Chapter 7

“Ah! Stop fighting! Please, stop fighting!”

Slap!

“Ah! Lu Jianguo, you even hit me now?!”

Lin Qian could clearly tell that all the pitiful shrieks were coming from Lu’s mother.

Lu Jianguo had every reason to be furious—his paralyzed father had been left unattended, ended up falling unconscious, and was now in the hospital. Meanwhile, his own wife had run off to chat about life with some old man.

The green hat on his head practically glowed.

Knock knock

A police officer knocked lightly on the door and said, “Everyone inside, please calm down. We’re the police. If there’s an issue, please open the door and talk to us.”

The chaos inside instantly fell silent.

Lu Jianguo and the bruised, swollen-faced Hu Degui stared at each other.

Wang Xiulian dropped to her knees with a thud in front of the two men. “Director Hu, please forgive me!”

“Lu Jianguo, can you stop making a scene? I swear I didn’t betray you—I’m innocent. Things have already gone this far. Can we please just stop now?”

“Slut!”

Lu Jianguo slapped her hard again. He was furious—he truly wished he could beat this scumbag man and shameless woman to death.

But he was middle-aged now, with too many things to consider. If the police really decided to deal with this officially today, his family would be completely ruined.

With her face swollen like a pig’s, Wang Xiulian knelt at his feet, begging. “Even if you don’t care about our 20+ years of marriage, at least think about our two kids. Xiaoqin is still young, and Zhanting hasn’t even married Lin Qian yet. If this ruins things with Lin Qian, do you really want him to end up marrying some freshly widowed woman? And your father, he—”

Slap!

“You don’t have the right to mention my father!”

“Fine, I won’t mention him,” Wang Xiulian said, completely humbled.

She then turned to the other man and said cautiously, “Director Hu, and you…?”

Hu Degui, face full of resentment, said, “Don’t worry. As long as we can keep this thing quiet, I’ll be thanking the heavens. If someone really accuses me of misconduct, I can forget about being factory director.”

Seeing that she had finally calmed both men down, Wang Xiulian gingerly asked Lu Jianguo, “Then… should I open the door now?”

Lu Jianguo closed his eyes in frustration.

Wang Xiulian got up, tidied her messy hair, and finally went to open the door.

Lin Qian heard the door creak and quickly leaned against the wall to avoid being seen.

“I’m so sorry, officers. My husband and his buddy were just talking about something and had a little disagreement. We didn’t mean to cause a disturbance.”

The two police officers struggled to keep from laughing and asked, “Are you sure it was just a disagreement? Nothing else going on?”

“Please don’t overthink it, officers. We all know each other. It was just some roughhousing. You can ask them yourself if you like.”

Hu Degui forced out a stiff smile. “Yeah, we’re all friends here—brothers even. At most it’s just a scuffle. Nothing illegal, right?”

The officers turned to look at Lu Jianguo.

Wang Xiulian and Hu Degui instantly tensed up. If Lu Jianguo chose to accuse them of an affair, they’d be finished.

Lu Jianguo clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles cracking, and swallowed down the metallic taste in his throat. Gritting his teeth, he said, “Yeah… we’re all acquaintances. It has nothing to do with you.”

Wang Xiulian and Hu Degui both breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Lin Qian let out a cold laugh—every man in the Lu family was spineless!

Since that was the case, she’d handle things herself.

“Uncle Lu, I didn’t realize you were such a ninja turtle. Aunt Wang and Director Hu didn’t find a better place to talk about work—they just had to come to a hotel room. And you caught them red-handed! The police even showed up for you, and you’re still going to bottle it up?”

Lin Qian deliberately used sarcastic mockery to stir up Lu Jianguo’s burning anger.

“Lin Qian, do you even know what nonsense you’re spouting?”

“And why are you even here?!”

Wang Xiulian’s eyes flashed with suspicion before she jumped up and screamed, “Oh, so you’re the one who set me up! You sent those undergarments to Director Hu in my name! You witch! Do you even want to marry my son anymore? What are you really after?!”

Lin Qian smiled calmly. “Aunt Wang, even now you’re still acting? If you hadn’t already been trying to seduce Director Hu, who would think to send him your underwear? And don’t tell me Director Hu held you at knifepoint and forced you to come here today?”

The front desk clerk added angrily, “That’s right. I can testify. All three of them came in one after the other. Director Hu arrived first, and then Madam Wang came specifically to find him.”

Lu Jianguo exploded with rage and kicked Wang Xiulian. “You shameless woman! You sent your underwear to seduce that bastard?! Have you no shame at all?!”

Hu Degui, terrified by Lu Jianguo’s fury, immediately squatted down and covered his head.

As Lu Jianguo moved in to strike again, the police officers quickly stepped in to stop him.

“Alright, everyone calm down. We were called here because someone reported inappropriate relations going on. This isn’t something you three can just agree to drop among yourselves. You’ll all need to come to the station and give a statement.”

Wang Xiulian, wiping blood from her nose as she stood up, screamed at Lin Qian, “You ungrateful tramp! Just wait! You’re getting dumped! I will never let my son marry you!”

Lin Qian smirked coldly. This was the outcome she had worked so hard to engineer.

Lu Jianguo, Wang Xiulian, and Hu Degui were all taken away by the police.

Lin Qian planned to return to the Lin household to try and reclaim the bride price the Lu family had paid.

Now that she had stirred up such a scandal with the Lu family, even if she canceled the engagement, they’d probably be too embarrassed to demand the money back.

But if she was calling off the engagement, then her parents, Lin Dawei and his wife, had no right to cling to the bride price either.

While riding her bike down the road, Lin Qian thought carefully about how to best recover that money from the cold-hearted Lin couple.

What weaknesses did they have in her past life?

Lin Dawei was famously henpecked—his wife Ma Guixin had him completely under her thumb.

And if he was that tightly controlled, then there had to be a secret.

Finally, Lin Qian remembered—one Mid-Autumn Festival when she came home, she overheard some neighbors gossiping about it in the family courtyard…