“…”
Sang You turned his back on the bed and said coldly, “It’s because you’re sitting here watching me that I can’t sleep.”
He thought the man would explode in anger after hearing that, cursing him for being ungrateful. But after a long while, Sang You only heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor.
Then came footsteps walking away.
Finally—thud…
The door closed.
Sang You’s eyes flew wide open. He abruptly propped himself up and looked behind him.
The empty room made his eyes widen in shock.
He—he actually left?!
Impossible…
Sang You stayed frozen in that position for a good while before snapping back to reality. What kind of trick is he pulling now?
He frowned, quietly got out of bed, locked the door, and pushed a chair against it. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief, return to bed, and rest easy.
The first half of the night he was on edge; it was only in the latter half that Sang You finally fell asleep from exhaustion.
The next morning, a haggard Sang You washed up and changed into clean clothes with the help of the auntie working in the house.
He remembered the morning after Gong Ze—that beast—had first taken him, Gong Ze had sent a subordinate to intimidate him. He had expected the same today, but instead, a regular auntie showed up.
Recalling the inexplicable hostility that big man had shown him, Sang You couldn’t help but feel curious. He asked the auntie, “Auntie, do you know that man who’s always with Gong Ze?”
“Yes, I know him. He’s always by Mr. Gong’s side—gloomy, doesn’t talk much, and huge. Oh my, scared me to death.”
The auntie had clearly been frightened by the sullen-looking Wang Liben.
After speaking with lingering fear, she changed tack: “But this morning, Mr. Gong suddenly called him over and gave him a real dressing down. Not only did he fine him, but he also suspended him for a week and sent him home to reflect.”
Sang You was slightly stunned upon hearing this.
Wang Liben?
The man who bullied me the day before yesterday?
Could Gong Ze have done that for me?!
Sang You didn’t want to flatter himself, but the timing was too much of a coincidence.
His emotions complicated, he asked for more details. The auntie said it really did seem related to Sang You—she had vaguely heard Sang You’s name mentioned.
Sang You furrowed his brows, thinking it over.
It really is like that?
Hearing that Gong Ze had stood up for him behind the scenes and gotten angry on his behalf, Sang You finally realized that the big man’s humiliation of him probably hadn’t been ordered by Gong Ze at all.
Gong Ze must have sensed something, left his room last night, immediately called the man in to question him, and then punished him.
No wonder Gong Ze had said angrily, “You think I sent my trusted subordinate to take care of you just to humiliate you?”
I sent my own important right-hand man to look after you, and you treated my kindness like dirt, even beating him up—were you trying to spite me and slap me in the face?
When Sang You answered “yes,” Gong Ze’s face had turned terrifyingly dark.
So the truth was like this…
It wasn’t Gong Ze deliberately ordering his subordinate to humiliate me—it was Gong Ze’s subordinate going behind his back and defying his orders!
I had misunderstood him all along…
Sang You, pure-hearted as he was, felt guilt well up inside him for a moment, along with a tiny flutter in his chest.
But then he remembered that this man had harmed his parents and stolen his family’s fortune, and that small spark was instantly replaced by hatred once again.
During the day, Gong Ze was nowhere to be found. Due to Gong Ze’s orders, Sang You couldn’t leave the house, but inside the house, he could move around freely.
So Sang You began looking for a way to escape. He wandered all around the house, trying to find a spot without any guards watching.
It was then that Sang You happened upon the laundry room and heard two aunties inside, slacking off and chatting.
He paused in his steps and, acting on impulse, hid outside the door to eavesdrop.
The aunties inside were gossiping about the hottest news in the Sang household.
The cleaning auntie said with great interest, “Tell me, how could two grown adults like Mr. Sang and Mrs. Sang just disappear? Do you think Mr. Gong had something to do with it?”
The cooking auntie rolled her eyes. “Don’t talk nonsense. Haven’t you noticed that Mr. Sang was planning to have Mr. Gong marry into the family? Ah, the young master’s health is like that—he certainly can’t run the company. Who’s going to run it in the future? Of course it’s Mr. Gong.”
“Besides, he’s practically guaranteed to be the Sang family’s son-in-law. He’s only one step away from marrying the young master. If something happened to Mr. and Mrs. Sang right now, wouldn’t Mr. Gong be the one losing out the most?”
“Now that you put it that way, that’s true…”
The two aunties gossiped away with great enthusiasm.
The speaker had no ill intent, but the listener took it to heart.
Think about it carefully. Father had said that he was Gong Ze’s benefactor. Gong Ze was only one step away from marrying into the family. If he were going to harm his parents, this wouldn’t be the right time to do it.
(Gong Ze: That’s right. But in the original plot, he still wanted to kill you and force you to transfer your shares. Being the fiancé was enough—why bother getting married?)
And besides, besides…
Sang You’s face turned red with complicated emotions.
He had noticed several times in the past that Gong Ze would secretly stare at him with hungry, wolfish eyes.
Sang You couldn’t help but wonder—could Gong Ze’s past confession that he liked him have been true all along?
(Gong Ze: That was just to marry into the family.)
Moreover, if his parents hadn’t disappeared, the Sang family fortune would have been Gong Ze’s sooner or later. Sang You himself would probably have had to marry Gong Ze too—unless Gong Ze had some compelling reason to kill his parents, there would be no need to go through the trouble.
Sang You curled his lip.
He told himself that the only person he loved was Brother Qin Chuan.
Even if Gong Ze liked him, doing something like this to him was unforgivable.
But after hearing the aunties’ conversation, Sang You—who had hated Gong Ze to the bone with blind, mindless loathing—wouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions and assume Gong Ze was guilty the next time, having already once misunderstood him.
He furrowed his brows and tried to think along the lines of the aunties’ gossip.
Could Gong Ze really be connected to the disappearance of my parents?
—
“Of course he’s connected.”
“His parents are definitely dead. I killed them. But I need him to doubt the facts.”
At the Sang family company, Gong Ze sat boldly in the office that had once belonged to Sang You’s father. Leisurely flipping through a project plan, he quickly familiarized himself with the Sang company’s operations.
Receiving a message from the Sang household auntie, Gong Ze smiled with satisfaction. “Heh, well done…”
He sent each of those aunties a red envelope bonus of ten thousand yuan.
There were no such things as so many coincidences in this world.
With Mr. and Mrs. Sang missing and the young master being a sickly invalid, it was a foregone conclusion that the Sang family would belong to Gong Ze. The aunties and butlers who served the Sang family knew that if they didn’t want to lose their jobs, they needed to find a new way forward.
Without Gong Ze even having to say a word, they naturally knew who would be paying their wages from now on, who they should listen to, and who they should curry favor with.
“The entire Sang household is filled with my people now.”
“My poor little young master. He really is clueless about everything.”
After sending the red envelopes, Gong Ze let out a laugh. “My scolding of Wang Liben wasn’t entirely an act for Sang You’s benefit. Most of it was just to find an excuse to get rid of him.”
“He’s the original host’s loyal dog. A dog who tried to seduce his master.”
“He knows the original host too well…”
“I needed to come to the company to familiarize myself with the original host’s position and the Sang family’s business. If Wang Liben were here and saw that I didn’t understand any of this, he’d definitely become suspicious. So I sent him home to reflect for a week—giving us time to settle into the disguise.”
“And one more thing.”
Gong Ze looked sideways at the dumbfounded system.
“Weren’t you asking me yesterday why I didn’t explain the Wang Liben situation to Sang You?”
He propped his chin on his hand, his eyes growing deep and dark as he smiled.
“You need to remember—people always tend to believe the truths they discover for themselves, while becoming suspicious of anything someone else tells them.”
Gong Ze raised one finger and elegantly flicked the system’s tiny chicken-wing appendage.
“If I take the initiative to explain it to him, that means—I’ve done something wrong.”
“If he finds out on his own, that means—he realizes he misunderstood me.”
“The nature of these two scenarios is completely different.”
Gong Ze curled his lips in a sneer, his long, narrow eyes cunning and seductive: “In the first case, I’m in the wrong. In the second, he feels guilty. That way, the initiative is in my hands.”
“Once he discovers he misunderstood me, he’ll feel guilty toward me—and the image he has of me in his heart will become completely different…”
This is what you call human nature.
Whether in romance, business, or war—
Gong Ze was the most effortless and most reckless gambler of them all. And he had never lost.
After listening to all this, the system: …………
My head itches. I think I’m growing a brain.
It swallowed hard, feeling deep sympathy for the protagonist bottom, Sang You: It’s really not your fault that you got fooled by this guy. He’s terrifying. He has more tricks up his sleeve than a wholesaler in Yiwu!
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