Wu Chen was teasing. He knew perfectly well she was not acting cute.

But the remark gave her an idea. After a beat, Li Ruobing arranged her face into a mixture of displeasure, wounded grievance, and pleading, wriggled in his lap, and begged, “Tell me! Come on, tell me!”

She really was going all out.

There was no chance she would have done anything of the kind before. Even now, with their relationship settled, she would never have done something so contrary to her nature had she not been desperate to know.

She had thought it through. First she would coax the substance of the conversation out of him. After that she would play hard to get properly and keep Wu Chen well in hand. She fully intended to hold the initiative in this relationship.

“Don’t. Can you not act? Doesn’t it make your skin crawl? It’s making mine crawl.” As infuriating as ever.

“Darling, darling, tell me. Just tell me.” She wriggled again. The more he mocked her, the harder she pressed.

Wu Chen stopped talking and simply watched her, smiling.

Li Ruobing went still. Her expression cooled fast. “Tell me or don’t. See if I care.” With that she rose from his lap and strode toward the desk as though furious. Before she reached it she turned on her heel and marched straight back to the coffee table.

Bang!

Her palm struck the table. “Wu Chen! I’m warning you! Don’t imagine there’s nothing I can do about you just because you carry on like this!”

She looked genuinely enraged.

“Are you an actress?” Wu Chen asked instead, in the tone of a man who found her performance hilarious.

Li Ruobing raised a hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, then paced back and forth before the coffee table.

“Ah…” Wu Chen let out a sudden sigh, as though something ached. Still in the armchair, he lifted both feet onto the coffee table and settled into a comfortable sprawl, then reached up to knead the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders, as though his whole body were sore.

Li Ruobing stopped and glanced at him.

She understood what he meant.

“You’re the actor, aren’t you?” she said coolly.

“No.” Wu Chen smiled. “I really haven’t been comfortable these past couple of days. Qingying’s too clingy. She wore me out rather badly.”

“Could you possibly be more shameless?” She gave him a sidelong look.

“Shameless? Am I?” He smiled. “Jealous?”

Li Ruobing said nothing.

What could she say? She had already lost the right to “be jealous” to Wu Chen in their earlier wager.

She could not settle. It was not mere curiosity. This touched her too closely—you could say it was bound up with the largest matter in her life at present.

“You really can’t tell me?” she asked after a silence.

“It’s not… entirely impossible.” Wu Chen smiled. He paused, then said, “All right. No more teasing. I gave your father dirt on Ding Ruilong. Extremely lethal dirt. And… a few things concerning the Wei family.”

Li Ruobing’s expression finally came back to normal.

She thought a moment, then asked, “Ding Ruilong… specifically…”

So he told her.

In truth Wu Chen saw no real harm in telling her this. She rarely involved herself in the Li family’s internal affairs.

She was not Li Ruotai. Li Ruotai truly would dare anything. He had acted first and asked permission later more than once. He got things done—and he also made messes when things went wrong. He lacked Li Maoren’s steadiness. He was still growing.

Wu Chen knew Li Maoren would certainly not tell Li Ruotai any of it, chiefly for fear Li Ruotai would tip their hand.

Li Ruobing carried no such risk.

Even so, Wu Chen did not tell her everything. He and Li Maoren had talked for over two hours, and most of the latter part had concerned the Wei family. The dirt he had handed Li Maoren on the Weis was not one item but many, touching several core members of the Wei family and several other great houses, the Xie family among them.

Wu Chen meant to use the Li family’s hand to break the Wei family.