Chapter 49
Chapter 49
Pei Yuming nodded. “Yes.”
Cao Lei ran his tongue over his back teeth. “Lao Pei, you know Su Jin’s family has also been invited here. For the police, no matter how much we trust someone, we can’t just listen to one side of the story. You understand what I mean, don’t you?”
Pei Yuming’s gaze flickered. He avoided Cao Lei’s fixed stare, the guilt on his face obvious, but even after a long silence, he still did not speak.
Cao Lei rapped his knuckles against the table, drawing his attention back. “If you don’t talk, someone else will. But you know how it is. Some perfectly normal things, when they come out of someone else’s mouth, can end up sounding like something else entirely.”
There was nothing wrong with that. As an adult, Pei Yuming knew perfectly well how powerful rumors could be, especially when it came to what had happened back then. If the Su Family were the ones to tell it, there was no telling how they might describe it.
He could not help swallowing. He lifted his eyes to glance at Cao Lei, and finally said, “It was actually because of Bai Xue.”
“Hm?”
Cao Lei narrowed his eyes, signaling for him to continue.
“At the time, I was working under Su Jin’s father. He introduced his daughter to me, and I couldn’t really refuse. Fortunately, Su Jin was a good person. I originally thought we could just keep dating like that and then get married when the elders arranged it. But after New Year’s, I attended a class reunion and met Bai Xue. We fell in love at first sight. After that, I brought up breaking up with Su Jin. Her family found out about it too. Back then, my mentor, Su Jin’s father, Su Bonian, was furious. He even threatened to have me removed from the hospital. Later, for some reason, he came around and agreed to let us break up. After that, she married Lu Dong.”
“Then after she married Lu Dong, did the two of you have a relationship?” Cao Lei asked with a frown.
“No!” For some reason, Pei Yuming reacted strongly. “It was before that. About half a month before we broke up. It was her birthday that time, and we both had a little to drink, so…”
Cao Lei folded his arms and studied Pei Yuming closely. To be honest, from a purely male perspective, Pei Yuming was still a very good-looking man.
Even at his current age, his regular features and tall, well-proportioned build made it clear that he must have been very popular with women when he was young.
More than twenty years ago, a tall, handsome man who was intelligent, capable, and working at a hospital would have been considered someone with limitless prospects. Plenty of girls would undoubtedly have fallen for him.
Pei Yuming had spoken vaguely, but Cao Lei heard quite a bit beneath the surface.
He rubbed his chin and asked, “Back then, Bai Xue was the one who pursued you, wasn’t she?”
Pei Yuming froze, then nodded. “Yes.”
“Afterward, you never asked around to find out why Su Jin’s father suddenly let you off?”
Pei Yuming shook his head. “No… But I did hear a few things later. It seemed like Su Jin pleaded on my behalf.”
Cao Lei nodded in understanding. That made sense. Su Jin could not have given birth to Pei Yuming’s child for no reason. If she had liked Pei Yuming from beginning to end, then it could be explained.
Cao Lei’s expression turned complicated. “After that, Su Jin never brought up what happened between the two of you again?”
“No.” Pei Yuming shook his head decisively.
He answered too quickly, and Cao Lei immediately looked suspicious.
Seeing that he did not believe him, Pei Yuming hurried to add, “It’s true, Officer Cao. Because of that incident, we had already stopped contacting each other at the time. For a long while, we never met alone. Later, it was only because Bai Xue and Su Jin became close that we started interacting again. But all these years, aside from some overlap at work, we almost never saw each other privately. I love my wife very much, and I also respect Su Jin. What happened back then had already hurt her. I couldn’t very well hurt her a second time.”
Cao Lei took Pei Yuming’s long-winded explanation with a grain of salt. He was a man himself, and he knew very well how good men could be at dressing up the things they had done. Still, Pei Yuming’s words had given him plenty to think about. It seemed the relationship between these two families was far more complicated than he had imagined.
“So what you’re saying is, not long after Su Jin got pregnant with your child, she married Lu Dong. Is that right?”
The question left Pei Yuming with extremely complicated feelings. Not long ago, he had been hopping mad over Lu Dong and Bai Xue, yet in the blink of an eye, Lu Zixuan had turned out to be his son. Without even knowing it, he had cuckolded Lu Dong for more than twenty years.
“Probably,” Pei Yuming explained awkwardly. “But I really didn’t know Su Jin was pregnant at the time.”
“Then do you think Lu Dong knew?”
Pei Yuming touched his forehead. Thinking back to Lu Dong’s expression and behavior at the time, he guessed, “Probably not. He was shocked just now too. At first, he didn’t believe it either.”
“Are you sure?”
Pei Yuming thought for a moment. “Yes.”
“Then do you think this hit Bai Xue hard?”
Pei Yuming did not understand why Cao Lei was asking these questions, but he still answered honestly. “I’m not too sure, but she was pretty shocked too.”
“Does she blame you?”
A look of shame appeared on Pei Yuming’s face. “Yes.”
Cao Lei nodded. Judging from the details Pei Yuming had provided so far, the reactions of the people involved did not seem particularly problematic. Of course, it was also possible that Pei Yuming simply had not noticed anything, or had not thought to make anything up.
The clues about Lu Zixuan’s parentage were useful, but what exactly they were useful for would only become clear if he kept asking.
Cao Lei frowned in thought for a while. “Wait. As far as I know, Bai Xue went to a dance academy, right? And she’s five years younger than you. How did you meet her at a class reunion?”
Pei Yuming licked his lips and shrank back slightly under the cover of lowering his head, clearly feeling guilty.
Cao Lei stared hard at him. The invisible pressure forced him to speak.
“Actually… when we met, she was Lu Dong’s girlfriend.”
“What? You mean back then, you took Bai Xue from Lu Dong, and right after that, he married your ex-girlfriend Su Jin? And when Su Jin got married, she was already pregnant with your child?” Even Cao Lei, who had seen plenty in his time, could not help the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Pei Yuming opened his mouth awkwardly, then finally admitted in frustration, “I mean, I guess that’s what happened, but why does it sound so abnormal when you say it?”
Because it was abnormal to begin with, all right?
Cao Lei was somewhat speechless. Just how mentally resilient were these people, to go on being friends for so many years after all that?
Pei Yuming glanced at the expressions of the others in the interrogation room and could not help defending himself. “Actually, I wouldn’t really say I stole her back then. Bai Xue came to me first. And Lu Dong didn’t seem to care much afterward. Later, he met Su Jin and went after her. If we hadn’t found out about all this, the two of them were actually much more harmonious all these years than Bai Xue and I were.”
Cao Lei gave Pei Yuming a meaningful look. He had discovered that this man’s ability to play dumb and innocent had truly reached a masterful level.
Anyone with eyes could see why Lu Dong had married Su Jin. A harmonious relationship did not mean a happy one. When Su Jin married Lu Dong back then, hiding the fact that she was pregnant, she had probably had no other choice. After all, in those days, that would have been an enormous scandal. There was no way Pei Yuming had never understood that.
Perhaps all these years, Su Jin had never forgotten him at all, while he had kept playing dumb, never taking the initiative and never rejecting her, quietly enjoying that hidden admiration.