Chapter 51
Chapter 51
She didn’t care whether anyone passing by might see them. She raised her hand and started hitting Pei Yuming, shrieking abuse as she struck him. “Are you even human?! Seducing another woman right in front of your own wife! Do you have no shame at all?!”
Pei Yuming failed to dodge in time. Bai Xue’s long, slender nails raked across the side of his face, the sting sharp and immediate. He instinctively lifted a hand to touch it, only to find he was actually bleeding.
He couldn’t help raising his arm to block her clawing attacks while shoving Bai Xue back, trying to make her stop. “Can you quit making a scene? Nothing happened between Su Jin and me. This was from before we got married. I just want to understand what happened. It has to do with Xiaobei, so can you calm down for a second?!”
“Xiaobei?” Bai Xue abruptly stopped moving, instantly calming down. “What does this have to do with Xiaobei?”
“You wouldn’t understand even if I told you!” Pei Yuming didn’t want to get tangled up in that. He thought Bai Xue would keep pressing him, but she only gave him a long, deep look and did not continue causing a scene.
Pei Yuming looked at her suspiciously.
Bai Xue’s reaction was wrong. They had lived together for so many years; he knew her better than anyone. If he had to sum up Bai Xue’s personality in one sentence, it would be that once she had the upper hand, she never let go. Pei Yuming did not believe she could suddenly change her nature in such a short time.
Pei Yuming moved his lips, just about to ask what was wrong with her, when a series of loud pops suddenly sounded above them, like something exploding.
Bai Xue and Su Jin were both so frightened they covered their heads and ducked over. Only then did Pei Yuming look up. Thick black smoke was billowing out of some apartment window upstairs. It looked like a fire had broken out.
“Whose place is that?” Bai Xue said in shock. “It can’t be a gas explosion, can it? That floor looks pretty high up. I hope it doesn’t spread to our place.”
Su Jin’s eyes widened then, and she murmured, “The twelfth floor, facing this direction… Isn’t that your home?”
“What?!” Bai Xue looked the building up and down, then cried out, “Oh no! I didn’t turn off the stove when I came out. It must be the soup boiling over!”
After Pei Yuming confirmed several times that the smoke really was coming from his own home, he was left speechless. He could not even get out a word of accusation. Mechanically, he took out his phone, called the fire department, and muttered, “Well. Guess dinner’s off.”
“Lao Pei, answer me. Do you hate her?” Seeing him drift off, Cao Lei spoke up to pull him back.
Pei Yuming blankly shook his head. Avoiding the harsh glare of the light overhead, he chose his words and said, “No. I don’t hate her. She had her reasons too.”
Cao Lei did not notice anything unusual about him. Instead, he found Pei Yuming’s attitude strange. Just a moment ago, the man had nearly broken down crying over his daughter jumping from the building, yet now he claimed he did not resent Su Jin at all. Strictly speaking, in his story, Su Jin could more or less be considered partly responsible for his daughter’s jump.
Cao Lei could not quite read Pei Yuming’s stance. Could it be that not only had Su Jin always liked him, but he also had feelings for Su Jin?
But if he asked that outright, Pei Yuming probably would not admit it.
Cao Lei fixed his gaze on Pei Yuming’s face and asked tentatively, “Before the murder happened, what do you think Su Jin’s relationship with Lu Dong was like?”
Pei Yuming’s mouth twitched slightly. When he answered, there was a disdain in his tone that even he did not seem aware of. “Lu Dong was very attentive to everyone in the Su Family, and Su Jin was no exception. You could say the two of them treated each other with courtesy and respect. Su Jin had a pretty good temper, and Lu Dong was so good at dealing with people. I heard from Bai Xue before that the two of them never fought. Who knows whether that was true or not.”
“When you first found out Su Jin was going to marry Lu Dong, how did you feel?”
Pei Yuming looked at Cao Lei in confusion, not understanding why he would ask that, but he still answered honestly. “I just thought it was a shame. My junior colleague had so much going for her, but after looking around, she ended up with someone like Lu Dong.”
“You only thought it was a shame?”
Pei Yuming nodded. “Yes.”
Cao Lei stared fixedly at Pei Yuming, but he could not spot anything off, so he continued asking, “How did Lu Dong and Su Jin meet back then?”
It should have been an insignificant question, but when Pei Yuming heard it, his eyes flickered for no apparent reason. Cao Lei caught that instant keenly. He slowly leaned closer, using his body to put pressure on Pei Yuming.
“Hm? You should know, shouldn’t you?”
Pei Yuming licked his lips and swallowed before saying, “Actually, Lu Dong came to me and asked me to introduce them…”
“Lu Dong was the one who pursued Su Jin?” Cao Lei raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just say it was a shame Su Jin married Lu Dong? Then why did you agree to help him?”
Pei Yuming awkwardly avoided Cao Lei’s gaze. Only after a long while did he say in a low voice, “I saw that Su Jin had always been alone and seemed pretty lonely. Since Lu Dong happened to ask, I helped arrange a meeting. I just didn’t expect her to actually accept his proposal in the end…”
That was an extremely dishonest answer. Cao Lei narrowed his eyes at Pei Yuming and said nothing for a long time.
Under his stare, Pei Yuming did not even dare lift his head. His entire body practically had the word guilty written all over it.
After quite a while, Cao Lei finally spoke again. “What did you think of Lu Dong back then? Lao Pei, I hope you’ll tell me the truth.”
This was a relatively easy question to answer, and Pei Yuming did not show much resistance. He considered it, then slowly said, “Back then, Lu Dong was quite well-known in our circle. Not academically, though. It was more him as a person. He was very flexible, very good at working connections. He hadn’t even graduated from college before he already had his own company. He had money in his hands, so there were always plenty of people around him, men and women alike. He was pretty popular.”
“And you? What was your opinion of him?”
“I didn’t really like him, actually. He was too calculating, and sometimes he was pretty unscrupulous in the way he did things. Our relationship was only so-so.”
“Unscrupulous? In what way, specifically?”
“This is just what I heard. He had a first love he’d been with for six years at the time. They’d been together since high school. When he started a business in college, apparently it was that girl’s family who gave him the money. Later, once he made money, he kicked that first love to the curb and turned around and got together with… with Bai Xue. After Bai Xue dated him for a while, she realized he wasn’t an honest person, so she broke up with him.”
“You’re saying Bai Xue broke up with him first, and only then got together with you?” Cao Lei’s expression turned somewhat meaningful. Clearly, the relationships among these people were even more complicated than he had imagined.
“Yes.”
“Bai Xue told you that?”
“How did you know?” Pei Yuming looked at him in surprise.
Cao Lei ran his tongue over his back teeth. He was almost certain that, as someone who had benefited from the situation back then, Pei Yuming had not only played dumb, but had also played innocent.
However, Cao Lei did not dwell on that point. After all, exposing him now would serve no purpose.
“So after he broke up with Bai Xue, he pursued Su Jin through your introduction?”
Pei Yuming shook his head. “No. He never lacked women around him. After they broke up, he got a new girlfriend. Later, somehow, he met Su Jin, and only then did he come to me to set them up.”
Cao Lei nodded. Hearing this much, he already had his own judgment.