It would seem that Su Jianan was completely unfazed after the incident where she had been taken hostage. But in truth, she had merely kept her fears to herself.

The fact was that her terror had come after the incident.

Now, Lu Boyan was telling her, “Jianan, you don’t have to feel scared anymore.”

Those words were akin to a dose of sedative. Every word had soothed her troubled heart.

This also seemed to be the first time Lu Boyan had spoken so many words to her. She had once thought of Lu Boyan as the type who valued his words as if they were gold. She thought he would never utter so many words in the same breath.

Realizing that he was being scrutinized, Lu Boyan frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Were you the one who released the ropes on my hands that day? My brother said he saw you go upstairs.”

After so many days, Su Jianan was finally willing to bring up that incident. She was finally willing to face and deal with whatever that had happened that day.

However, it was also the image of Su Jianan rus.h.i.+ng desperately towards Jiang Shaokai, the way she had pressed down on Jiang Shaokai’s wound as she cried, and that had Lu Boyan taking up a cigarette again.

So many days had pa.s.sed since that day. Lu Boyan had almost forgotten about the whole thing. Now that she had brought it up, Lu Boyan felt a wave of frustration building up in his heart. It was an inexplicable feeling, one that he could not quite put his finger on.

“I didn’t know you were there,” Su Jianan said all of a sudden. “The first night, I was knocked out and tied to the chair by He Tianming. When I woke up the second day, I couldn’t even speak and my reactions were very slow. After that, he told me he was planning to start a live broadcast featuring the process of him cutting me up. I, I got a bit scared. After all, who would’ve thought that they’d die in such a horrible way, right? I didn’t expect Jiang Shaokai to risk his life to save me, though. He was bleeding out and I really thought that I had caused his death. I got even more afraid and I didn’t see you. So… I didn’t know you were the one who released the ropes.”

She lowered her head slightly. She had spoken a bit slowly, her small hands tightening around each other as she spoke. The delicate joints on her hands became clearer and clearer…

Finally, Lu Boyan understood the reason she had not brought up the incident all this while. The truth was that she was scared.

In her moment of greatest fear, it was Jiang Shaokai who had saved her.

Lu Boyan felt the frustration in his heart slowly seep away. “If you had seen me that day, what would you have done?”

“Probably won’t feel as scared, I guess.”

Her answer was not what Lu Boyan had expected.

Some kind of intense turmoil seemed to be roiling in his profound eyes. In the end, those intense emotions went away as he calmed down. He held Su Jianan’s hand in his own. “It’s alright now.”

Smiling, Su Jianan hummed and went back to her breakfast.

Before he left for work, Lu Boyan handed Su Jianan a bag.

Su Jianan knew that bag all too well. It was the fast-acting painkiller that she had taken in the hospital yesterday.

Her eyes went wide as she stared at Lu Boyan in horror. “I, I don’t… feel the pain anymore.”

“Argh! I don’t want to eat it! Don’t be tricked by Lu Boyan again!” she thought.

Lu Boyan placed the pills on the table. He reached out and stroked her hair. “I’m not asking you to take them now. Keep it around and take them when you don’t feel good.”

He grabbed a couple of doc.u.ments and left the room. After a long while, Su Jianan finally descended back into reality. She reached up and touched her dark tresses. There was no warmth there, but yet she could still feel the heat of Lu Boyan’s palm.

If she was not mistaken, Lu Boyan’s actions at that moment… were affectionate.

“What’s got into him this morning?” Su Jianan wondered.

Around 10 a.m., it was as if the sky was throwing tantrums like a child. All of a sudden, the sky became dark. Gusts of chilly wind swept in through the windows, lifting and coiling the curtains forcefully. Amidst her daze, Su Jianan realized that it was going to rain soon. The temperature was about to get colder.

Indeed, rain came sometime after lunch. Huge raindrops splashed against the gla.s.s windows. Su Jianan got up, shut the windows, and then turned the heater on. After that, she sat on the windowsill and took in the city view, which had already turned murky due to the rain. Moments later, she got bored and searched for her phone.

The black device was placed on the nightstand. When she picked it up, she found that the device had been shut off. “But I didn’t turn it off,” she thought.

When she booted the device, three text messages came in, all of which were from Shen Yuechuan—

“Meeting’s over? Are you serious? One moment the meeting’s going fine and dandy and then all of a sudden you just up and left. Now you’re saying that the meeting’s over? What’s the meaning of this?”

“It’s got something to do with Su Jianan, right? Don’t worry, we’re already used to this. If you could bail just before the contract signing last time in New York and risk losing the opportunity to venture into the North American market? This would be nothing!”

“By the way, does Jianan even know that you’d given up the North American market to save her? I bet you chickened out and didn’t tell her.”

Su Jianan read through the last two texts over and over again, verifying every line and every word just to make sure that she had not read anything wrongly. There had been several moments when her mind had gone completely haywire.

Before he left for that business trip in New York, Lu Boyan had told her that the trip would last 7 days.

When he suddenly returned on the day she got into trouble, she did feel a bit strange. But when she had asked Lu Boyan about it, he told her that he had wrapped up everything before coming back. He did not mention giving up any business opportunities at all. He also did not mention coming back ahead of schedule.

Why did he lie to her again?

Su Jianan dialed Shen Yuechuan’s number.

“Jianan?” Shen Yuechuan’s voice was heard shortly. “Are you looking for Lu Boyan?”

“No,” Su Jianan said. “I’m looking for you, actually. Where are you?”

“Oh. I’m running a few errands outside. Your man is back at the office.” When he spoke next, Shen Yuechuan’s tone was a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. “Is there… a reason you’re calling me?”

“When I was held hostage by He Tianming, Lu Boyan had deliberately returned from New York, hadn’t he?” Su Jianan said. “I saw the texts you sent him last night.”

Shen Yuechuan went silent for a long moment. All of a sudden, he laughed. “So you really didn’t know. What did he tell you?”

“He told me that he’d wrapped up everything and came home.”

“I knew it.” Shen Yuechuan was not surprised at all. “Well, you’ve read the texts. So you can pretty much guess it on your own. Wrapped up everything my a.s.s! We were about to start the contract signing, but he just up and left. In the end, we completely missed out on the opportunity to venture into the North American market. Our six months of hard work pretty much amounts to nothing. But you shouldn’t feel pressured over this. Right now, he’s working something out to salvage the situation. It’s rare to see him going through doc.u.ments with such a stressful look on his face. Oh, yeah. Do you want to see the look on his face? I’ll snap a picture of him.”

“…”

Su Jianan was silent for a long time. Shen Yuechuan panicked. “h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? Jianan, are you okay?”

Admittedly, he had deliberately told Su Jianan all those things. But if he ended up scaring Su Jianan out of her wits, the consequences would not be so simple as taking a ‘business trip’ down to Nepal. Lu Boyan would outright murder him!

“I’m okay,” Su Jianan said. “Thank you for telling me all this. But can you not tell him that I’ve found out?”

“Um…” Shen Yuechuan did not dare hide things from Lu Boyan. In fact, he had been planning to tell Lu Boyan everything when he got back to the office. So, upon hearing Su Jianan’s request, he could only ask, “Why do you not want him to know?”

“Because he didn’t wish for me find out,” Su Jianan said.

“Okay, then,” Shen Yuechuan said, gritting his teeth. “I’ll help you fool him once. But if he finds out, you have to help me.”

“Okay.”

Su Jianan smiled and hung up.

Outside the window, the rain had picked up the pace. Raindrops beat against the gla.s.s windows noisily. If it were not for the heater, the sound of the rain would send cold chills down her body even if it was still the end of spring.

The gla.s.s window held Su Jianan’s reflection, from which Su Jianan noticed her red-rimmed eyes.

Amidst the silence, she felt a strong urge to cry.

When she was held hostage by He Tianming, she did think of Lu Boyan. But back then, all her thoughts about Lu Boyan had to do with the rumors between him and Han Ruoxi. She had hopelessly thought that Lu Boyan would not even care whether she lived or died. After all, they would be getting a divorce in two years’ time.

But the reality was that he had abandoned everything and came to her the moment he had found out she was in trouble.

During the height of her panic, Lu Boyan had actually been standing right behind her.

She suddenly remembered the familiar scent that had mingled with her own breaths that day. She remembered his gentle voice too. In truth, she would have seen him standing behind her if she would just turn around.

Instead, what she had shown Lu Boyan was the way she had dove straight towards Jiang Shaokai.

At that moment, she wondered what Lu Boyan was feeling.

Well, she had no idea what Lu Boyan had been feeling back then. What she did know was that right now she was happy. Just like that time when she was ten, when she met Lu Boyan for the second time. She had secretly felt happy when she saw him. She would not have traded that moment for anything, not even if someone offered her the greatest possible deal. She felt like leaping straight into his arms right then and there.

Lu Boyan cared about her. At that thought, Su Jianan felt as though she had suddenly grown wings. She was so happy that she could spin three rounds in the air.

It took Su Jianan a long time to finally calm down. Wrapped in the warmth of the heater, Su Jianan felt hazy with sleep. When the hotel’s manager came to ask if she wanted to have afternoon tea or if she wanted to drop by the hotel’s beauty parlor, she had told the manager not to disturb her. She was just too lazy to move. As for dinner, she had decided to wait until Lu Boyan’s return. Soon, she fell asleep.

Lu Boyan returned around 7 p.m. The manager told him that Su Jianan had slept through the entire afternoon and that she had not shown any desire to leave the suite at all. Lu Boyan thought Su Jianan was feeling unwell again, so he opened the door to the bedroom hurriedly. He found her sleeping peacefully on the bed without the slightest hint of discomfort.

She did not leave the lights on. The room’s only source of light was from the window. Amidst the murky ambience, her delicate face seemed to have grown even smaller. She was like a soft and tiny animal, curled up in its nest as it slumbered. It was a sight that would turn anyone’s heart to mush.

Lu Boyan walked over. Su Jianan was almost awake. In her haze, she thought she heard movement, so she opened her eyes. She saw Lu Boyan in the middle of the blurriness. She smiled. “You’re back?”

“Mm.”

“Since when have I become so easy to please?” Lu Boyan suddenly wondered. Su Jianan had merely given him a tiny smile, and yet he had already forgotten all about his exhaustion that day. All he could see was this person in front of him.

“Why didn’t you get up to eat something?” he asked.

Su Jianan crawled out from under the covers. “I wanted to wait for you.”

Due to the fact that she had just woken up, her eyes were brighter than usual. Her hair was slightly messy and she was smiling like a child. He bet she did not even realize just how intimate and affectionate her words had sounded.

Everything hit Lu Boyan square in the heart. All of a sudden, the lonely place that was his heart was reduced into a pile of mush.

From now on, as long as she was home waiting for him, he would never feel tired no matter how exhausted he had been during the day.

When she saw that Lu Boyan was looking at her blankly, she waved her hand in front of his face. “Don’t tell me you’ve left me out and had your dinner already.”

Lu Boyan smiled and gathered her shoes. “I wouldn’t dare. Put on your shoes. I’ll take you downstairs.”