Chapter 316 - Favor, Money, Women, the Three-pronged Approach.
Chapter 316: Chapter 317 Favor, Money, Women, the Three-pronged Approach.
“Li Xinghui’s description of the third lady is very similar to my childhood friend. She went abroad five years ago, and Yuan Yuan must have thought that it was her.”
“Wait, what? That third lady is your childhood friend?” Dong Xiaoye was in disbelief, “you had such a rich childhood friend?”
“What are you talking about? I said the description of her is similar to my childhood friend,” I frowned, “I never said that the third lady was my childhood friend…”
“Then why did she offer that kind of cooperation term?” Dong Xiaoye asked the crux of the problem directly, “Business investment is not a game. Just because of you, they are willing to make a concession on their capital contribution? This is ridiculous.”
“You are right…” I smiled bitterly. If she really came back, what was the purpose of her doing this? Did she want to surprise me? This was even more ridiculous. In her eyes, I should be a heartless scum that was not worth her to do this kind of thing. Moreover, she was not an ostentatious person.
“You don’t know the background of your childhood friend?” Dong Xiaoye asked strangely, “Do you not stay in touch with her?”
Background? Stay in touch? I felt a faint pain in my heart. This question was like a thin needle piercing my heart. Why did I feel guilty? I didn’t know the background of the person who suddenly came out of nowhere and claimed to be her father, but I knew that many kids often used to joke about her background. However, as a friend, I had never contacted her and asked her how she adapted to the new environment. I even still owed her an answer.
This is like the way of life. Once you owe something to others, even if others have long forgotten about it, you will still think about it from time to time. This is probably the so-called imperfection, right? Maybe the first love we had when we were at an ignorant age would always be left incomplete, but how would people become mature if they had never experienced it before? However, it is exactly because we have become mature, that we no longer have the courage to look back on the innocent love we once had…
Maybe she wouldn’t come back again. I once comforted myself in such a despicable manner, and then despicably tried to forget about the past, because if I hadn’t been a despicable person, Chu Yuan, who felt guilty about what she had done, might have done something even scarier…
“We were childhood friends and classmates. She lived with her mom, and her mother worked in a foreign trade company. Her father seemed to be the owner of a large foreign company. But I have never met him. Five years ago, her father took her and her mother to the United States, and then… we lost contact.”
“Lost contact?”
“Mhm, I lost the contact information she gave me…” ” I tried to answer it like it was not a big deal, but the corners of my mouth twitched unnaturally.
“Are you serious?” Dong Xiaoye couldn’t believe what she had just heard, “how careless can you be?”
Thinking of the fragmented envelope, I smiled bitterly. I was indeed too careless.
After I stopped talking, the living room fell silent.
“Perhaps, that third lady was really your childhood friend,” Dong Xiaoye may have noticed my strange reaction, so she did not continue to tease me. Resting her chin on her hands, she pondered for a moment and suddenly said, “it feels like she is trying to increase your social status and value. If it was still a while ago, who would know who Chu Nan was? But now, even the chairman of Blue City Group has to get off his high horse and invite you to dinner personally… After all, no matter which company hires you, the biggest beneficiary is always you.”
‘Increase my social status and value?’ Indeed, that cooperation plan made me become the most popular employee in the business world overnight. No matter who the third lady was, the reality was that I was the biggest beneficiary.
“She… does she like you?”
“What?” I was startled by her so much that my heart suddenly skipped a beat and I quickly waved my hands, “no way. We were still high school students when she left, how could we understand those things…”
“Nowadays, little kids start to have relationships even when they are still junior high school students. So why are you pretending to be innocent?” Dong Xiaoye interrupted me and said, “if she doesn’t like you, why does she want to deliberately increase your social status?”
“I have said already that the third lady may not be her.” Although all signs indicated that it might be her, I had a feeling in my heart that it was not her. Perhaps, this was just my wishful thinking. But I really did not know how to face her. I didn’t know how to explain to her why I never contacted her in those years.
“I still think it’s her, otherwise, who else would do this for you? Not to mention that who else has the ability to do this kind of thing for you?”
“Miss Xiaoye, please keep your eyes wide open and look at my face carefully and seriously.”
“Why do I need to look at your face?” Dong Xiaoye’s face blushed. Thinking that I was teasing her, she raised her leg and wanted to kick me.
“I want you to see my face clearly,” I shook my head and smiled, “do I look like the kind of guy that would make women lose their minds? You think they are stupid?”
Dong Xiaoye snorted coldly, “Leaving Liusu aside, isn’t that Mo Fei woman stupid? She doesn’t even want to hide that she loves you. I just don’t know why she thinks that you are so charming. Maybe I’ve gotten used to seeing women fall head over heels in love with you, so I have developed some kind of immunity to it…”
I was speechless…
“I didn’t expect that you would know such a powerful figure…” Dong Xiaoye seemed to be certain that the third lady was my childhood friend. Her mood suddenly became low, her pretty face also darkened inexplicably. She looked down at her loose T-shirt and sweatpants, she smiled a little stiffly. “I thought you were an ordinary person just like me…”
“I am an ordinary person just like you,” I smiled bitterly, “Actually, my situation is worse than you. At least, you still have a job, but me? I don’t even have a job…”
“Don’t give me that excuse,” Dong Xiaoye sneered, “At the dinner table just now, didn’t you say that you are planning to stay in Fengchang?”
“That was just an excuse to stop Li Xinghui from looking for me again,” I sneered disdainfully, and said lightly, “I don’t want to be used by him. If I say that I have left Fengchang, then he would definitely want to invite me to work with him again. That guy is as sly as an old fox. During the dinner table, he only talks about the benefit that he can provide to me. Didn’t you see that even Guo Xiang was also tempted by the conditions he offered?”
Li Xinghui was extremely clever. He did not directly invite me to join his company, but persuaded me to enter Guo Xiang’s company. And then Blue City and Heng Xiang would form an alliance to jointly take part in the cooperation project of the third lady. From this plan, it was enough to see that Li Xinghui was not an ordinary person.
Obviously, his company had enough strength to handle this project alone, but he actually wanted to share it with Guo Xiang. In fact, anyone would be able to figure out what he was thinking if they thought about it carefully.
Heng Xiang had insufficient financial resources and could hardly provide any resources for Blue City. Since they couldn’t provide anything, and they could not invest anything, how would Heng Xiang be able to get anything in return? So even if they got the cooperation project of the third lady, Heng Xiang would only be able to increase its fame, and most of the profit would still belong to the Blue City Group.
There was only one reason why Li Xinghui didn’t mind going through all the trouble to invite me to dinner. He mainly wanted to persuade Guo Xiang as much as possible. Once he was able to convince Guo Xiang to work with him, he believed that Guo Xiang would use his private relationship with me to convince me to work with them.
Guo Xiang also understood Li Xinghui’s intentions, but he was still moved because Heng Xiang had just signed a big contract and was eagerly hoping to make its name in the market. This cooperation was undoubtedly the best advertisement.
The frightening thing about Guo Xiang was that he knew what he needed the most for his company and his company’s limit. So what he valued was not the project of the third lady. This was something that the sly old fox, Li Xinghui, understood well. That was why Li Xinghui promised that he would invest the money they saved from the project of the third lady into Heng Xiang.
In other words, this was bribery.
In addition to business interests, favors, and money, what made me flustered the most was that he even let his nominal wife seduce me! Was this how people in the upper class discuss business matters? Asking their wives to seduce other people?
During the dinner, apart from the flirtatious behavior under the table, Zhang Lingfang even followed me into the male bathroom of the restaurant and told me that as long as I agreed to work with them, she would satisfy all my needs, whether it was material or spiritual. When I jokingly asked if she was willing to sell her body, she directly grabbed my hands and put them on her plump breasts and said seductively, “of course.”
After the dinner, I finally understood why she was doing it. It turned out that she thought I was a lecherous man. Compared with all other methods that Li Xinghui used to invite me to join them, Zhang Lingfang was apparently Li Xinghui’s trump card. Because after the Crouching Dragon Mountain Resort incident, people in the upper class seemed to think that I was a lecherous man who would die for women…
No one would think that a man who had two beautiful women at the same time was innocent. And compared with the lively and straightforward Dong Xiaoye, and the cold and arrogant Mo Fei, Zhang Lingfang, who knew how to please a man, had a completely different kind of attraction to men. At least as a man, I would not feel shame admitting this.
Favor, money, beauty, the three-pronged approach was really hard to refuse…
“Why don’t you just join them…” Dong Xiaoye’s smile was very beautiful, but it was also very cold…