Su Ran’s eyes widened in shock as she stared at Zhou Yanbai as if he were a lunatic, “Are you insane? This is your child, and you’re telling me to go find Lu Qingyan?”
“If you acknowledge the Zhou Family again, the child in your womb can’t be mine, and if it leaks out, it will be a huge scandal,” Zhou Yanbai said, sitting in the leather chair with his legs crossed, leaning comfortably against the backrest.
Su Ran wanted to ask why not just abort the child, so neither side would have to suffer.
But seeing Zhou Yanbai’s grim face, she ultimately couldn’t utter the words.
Equally cold-faced, “I’m not willing. I’ve already become like this, I want to have some dignity in front of him. Even if there’s no chance for me and him, I don’t want to throw whatever little face I have left at his feet!”
“Dignity?” Zhou Yanbai chewed on the word then suddenly let out a light laugh, a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes, “What dignity are you talking about in front of me? If you had any sense of shame, you wouldn’t have gone behind my back to sleep with another man. Baby, have I treated you poorly? That you would betray me like this.”
His gaze was coldly fixed on her.
His words, filled with insult, made Su Ran’s straight back bend.
He was always able to precisely target her Achilles’ heel, while professing his love for her.
That disgusting kind of love, she didn’t want it.
“Zhou Yanbai, do you think you’d still be standing here intact, speaking to me without me?” Su Ran said through clenched teeth, word by word.
Zhou Yanbai slightly narrowed his eyes, and a mysterious snort came from his nostrils, his tone casual, “So, as a reward, isn’t it enough that I’ve given you all my love?”
Su Ran: “…”
Let that kind of love go to the dogs; she didn’t want it.
She stood firm on her bottom line, “I won’t go unless the child is aborted, then I will agree to the proposal of impersonating Zhou Zhenghui’s daughter.”
Hearing about aborting the child, Zhou Yanbai’s complexion turned abruptly, his eyes chilling, “If you dare to get rid of it, I dare to take your life.”
Su Ran merely tugged at the corner of her mouth.
Tears gradually moistened the corners of her eyes.
Look.
How could Zhou Yanbai, such a demon, possibly understand love?
She turned her head away, using silence as her response.
This was still the first time Su Ran had been so stubborn in front of him, refusing to yield.
But what Zhou Yanbai was best at was making these hardheaded people bow.
He slightly curved his lips, his tone ice-cold, “Then I’ll give you two options. First, become Zhou Zhenghui’s daughter; second, I send you back to your biological father.”
“What did you say?” Su Ran was first stunned, then watched him incredulously, “My biological father? Do you know who my biological father is?”
She visibly started to get excited, “Where is he?”
Zhou Yanbai looked at her as if he were looking at a clown, lightly uttered, “Take a look at this.”
With that, he threw the folder that was on the nearby table on top of her, his gaze steadily watching, “You will agree to my proposal, Ranran.”
Su Ran disregarded his words, her resolve firm, she would definitely not do such a thing.
After reading the contents of the folder, her complexion turned pale, “How… how could this be…”
“You’ve always been fixated on finding your family, now do you dare to go back? But you’re in luck, he has made himself quite a name as a wealthy businessman in Yu City. Apart from his deceased first wife, he has married three more times and has three daughters and one son. If you go back, you’ll be his fourth daughter, and your status will definitely not be glorious, after all, you are an illegitimate child, and your mother was the mistress who broke up someone else’s marriage. If your mother hadn’t driven his first wife to death, your biological father probably wouldn’t have been so brazen to indulge in affairs, changing wives one after another, not to mention the mistresses he kept on the side…”
With each sentence Zhou Yanbai spoke, Su Ran’s face grew paler.
There was a feeling of teetering on the brink of shattering.
Zhou Yanbai didn’t care about how she felt; seeing Su Ran in pain even satisfied the destructive desire in his heart.
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, bit one and lit it up, and the irritating smell of nicotine spread through the cramped space.
Su Ran’s eyes reddened, tears falling as she shook her head, “Impossible, my mother isn’t that kind of person… She hated mistresses the most, how could she be one and destroy another’s family… Before she died, she warned me not to take the wrong path, to never become someone’s mistress. She said she stayed unmarried her whole life just to raise me. The thing she regretted the most in her life was having a child out of wedlock. She didn’t want me to follow in her footsteps…”
Her lips quivered.
That’s why she loathed the child in her womb so much.
Her mother was already dead.
All she could do was to heed her mother’s teachings as a way to remember her.
But now to be suddenly told that her mother was a mistress, even responsible for driving someone to death.
She couldn’t accept it.
“Heh, hypocrisy, nothing but crocodile tears.”
As Zhou Yanbai finished speaking, Su Ran glared at him fiercely.
“Don’t you dare talk about her like that.”
Zhou Yanbai smirked with indifference, indolently taking puffs of his cigarette, “As for your father, this is the situation there. You have three sisters; the eldest is only fifteen years old, and his son, two years older than you, is an uneducated vagabond. His current business is having financial difficulties, and he’s begging everyone to solve this problem. I came to know about it thanks to your grandmother’s family from the countryside, who didn’t hesitate to travel thousands of miles to Yu City asking for money. They gave Su Sheng the photos of you and your mother, hoping to extort a sum, but it turned out that he urgently needed an age-appropriate daughter to marry off and stabilize his financial crisis. He’ll rise again as long as someone invests in him.”
“Now he has already discovered your basic information and has gone to Beijing to investigate. The moment you dare to step out of Port City, he will capture you.” Zhou Yanbai’s eyes held a sincere smile, “Of course, if you are of any use, like being able to bring him significant benefits or make a lot of money, perhaps he will let you go.”
Zhou Yanbai uttered each word she knew, yet when strung together, they felt foreign to her.
What arranged marriage, what grandmother…
She didn’t understand.
“Impossible… I don’t believe it…”
“You can try it if you don’t believe it, I will find another girl to take the place of Zhou Zhenghui’s daughter, if not you, then someone else,” Zhou Yanbai continued.
Seeming a bit weary.
After finishing his cigarette, he threw it on the ground and stamped it out fiercely with his leather shoes, extinguishing the faint sparks.
“I have already arranged for someone to contact your father. I believe it won’t be long before you can reunite with your family. Congratulations.”
“Oh, and don’t lose my child, if anything happens to it, I won’t let you off easily,” Zhou Yanbai stood up, dusting off non-existent dust from his sleeves.
This blatant threat made Su Ran’s legs go weak.
She collapsed to her knees on the ground.
Zhou Yanbai’s words had cornered her.
A sudden pain struck her belly, her face turned deathly pale, and strands of blood left deep marks on the white ancient-style skirt.