Chapter 53

Chapter 53

While Wu Xiaojiu was on the phone, Bo Suihan had already moved through the dark to stand behind him.

“At a friend’s house? What kind of friend gets your heart racing this much? Is it your boyfriend or your girlfriend, Wu Xiaojiu?”

Qi Jiao’s voice rose slightly.

Wu Xiaojiu clicked his tongue, just about to snap back that it was none of his business.

Then the back of his neck suddenly went cold. He looked down and saw Bo Suihan, without knowing when, resting his face in the crook of his neck again.

He looked up at him with a pitiful expression.

“I’m scared. I just want to make sure you’re here. Don’t go, okay?”

A lethal triple strike.

Wu Xiaojiu was softhearted and not at all good at resisting this sort of thing. Being acted cute at like that, he suddenly didn’t know what to do.

He took a step back.

Before he could even answer Qi Jiao on the other end, the other side had already exploded first.

“Your heart rate went up again. What are you two doing right now? What is your friend doing while you’re on the phone with me!”

Seeing how agitated the other party was, Wu Xiaojiu suddenly felt a little flustered.

He was just about to coax him a little.

Then the side of his throat went cold again.

“Is he really that much fun to be around? So concerned about your private life. Am I not your best brother?”

When Bo Suihan said that, he sounded genuinely pitiful.

In that instant, Wu Xiaojiu thought, damn it, what exactly are you trying to do, acting all obedient and cute like this?

He had only said two sentences back to Qi Jiao and already gotten hit twice.

What exactly had Bo Suihan hauled him all the way over here for?

But before he could think it through, Qi Jiao on the other end had already lost his mind.

“I heard that! Wu Xiaojiu, you’ve got some nerve, and you’re only in your twenties and already daring to get into a relationship! Just wait, I’m driving over right now.”

The person on the other end was so angry he was practically jumping up and down.

Bo Suihan, however, curved his lips.

Narrowing his eyes, he glanced coolly at the red glow on Wu Xiaojiu’s watch.

He tilted his chin up with a hint of challenge and leaned closer to Wu Xiaojiu’s jaw.

“Wu Xiaojiu, just wait until I deal with you!”

A frantic voice instantly came through the phone.

Then came the heavy slam of a car door closing.

Wu Xiaojiu hurriedly hung up, then tossed the phone onto the bed like it was a land mine.

“Crazy. You’ve been childhood friends for this long, and now you want to control each other’s private lives?”

He cursed under his breath, then looked down at Bo Suihan again.

He reached out and pushed him farther away, sitting on the edge of the bed alone and questioning life.

On Qi Jiao’s side.

The rain was still coming down hard, but he didn’t care whether he had an umbrella or raincoat.

He strode straight from the building to the garage, floored the accelerator, and didn’t give a damn whether the traffic lights were working or not. He practically blasted the car stereo to the point of deafening.

That reckless energy carried him through the streets.

Nothing else was on his mind now. All he could think about was Wu Xiaojiu being kissed by someone else.

Someone had gotten there first.

The person he’d been thinking about for over a decade had been taken before he could make a move.

They always said the person closest to the moon got it first. Qi Jiao had kept quiet for more than ten years, always thinking Wu Xiaojiu was silly and well-behaved, and that although he messed around in bars, he had never developed a long-term relationship with anyone.

He had thought Wu Xiaojiu was already in his pocket, only to find out today.

Wu Xiaojiu had been holding something big back on him.

Qi Jiao turned the car music up as loud as it would go. His handsome face was taut, and his fingers dug deep into his palm beneath the steering wheel.

Only real pain could dull the rage building up in him right now.

“I’ll kill you. A nouveau riche upstart who only just got rich? I’m definitely going to sell you off to Eastern Europe and make sure you suffer so badly you can’t live or die in peace.”

The fury had already clouded his mind.

Right then, through the pouring rain, a truck cut across the road.

Qi Jiao had no choice but to hit the brakes. The massive inertia slammed his head into the steering wheel.
Qi Jiao slammed his fist hard against the horn.

He couldn’t help swearing in anger.

Wu Xiaojiu’s children’s smartwatch had not only heart-rate monitoring and real-time heartbeat transmission, but also a function even Wu Xiaojiu himself didn’t know about.

Surveillance.

There was a pinhole camera Qi Jiao had specially hidden inside it.

It was no bigger than a needle hole and glowed red while it sat on Wu Xiaojiu’s wrist.

Qi Jiao could see every move he made.

Ever since that watch had been strapped onto Wu Xiaojiu’s wrist, Qi Jiao had developed the habit of peeking at him from time to time.

So whether it was Bo Suihan and Wu Xiaojiu hugging, or Wu Xiaojiu returning to the country after his palm had been cut and the two of them holding hands with their fingers interlaced, Qi Jiao knew. He could see it all.

And every time, he burned with rage.

There was nothing he could do about it, usually.

But this time, what Bo Suihan had done was simply too much.

They had been childhood sweethearts for more than ten years. Forget Wu Xiaojiu’s face and neck, Qi Jiao had never even kissed or touched his hands or legs.

And Bo Suihan was just some nobody from who-knows-where.

On what grounds?

Qi Jiao drove like a madman, his only thought being how to deal with Bo Suihan. He didn’t notice at all that Wu Xiaojiu’s location on the watch had already changed.

By the time he reached the base of Bo Suihan’s villa,

the place was already empty.

“You played me. So you thought you were clever.”

Qi Jiao stood in the rain, hands on his hips, trembling with rage.

His lower lip was not only cold, but bitten white as well.

He climbed back into the car, planning to adjust the watch’s live location again and track Wu Xiaojiu down once more.

And just then,

his phone suddenly rang.

Qi Jiao was already irritated and wanted to hang up.

But when he saw it was an unknown number, he thought it might be an urgent call from an East Asia investment partner.

After hesitating several times, he finally answered.

“Are you Qi Jiao, the acting president of Qi Group? Hello, my name is Wang Xiao. I can tell you hate Bo Suihan. Want to team up and turn the Bo Family upside down?”

…

Meanwhile,

Wu Xiaojiu and the others took a car to another villa.

Bo Suihan only had two properties under his name right now: the one he was living in, and another near the Bo Family Old Residence.

In other words, the other villa was out in the suburbs.

Pretty far.

As they drove there, the rain from the sky kept getting heavier.

Wu Xiaojiu was a little scared there might be flooding. If the water and power were cut off somewhere else, the two of them could end up trapped inside and unable to get out.

So he suggested they make do with a hotel for the night.

Bo Suihan agreed without much hesitation. There happened to be a hotel right nearby.

Just as they were about to get out of the car,

the hotel doors suddenly flew open, and a woman was thrown out half-dressed.

The rain was coming down in sheets, making her face impossible to see clearly, but there was a large cluster of peonies tattooed across her back.

It stretched from her shoulder blade to the nape of her neck, a vivid pink that looked strikingly beautiful.

The two of them froze at first.

Then they saw the woman stagger to her feet in the rain and carefully straighten the flimsy gauze-like clothes on her body.

She hobbled forward.

But after only a few steps, a crowd poured out from the hotel after her.

They were dressed much better than the woman, in suits and ties and matching uniforms. They looked like proper hotel staff.

The group surrounded the woman in a circle.

The leader kicked her hard in the chest.

“You’ve got some nerve, coming into my hotel to steal business. You don’t know your place, do you? You want to die, is that it?”

The rain was heavy, but it couldn’t drown out his voice.

“My child is sick, and I urgently need money. Just let me finish this job. At worst, I’ll come back and pay you back with the money from this one.”

The woman fell into the rain, and the peonies on her back were exposed again.