Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That afternoon, a familiar face suddenly came looking for me.

It was Lin Jia.

She no longer possessed the pride she’d displayed when clashing with Lu Sisi on set; she looked utterly disheveled.

Sitting in a corner of the cafe, she asked me, “Lu Sisi treated you like that-you must be furious, right?”

“I know how hard you worked to climb up to a high branch like Zhou Jinyan, only for her to come back and ruin everything. I had someone take photos of her spending the night with Zhou Jinyan. As soon as they’re exposed, all you have to do is step forward and say you’re the official girlfriend, and she’ll be finished.”

“The ‘pure white jasmine’ is actually a homewrecking bitch. Heh.”

I finished my glass of lemonade and shook my head, refusing her offer.

But I underestimated Lin Jia’s desperation.

Her acting career, her greatest pride, had been easily crushed by Zhou Jinyan. She had lost all reason.

That night, intimate photos of Lu Sisi and Zhou Jinyan hit the trending searches.

A so-called insider leaked the story: “Zhou Jinyan has a girlfriend; they’ve been together for years. I’ve seen them eating out together, and that person definitely wasn’t Lu Sisi.”

To prove she wasn’t lying, she even posted a photo.

Because it was a candid shot, the quality was blurry, but you could still see that the woman in the photo had short hair, a slender build, and a tear mole at the corner of her eye.

She was looking up at the man opposite her, her eyes bright.

I stared at the photo, momentarily dazed.

This was from two years ago, not long after my grandmother passed away.

My mood had been consistently low back then.

Zhou Jinyan had taken me to a newly opened, niche restaurant.

They served the cuisine of my hometown.

The seasonings used were exactly like the ones my grandmother had used for decades.

I took a bite and realized he had brought me there specifically. I looked up and thanked him earnestly.

“Thank you, President Zhou.”

He just quirked his lips into a smile. “Yu Ning, is that any way to address your boyfriend?”

He wanted me to call him Ah Yan.

I couldn’t get used to that kind of intimacy, so I could only call him by his full name.

It wasn’t until later that I learned that was how Lu Sisi had addressed him since they were children.

“Yu Ning!”

I snapped back to reality to see Zhou Jinyan entering the room with a dark expression, striding toward me.

He raised his hand and slapped me across the face, then grabbed my collar and shoved me against the edge of the table.

A photo was slammed down violently in front of me.

It was a picture of me and Lin Jia sitting in that dimly lit corner of the cafe.

His voice was deathly cold. “What more do you want? If it weren’t for the fact that this face looks a bit like Sisi’s, you wouldn’t have even been qualified to sell yourself to me for the money to keep your grandmother in the hospital! And now, you’re teaming up with others to frame Sisi. How can a woman be as malicious as you?”

A burning pain radiated from my cheek, and the tightened collar choked my neck, bringing waves of suffocation.

I opened my mouth and spoke with difficulty, “It wasn’t me.”

“I refused her.”

Zhou Jinyan refused to believe me.

He squeezed my chin forcefully, scanning my face as if he wanted to gouge a piece of flesh out with his eyes.

After a long moment, he let out a cold sneer. “Third-rate trash. Truly pathetic.”

He let go, watching me collapse weakly to the floor, and slammed the door as he left.