapter 17

“You’re fired.”
That was the very first sentence Jiang Wei saw when she got back to the firm, a termination email.
Li Xiaoxiao rushed over to ask what had happened, saying if it wasn’t something huge, she could talk to her uncle and try to smooth things over.
She’d vaguely heard some things about Attorney Wu, but nothing concrete.
Jiang Wei was grateful to her, but dumping her troubles on someone else again and again just wasn’t her style.
She shook her head at Xiaoxiao and said she was fine.
The moment she stepped out of the firm, she dropped the recording and video from that night in Attorney Wu’s hotel room into the company group chat, then immediately left the group.
“You’re a married man…”
“We’re just having a little fun. What’s wrong with that? We’re all adults here.”
The audio played aloud. Attorney Wu’s face went a thunderous shade of green, and he swept everything off his desk in one furious swipe.
Their conversation was crystal clear. People in the group chat downloaded and saved the files in seconds. The admin hurried to delete the recording and video, but it was already too late.
Attorney Wu himself was an admin. Deleting it now was basically an admission of guilt, but leaving it there would have been even worse.
The chat might look calm on the surface, but in private, everyone was in an uproar.
“Hey, did you save it?”
“Yeah, got it.” Someone even waved their phone triumphantly.
A few interns traded knowing looks.
“Hello, Dr. Wen. What’s up?”
“Me? I’m great. Things at the firm have been really busy these days. I actually feel like I’ve learned a lot.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
Walking out of the office building, Jiang Wei let out a long breath and glanced at the missed calls on her screen.
After hesitating for a long time, she finally called back. He must have been worried sick. He was taking care of her from a distance and watching over Grandma at the same time…
When he picked up, she kept her tone light and breezy, hiding the heaviness deep inside.
“That’s good then. Weiwei, I was scared to death. If you hadn’t called me back today, I might’ve just hopped on a plane to come find you.”
She soothed her boyfriend and then headed back to campus.
After that, she started firing off résumés again. One after another.
Nothing but silence.
One day she finally got an interview notice, from a tiny firm she’d never even heard of. She was genuinely excited. As long as she could work, grow, gain experience, anything was fine.
But when she got there, they peppered her with questions, made her wait for hours, and had her doing cleaning, ordering takeout, serving tea and water, calling it “testing her ability to handle pressure.” In the end, they told her she wasn’t a good fit.
When she pressed for a reason, the interviewer just smiled.
“My surname is Wu.”
Jiang Wei understood immediately.
She stared at him coldly for a long moment, then turned and walked away.
That night, lying in bed, she stared up into the darkness and wondered…
Could she still be a lawyer? Could she still speak for the powerless?
If I stand for the weak, who stands up for me?
Later, Li Xiaoxiao told her that Wu Xugou had spread the word: he was going to make sure she couldn’t survive in this industry. Unless Jiang Wei went to his house, knelt and apologized, and admitted that the recording and video were fabricated, she’d never be able to get a foothold again.
Xiaoxiao sounded guilty; there was nothing she could do.
“It’s okay, Xiaoxiao. You’ve already helped me a lot. The situation now is the result of my own choices. My conscience is clear. I don’t regret anything.”
She had her own two hands and feet. If she couldn’t do law, she could do something else. She’d still be standing.
Unfortunately, not even waiting tables could be peaceful. By the twenty-eighth time she’d brought an order to Ling Ze’s table, she finally snapped.
“What exactly do you want?”
“I’m courting you. Isn’t it obvious?”
Ling Ze lifted his chin slightly, raising his wine glass in her direction, every movement smooth and elegant, as if to say he greatly admired women as beautiful and resilient as she was.
Jiang Wei bit down hard on her molars. Heh. Everyone in the restaurant said she’d landed a rich patron, and even the floor manager came over to tell her to accept him already.
She’d said a thousand times that she had a boyfriend.
The more she said it, the more people’s attitudes turned snide, accusing her of putting on airs. She: ???
If she’d wanted to snag a rich man, she could’ve done it in high school. With a top-tier second-generation like Ling Ze, even if his father paid her off to get lost, it would have been a huge sum.
Was this man really so busy with the company that he had this much free time?
“I’ll drive you back to campus.”
It wasn’t a question. The statement alone radiated his growing dominance. Back in high school, he’d still had some youthful softness about him; now he looked gentlemanly and refined, but underneath he was nothing more than a fox in a tailcoat.
Jiang Wei had wanted to refuse, but he tailed her all the way in his silver-gray Bugatti with eight eights on the plate, ostentatious as a parade float. Her skin just wasn’t thick enough to endure it.
By the time they reached the university, it was already late. As she got out, she could feel a few straggling students casting her looks full of contempt, making her cheeks burn with a strange shame.
“Weiwei, think about it. In my eyes, that Wu guy is just a cockroach. Crushing him would be easy.”
He knew.
Jiang Wei whipped her head around to stare at him. She didn’t dare follow that thought too far, but she couldn’t help wondering if her total inability to land a decent job lately had something to do with him.
A senior partner at some law firm shouldn’t have that much power.
Was this man really planning to play out some cliché eight o’clock melodrama with her?
“Ling Ze, the reason I haven’t been able to find a decent job… is it because I turned you down that day?” She drew a breath. “Let me tell you something, I bitterly regret saving you back then. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would never make the same choice.”
For a moment, Jiang Wei couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“But you saved me back then. You almost lost your life for me. Are you really saying you don’t feel even a shred of affection for me?”
Jiang Wei was just about to shout: No! I was just being a decent human being!
But this great young master barreled right on ahead on his own. “Weiwei, you do have feelings for me. You’re just bewitched by that boyfriend of yours. He doesn’t deserve you. Being with me, that’s the best destination you could ever choose.”
“I think President Ling must be sick. You should go take your meds.”
Even that kind of sharp jab didn’t really anger Ling Ze. Instead, he looked at her with a kind of indulgence, almost doting, as if he could forgive her anything.
Seeing that calling him crazy wasn’t working, Jiang Wei switched tactics, appealing to his feelings. “Senior, I don’t think you actually like me. You’re just clinging to a bit of warmth, that’s all. In the future, when you and your fiancée start a family, you’ll have an adorable baby…”
In her mind, this guy was just someone whose birth mother died early and whose father never loved him, warped and starved for affection.
But she hadn’t even finished when,
“I just need a fiancée. The engagement is nothing more than a means to an end. Entertaining those society ladies is exhausting. Weiwei, I really don’t want you to suffer like this. Besides, we might have a child of our own someday.”
Completely impervious.
“You!”
He was talking about making her his mistress in the most righteous tone, as if he were offering her a life of blessings.
Watching her little face flush bright red with anger, something in Ling Ze’s chest stirred. Alive. Real. This was what he wanted. And what he wanted, he always got.
He felt like he only truly came alive when he was with this girl. Only with her did life feel easy, almost pleasant, even if his memories still hadn’t come back.
His father, his fiancée, that stepmother of his, he looked at them the way he’d look at a black-and-white photograph: self-serving, hypocritical, every move carefully calculated.
They were all trying to hide things from him, but they were too clumsy; their lies leaked at the seams.
He was starting to understand why Jiang Wei felt so different to him.
In a certain rich man’s villa.
Wang Zhi Ning’s face was thunderous as she spread out the photos taken by the private investigator, looking through them one by one.
“What’s wrong, darling?”
Madam Wang had just finished a facial. She walked in carrying an armful of luxury shopping bags, only to see her precious daughter’s foul expression and immediately went over, concerned.
“Mamy, do you really think I can become the future mistress of the Ling Group?”
Wang Zhi Ning’s tone was aggrieved, full of dissatisfaction.
Madam Wang tossed the designer bags casually into a corner and hurried to pull her daughter into her arms. “If you’re not the future Mrs. Ling, then who would be? No one but our Ningning.”
Her gaze drifted to the photos on the table, and she sighed.
“You’re getting worked up over some weed growing on the roadside? Really? Tsk. Instead of wasting time on her, why don’t you think about how to win over your fiancé and sit securely in the Madam Ling seat.”
Madam Wang’s tone was laced with disdain and the particular arrogance of old money.
“But he has never been this invested in any other woman before. Or rather, I’ve never seen him show the slightest interest in other women. Doesn’t that make this girl more dangerous, Mamy?”
“So what? Ningning, as long as Ling Ze still wants the Ling Group, and as long as you remain the Wang family’s only daughter, the Mrs. Ling position can only be yours. If you can’t even handle this, what, are you planning to end up like the previous Madam Ling? Don’t forget, her father was a military district commander, and even that didn’t stop Chairman Ling from keeping a woman outside.”
“Men are like cats. They all like to sneak out for a taste of something else. It’s hard to really keep them on a leash.”
Clearly, Madam Wang had seen this sort of thing too many times. Just earlier, she’d finished dealing with one of Mr. Wang’s little romantic disasters. Powerful men cheated, wiped their mouths badly, and then dragged their wives in to help clean up.
It wasn’t that she never got angry. But a family empire that big, tear it all apart and it only hurts everyone. Besides, Madam Wang herself had started out as the mistress, stealing his first wife’s place. She was all the more afraid that if she didn’t keep his mouth wiped clean, someone else would replace her.
Her mother’s little lecture did nothing to soothe Wang Zhi Ning.
Instead, she picked up one of the clearer frontal shots, gently brushed the fine dust from its surface, and narrowed her eyes, studying it.
“Mamy, why do I feel like this woman looks a lot like me?”
If a man cheats, it’s usually because he’s tired of the face he’s seen for years and wants something fresh.
Like a man who’s stared at red roses for too long and suddenly wants to sniff at a white peony.
But Ling Ze had found someone whose face looked this similar to hers. What was that supposed to mean?
The butler glanced over, took a good look, and was stunned. “Truly… she and Miss look like twins.”
The moment those words left her mouth, Wang Zhi Ning’s expression turned even uglier, like she’d stepped in dog poop that morning. If they had the same face, but Ling Ze preferred that woman and treated her, his official fiancée, like a passing stranger, how bad did that make her?
Realizing she’d said the wrong thing, the butler fell silent at once.
Only then did Madam Wang take a closer look. Her gaze paused on the faint, blurry mark on the girl’s wrist, something that looked suspiciously like a scar, and her heart began to hammer in her chest.
A terrible suspicion rose in her mind. She took a gulp of cold tea to steady herself.