The next morning.
Underground parking garage.
Su Hao and Qiao Tang stepped out of the elevator one after the other.
Su Hao still looked pale. After all, today was the day he was going under the knife.
Walking beside him, Qiao Tang was dressed unusually low-key. Sunglasses covered most of her face, and she carried a small lambskin handbag.
All the way there, she kept trying to reassure him. “Don’t be nervous. It’s really just a minor procedure. Medicine is so advanced these days…”
In the past, Su Hao had tried to persuade her to have an abortion. Now, she was using those same words to persuade him to get sterilized.
Su Hao stopped and looked at her. “Are you sure there wasn’t a problem last night?”
Qiao Tang immediately put on a shy, gentle expression. “How would I know? These things don’t happen just because you want them to.”
Su Hao still felt deeply unsettled.
Just as they were nearing the car, Ruan Tian, bundled up from head to toe, suddenly rushed out from the side.
Without looking where she was going, she ran straight into Qiao Tang.
“Ouch!”
The impact knocked the handbag from Qiao Tang’s hand. The clasp sprang open, and its contents scattered across the ground.
Lipstick, pressed powder, keys, tissues…
Ruan Tian pinched her voice into a squeak. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! I’m in a hurry to get to work!”
With that, she turned and ran.
Qiao Tang shouted furiously, “Stop right there!”
The woman ran incredibly fast, disappearing into the adjacent lane in the blink of an eye.
Qiao Tang cursed angrily. “What the hell is wrong with her?”
She bent down to pick up her things when she suddenly felt a chill run down her back. Looking up, she saw Su Hao staring fixedly at the ground.
Qiao Tang followed his gaze.
Su Hao was looking down at a box of birth-control pills lying on the ground. The box had already been opened.
Qiao Tang’s face went deathly white.
What was going on? She had clearly locked the pills in a drawer last night! How had they ended up in her bag?
This was impossible!
Had she been too flustered and tossed them into her bag after taking one?
Or had she accidentally packed them while leaving that morning? She couldn’t remember clearly.
But this was the exact same box she had bought the night before. If she lied and claimed it wasn’t hers, Su Hao could check her phone’s payment records and the truth would still come out.
Su Hao slowly bent down and picked up the box.
Qiao Tang panicked. “Brother Hao, it’s not what you think. I bought these to regulate my period…”
Smack!
A hard slap landed across her face.
Qiao Tang’s head snapped to the side, and her sunglasses fell to the ground. Her cheek instantly reddened.
She covered her face as tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t dare throw one of her usual tantrums.
She knew that Su Hao was truly furious this time.
The reason he had been so desperate the night before was that he feared the risks of the surgery. He was afraid that afterward, he might never have children.
And yet, at a time like this, he had caught her buying birth-control pills.
Su Hao’s voice trembled with anger and resentment. “Last night, you swore you’d have my child just to trick me into getting sterilized. And then you turned around and took pills?”
Thinking quickly, Qiao Tang hurriedly said, “I did it for you! Think about our situation right now!”
“Our training center is still surrounded by parents demanding refunds, and we have no idea where that money is going to come from. Yu Xiaxing has already said she’ll keep coming after us, and we haven’t even registered our marriage with Yu Lingyi yet…”
“If I got pregnant now, I wouldn’t be able to struggle alongside you. What would you do on your own?”
Su Hao’s gaze darkened. “That doesn’t excuse you lying to me.”
Qiao Tang shouted, “Pregnancy isn’t something you can decide to have today and get pregnant today! Even if I didn’t take anything, I might not conceive. But what if I really did get pregnant? At a time like this, would you be able to divide your attention to take care of me? Would you let Yu Lingyi find out while your position was still unstable?”
After a long pause, she lowered her voice. “Let’s cooperate with Fourth Miss Yu for now. Go through with the surgery and register the marriage, all right?”
“Once we’re legally married, we’ll have the money, and we can fill the hole at the training center.”
“After that, we can have children whenever we want.”
Su Hao stared coldly at her.
He knew Qiao Tang was trying to placate him, but he also knew that part of what she had said was true.
After working so hard for so long, he couldn’t possibly waste time arguing with Qiao Tang now. He needed this marriage. He needed to marry into the Yu family.
If he didn’t go over soon, he wouldn’t even be able to hold on to Yu Lingyi anymore.
Su Hao flung the box of pills at her feet, turned, and got into the car. The door slammed shut.
Qiao Tang stood where she was, her cheek still burning.
She lowered her head to stare at the birth-control pills and suddenly realized something.
That person who had bumped into her just now…
Could she have bought an identical box and deliberately framed her?
Qiao Tang spun around, but the parking garage was already empty.
Far away, behind a support pillar, Ruan Tian lowered the brim of her cap and quietly put away her phone.
She had recorded the entire scene and sent it to both Yu Xiaxing and Yu Lingyi, the two women funding her, to let them know what had happened.
—
At the hospital.
Yu Lingyi sat on a bench in the waiting area, a light-gray document folder resting on her knees.
She was dressed beautifully that day—a pearl-white blouse, a smoke-gray skirt, and her hair pinned up without a strand out of place. She looked exactly like someone who had come to register her marriage.
In truth…
She had come to close the net.
Just then, she received the video from Ruan Tian.
Yu Lingyi watched it in silence.
Oh. So the two of them had already had a falling-out.
That was even better. It would make the next part of her plan easier.
She replied: “Who asked you to do this?”
Ruan Tian: “Your sister, Yu Xiaxing.”
Ruan Tian: “Miss Yu, you probably guessed it long ago. My reaching out to you was arranged by your sister too. After all, the first piece of evidence I gave you—the information Fatty Zheng let slip—was filmed at school.”
Ruan Tian: “She may have a nasty way of speaking, but she’s genuinely kind at heart. She really cares about you.”
Yu Lingyi stared at those words, and something in her chest softened.
Yes. She had known from the beginning that Xingxing was behind it.
She had known that Xingxing had poached Shen Zhi in order to force her into a desperate situation and make her wake up from the mess she was in.
She also knew that it was only because Xingxing had agreed that Shen Zhi had been able to return and finish filming the project. Otherwise, the only project she had left would have fallen apart.
Her little sister simply didn’t know how to speak nicely, but she truly, truly cared about her family.
Today, everything had come together perfectly—the right time, the right place, and the right people.
Xingxing’s planning, Ruan Tian’s execution, Qiao Tang’s betrayal, and her own role in tying up the loose ends.
Four women, each with different goals, different allegiances, and different moral standards. They weren’t even on the same side.
And yet, together, they had pulled off a beautiful combination attack.
All that remained was to catch the turtle in the jar.
Before long, Su Hao arrived.
Yu Lingyi immediately put away her phone and pretended not to know anything.
Su Hao sat down beside her, looking grim.
Although he had repeatedly reminded himself on the way there that this was only a minor procedure, and that once he got through today, he would become the Yu family’s son-in-law…
Now that he was actually sitting there, hearing the nurse call patients’ names and the squeak of a stretcher being pushed down the corridor, the fear he had managed to suppress began crawling back up again.
What irritated him even more was the box of birth-control pills that had fallen from Qiao Tang’s bag that morning. It had lodged in his mind like a thorn.
The night before, she had spoken softly about bearing him a child. Yet that morning, he had caught her red-handed with birth-control pills in her bag!
That selfish woman only wanted the resources he would gain by marrying into the Yu family. She wasn’t willing to take on the risk of having his child!
Yu Lingyi seemed to sense his mood.
She placed the document folder in his hands.
Su Hao froze. “What is this?”
Yu Lingyi smiled gently. “A wedding gift for you.”
