J: “The sky in Miami is beautiful today. I wonder if the weather in Tangcheng is sunny or rainy?”
The screen lit up again.
Zhou Suisui instinctively lowered her head and glanced over.
Before she could look away, a broad hand reached over and snatched the phone from her.
“Brother!”
Zhou Suisui’s expression changed, and she reached out to grab it back.
But Zhou Sui’an was clearly faster. Taking advantage of his height, he raised his long arm, effortlessly holding the phone out of her reach.
Zhou Suisui lunged and missed, stomping her foot in frustration. “Give me my phone!”
Zhou Sui’an lit up the screen and immediately spotted Jiang Zongyan’s familiar, annoyingly flashy profile picture.
He curled his lips in disdain.
As if he was afraid everyone wouldn’t know he could ski.
Finding an angle like that must have been quite an ordeal for him.
With quick, decisive movements, he deleted Jiang Zongyan from her WeChat contacts. Then he opened her address book and deleted his phone number as well.
Standing beside him, Zhou Suisui’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“Brother, I’m already an adult. I have the freedom to make friends. How can you delete my WeChat friend without even asking what happened?”
Faced with his sister’s indignant protest, Zhou Sui’an merely raised his brows, completely unashamed.
“You just promised you’d listen to me from now on. Why have you changed your mind already?”
“I…”
Zhou Suisui sucked in a sharp breath.
No wonder she had felt that something was off earlier!
So this was what her brother had been planning all along.
“Brother, I know you and Jiang Zongyan don’t get along. You don’t like him, but he’s a good person.”
“Hmph! Brother Yan? That sounds pretty intimate.”
Zhou Sui’an’s heart bubbled with sour jealousy as he lifted the corner of his lips mockingly. “What you just said is no different from me telling you that Su Wan is kind and innocent.”
“!!!”
Zhou Suisui was stunned.
How had her naïve, gullible brother suddenly become so sharp?
She couldn’t handle this version of him.
After deleting the contact information, Zhou Sui’an returned the phone to Zhou Suisui and muttered under his breath, “I clearly deleted him from your WeChat before. How did you secretly add him again?”
Zhou Suisui gritted her teeth. “…”
So it hadn’t been her accidentally deleting Jiang Zongyan’s WeChat after all. Her brother had done it behind her back.
She was completely speechless at how childish he was.
—
It was early morning in Miami, and the office was quiet.
Jiang Zongyan leaned against the back of his chair, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing across the phone screen.
The screen was still displaying the sunrise photo he had sent. He stared at it, waiting patiently.
For the first time, he found himself genuinely willing to wait.
The chat remained silent, with no notification of a new message.
Before he knew it, ten minutes had passed.
Jiang Zongyan’s brows drew together slightly.
There was a twelve-hour time difference between Miami and Tangcheng.
It was morning here, which meant it should be evening in Tangcheng.
What was she busy with right now?
He opened the chat window, tapped the screen with his fingertip, and sent another message.
J: “Busy?”
The instant the message was sent, an obnoxious red exclamation mark appeared on the screen.
“The other person has enabled friend verification. You are not friends yet.”
Jiang Zongyan: “…”
He stared at the red exclamation mark for a full three seconds.
Then he let out a low laugh, so furious that he found it funny.
The last time, she had blocked him. This time, she had gone one step further and deleted him outright.
Just how many more surprises did this girl have in store for him?
—
Zhou Suisui ate dinner absentmindedly.
“I’m full.”
She set down her chopsticks and dashed upstairs to her room.
Click!
She shut the door behind her and, still worried, locked it. Then she threw herself onto the bed and picked up her phone.
She added Jiang Zongyan on WeChat again.
Heh. Her brother still didn’t know, but she had memorized Jiang Zongyan’s phone number.
His last message had been sent half an hour ago.
He had sent her a picture.
Judging by the angle, he had probably taken it in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of a high-rise office building.
The sea was calm, while pure white clouds stretched across the horizon like soft cotton, dyed a brilliant orange-red by the rising sun.
J: “The sky in Miami is beautiful today. I wonder if the weather in Tangcheng is sunny or rainy?”
So he had gone to the United States.
The corners of Zhou Suisui’s lips lifted unconsciously.
She thought for a moment, then climbed out of bed and took a picture of the evening clouds outside her window.
Her eyes darted around mischievously. She tapped out a message and sent it.
Across the Pacific, it was early morning in Miami.
Jiang Zongyan sat at his desk, looking at the sunset photo on his phone.
“The sun knows it should set and go home, but someone still isn’t in any hurry to come home.”
As he repeated the line, which carried more than a hint of hidden meaning, his thin lips curved faintly upward. His usually hard features softened in an instant.
Knock, knock, knock.
Lin Zhou pushed open the door, a stack of documents in his hands. “Mr. Jiang, all the handover arrangements have been taken care of. When do you plan to return to China?”
He paused, but in the end couldn’t resist asking the question that had been on his mind. “Are you really willing to give up the overseas market you spent three years building?”
At that, Jiang Zongyan rose to his feet and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He instinctively took a cigarette case and lighter from his pocket. Just as his fingertips touched the case, the image of Zhou Suisui wrinkling her nose and complaining, “Cigarette smoke smells awful,” flashed through his mind.
He fell silent for two seconds. Then he let out a helpless, amused laugh and slipped the cigarettes and lighter back into his pocket.
The tip of his tongue unconsciously pressed against his cheek, and a tenderness he himself didn’t notice appeared in his eyes.
“If you had asked me that question a month ago, I would have told you without hesitation that I wasn’t willing to give it up.”
He gazed at the rising sun over the horizon, his deep voice filled with unwavering resolve.
“But now, compared with power and money, I have something I want more—and something I want to protect.”
Watching him like this, Lin Zhou couldn’t help smiling.
It seemed their CEO had truly fallen in love.
He no longer tried to persuade him and handed over the plane ticket instead. “Your ticket has been booked. It’s a direct flight at ten tonight. You’ll arrive in Tangcheng at ten thirty tomorrow morning.”
Jiang Zongyan nodded, picked up his phone again, and quickly typed out a message.
J: “I’ll arrive in Tangcheng at ten thirty tomorrow morning. Will you come pick me up at the airport?”
At the Zhou residence, Zhou Suisui stared at the message on her phone and sat upright in surprise.
Go to the airport to pick him up?
Her slender lashes trembled, and she pressed her soft lips together.
She was a little tempted.
Jiang Zongyan had given her eight pink diamonds, and she hadn’t thanked him in person yet. Then there was the matter of the house… She had caused him quite a bit of trouble lately.
Picking him up at the airport wasn’t asking too much, was it?
Zhou Suisui hesitated for a while.
She opened the work app on her phone and checked her schedule.
There was an internal meeting for department directors at nine tomorrow morning, and it would probably last about an hour and a half.
After the meeting, she would have two free hours, and with her lunch break included, there would be more than enough time to get to the airport.
Suisui: “Okay.”
She sent the reply.
Then, hugging her phone, she rolled around on the bed.
Her cheeks felt hot, and her heart was beating quickly.
She let out a breath. This was nothing strange, right?
Why did it feel so secretive and guilty?
She looked like she was sneaking around like a thief!
She only thought of him as an older brother. What was she feeling guilty about?
