“Over something so trivial, she’s going to break up with Xuan Yanyu. Does she have any idea how many people would love to marry him?”
The more Shiyao thought about it, the angrier she got. “And Xuan Yanyu too — if she wants to break up then fine, but he still……”
“Shiyao!” Qi Qingchen shot her a cold look. “What exactly did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I just made one phone call.” Shiyao felt utterly wronged.
“What did you say on the call?” Qi Qingchen pressed.
Shiyao’s lashes trembled. “Nothing. Nothing at all. The call wasn’t even a minute long — what could I possibly have said?”
Qi Qingchen’s eyes grew heavy and still. “She’s causing a scene about breaking up over a call where you said nothing?”
“How would I know she’d want to break up?” Shiyao pouted. “They’re already engaged, the wedding date is set, and now she’s talking about breaking up again — isn’t she just stamping all over Xuan Shi’an’s and Xuan Yanyu’s dignity?”
“A’Chen, I think it’s obvious Yan Yunning had already regretted the engagement after it happened and was just using my phone call as an excuse to kick up a fuss. I’m completely innocent in all this.”
Wu’an’s mouth twitched faintly.
Shiyao blinked. “A’Chen, am I right?”
Qi Qingchen was at such a loss he didn’t even know how to begin responding. He said only, “Go and explain everything to Ningning yourself. That’s the only way Yanyu will let this go.”
Shiyao pursed her lips. “I’m not going. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
If she came clean to Yan Yunning, the lie would be exposed, and Xuan Yanyu would go after her even harder. She wasn’t foolish.
“A’Chen, weren’t you just protecting me? Protect me one more time — please……”
“Shiyao!” Qi Qingchen cut off the rest of her words sharply.
“I was not protecting you, and I have no desire to protect you. It’s just that the mistake you made isn’t serious enough to warrant Yanyu sending you to prison. I was afraid he’d act on impulse and you’d end up in a bad situation — and if that affected Yanyu somehow, then what?”
“So go and explain yourself to Ningning.”
Shiyao’s face drained of colour as she shouted, “You’re making that up. I don’t believe you.”
“Believe whatever you like. You have two days to figure out how to go and apologise to Ningning. After two days, I’m no longer getting involved.” Qi Qingchen said calmly.
“A’Chen!” Shiyao lunged forward, trying to throw herself into Qi Qingchen’s arms. Wu’an caught her before she could. “Miss Shi, you and our President Qi have already broken up. Mind yourself.”
“Send her to the villa by the river. Come and collect her again in two days.”
Wu’an nodded. “Understood, President Qi.”
Knowing that making any more of a scene would only work against her, Shiyao obediently fell into step behind Wu’an and left the office quietly.
——
Xuan Group.
Xuan Shi’an handed the share transfer agreement over to Old Feng, in high spirits. “Old Feng, you just don’t understand. Every time I think about the fact that in a few months I’ll be holding a grandchild in my arms — a grandson or a granddaughter — I could laugh even in my dreams.”
Old Feng chuckled along with him. “Chairman Xuan, how are you going to explain this to Mr. Xuan?”
Xuan Shi’an paused. Truth be told, he hadn’t even thought about that.
He and his wife already knew the full situation — but Yanyu remembered nothing. At the time, Guo Si had assumed Yanyu and Shiyao were truly together as a couple, and after sending Yanyu back to the Xuan family home, had nearly been frightened out of his wits.
Even Guo Si himself hadn’t anticipated that Yanyu would have conceived a child with Ningning. Terrified that Yanyu would recover his memory and come after him, and even more terrified that Ningning would find out the child still existed, discover Yanyu’s entanglement with Shiyao, and refuse to forgive him — he had hidden nothing and told him everything. He’d begged him to help send him abroad, and also begged him that if Yanyu and the Yan family came looking for trouble, to make sure to shield him.
The character written into that classical novel of Guo Si’s — the one who was fated to be Yanyu’s destined companion, the one who would come to understand and love him — had originally been assumed to be Shiyao. None of them had anticipated that under the operation of the transmigration device and the story’s own plot mechanism, the one who would be sent into the book would be Ningning.
Only now did it become clear — Shiyao had been with Qi Qingchen at that time, so there was never any way it could have been her.
“Chairman Xuan? Chairman Xuan??” Old Feng, seeing Xuan Shi’an had sunk into his thoughts, asked, “Have you figured out how to explain things to Mr. Xuan? How about a paternity test?”
“No need to worry about him. I asked Guo Si about it, and Guo Si said that at the very latest, within three months, he’ll naturally recover his memories on his own. By then, it won’t change anything. It’s already been over a month, so there are only about two months left before his memory comes back.”
Old Feng nodded. He glanced down at the transfer agreement in his hands. “Chairman Xuan, is this for Mr. Xuan to sign?”
Xuan Shi’an lifted his teacup and took a quiet sip. “No. It’s for Ningning.”
Old Feng looked somewhat surprised. “For Miss Yan? Is this compensation, Chairman Xuan? Thirty percent of the company’s shares — aren’t you worried about……”
Catching the displeased look in Xuan Shi’an’s eyes, Old Feng didn’t dare continue. Thirty percent of Xuan Group’s shares — setting aside how much money that represented, the salient point was that Mr. Xuan himself only held thirty percent. Add the ten percent in the chairman’s wife’s hands, and the five percent each held by the eldest and second misses, and that left the chairman with only twenty percent of the company in his own name.
Did the chairman trust Miss Yan that much?
Miss Yan had the Yan Group behind her. Was the chairman truly not worried in the slightest?
Xuan Shi’an set down his teacup and looked at Old Feng. “Since Ningning is marrying Yanyu, she’s family. And family doesn’t need to be guarded against.” He paused. “A daughter-in-law isn’t someone to be wary of.”
Old Feng lowered his head, ashamed.
Xuan Shi’an rose from his seat and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing down at the traffic below. “One must learn to be grateful. The shares I’m giving Ningning aren’t only compensation — more than that, they’re a safeguard. If it were merely compensation, I could find any number of other ways to do it.”
“If there comes a day when Yanyu has a change of heart, thirty percent of the company’s shares in Ningning’s hands would give him a serious headache. And with the Yan Group still behind her, Yanyu is smart enough to know better than to try anything reckless.”
“And even if he later wanted to buy those shares back, he’d have to pay Ningning a substantial sum. At Xuan Group’s current rate of growth, purchasing thirty percent of the company from Ningning — even if he sold off every villa and apartment in his name, he couldn’t raise that kind of money. So he’d have no choice but to behave himself.”
“The shares I and Shu Yun hold are reserved for our grandchildren — they will never be transferred to Yanyu. That’s also one of the reasons Ningning’s parents agreed to such a swift engagement and marriage. My sincerity was evident enough that they felt comfortable entrusting their daughter to our family.”
“Going forward, Xuan Group and Yan Group can only stand to benefit each other — not compete and undermine one another.”
“Ningning is marrying into our Xuan family. Whatever the future brings, she will have something solid to stand on. She’s marrying Yanyu to be cherished — because without her, there might not have been a Yanyu to wake up, and Xuan Group might have had no future. As I keep saying: one must know how to be grateful.”
Old Feng nodded. Someone who didn’t know better might think the chairman was marrying off a daughter — he had even prepared a fallback plan for her. The chairman could have compensated her in any number of other ways, yet he had chosen company shares — precisely the kind that could keep Mr. Xuan in check. What a far-sighted, magnanimous man.
And if Miss Yan, after the wedding, sweet-talked Mr. Xuan into giving her a portion of his shares as well, she would become the single largest shareholder of the entire company.
If he were Miss Yan’s father, he would have agreed without hesitation.
“They’re back, aren’t they?” Xuan Shi’an asked.
Old Feng answered honestly. “They are. But Mr. Xuan and Miss Yan didn’t come to the Xuan family home — they went to the villa.”
Xuan Shi’an, worried that Xuan Yanyu might do something foolish, said quickly, “Call him. Tell them to come and stay at the family home.”
“Yes.”
——
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Xuan Yanyu — who had rushed back from Qi Qingchen’s office to coax Yan Yunning — heard the grating ringtone of his phone and, without so much as a glance at it, pressed it silent.