CHAPTER 245: CHAPTER 242: MR. JING, THE POWER BEHIND THE SCENES

"They can’t handle the current situation well themselves, Shi Lingkang will personally disperse those journalists, just wait patiently."

Wen Ke handed her a bottle of mineral water: "This is the water from the table in the booth over there, the bottle mouth is sealed and hasn’t been opened, it’s clean. I have two small packs of compressed biscuits in my pocket, which are usually used to stave off hunger during police training. Do you want to eat some?"

Shi Su took the compressed biscuits, held them in her hand but didn’t eat, just looked down at the packet of biscuits and asked, "With the evidence I currently have, can I immediately destroy their whole family?"

She couldn’t wait any longer.

She had been patiently scheming for so many years, but in the end, she was just one person, a person with blood and flesh, and she could hurt too.

"The evidence you have now can only be used to checkmate Xv Yaru and Shi Yunyin, as for Shi Lingkang, you still can’t touch him." Wen Ke saw that she didn’t seem interested in taking the water, knowing that the things in the booth were all ordered by Shi Lingkang. He figured Shi Su found it disgusting and didn’t want to touch it, so he simply put the water aside and didn’t offer it to her again.

Shi Su didn’t speak further, just kept looking out the window at those journalists full of enthusiasm for gossip, gripping that compressed biscuit tightly in her palm.

...

As expected, not long after, Shi Lingkang’s people went down to disperse those journalists, and the people outside also gradually left, returning to silence.

The people Shi Lingkang left behind brought a message to Shi Su, warning her that her mother’s relics were still at the Shi Family, and how to talk about it externally was up to her to decide carefully.

Wen Ke thought she was being threatened.

But Shi Su said, "He can’t threaten me. If I couldn’t live without those things, how did I manage for five years outside? I will find a way myself, but thinking he can apply pressure to me this way shows he underestimates me."

-

On the way back in Wen Ke’s car, Shi Su finally bought some food and mineral water and also tried a piece of the compressed biscuit Wen Ke had given her.

It was very dry, not tasty, but indeed very filling, and drinking some water gave a sense of fullness.

At this moment, nothing Shi Su ate tasted good, whether it was just-packaged takeout food or compressed biscuits, it was merely to maintain energy.

She called Jun to report she was safe, without mentioning what’s happened in the last couple of days, but Jun had been mentally breaking down over a recent incident and urgently needed her to make time to comfort her, otherwise, Jun might actually have an early menopause.

After replying to two WeChats, she saw Jing Jihan had sent her a WeChat message at past eleven last night.

Jing Jihan: [Had meetings all day, just finished, are you already asleep?]

Then at nine this morning, since he hadn’t received a response from her after she woke up, he sent another message.

Jing Jihan: [?]

A question mark.

Still with no reply from her.

Her phone had been turned off before, the missed calls weren’t showing, so who knew how many missed calls there were.

It seemed after this he directly asked Wen Ke to check her GPS location, her phone’s last signal disappeared where she was borrowing the banquet hotel during filming, then she was taken back to the Shi Family, then brought here, Wen Ke probably spent some time finding clues and guessing she’d been taken back to the Shi Family through traces.

Just before returning to Kaixing Mansion, Wen Ke remembered he had said he would explain something to Shi Su and spoke up:

"Mr. Jing was previously the behind-the-scenes benefactor in the Chinese domain of the FBI in the United States, responsible for investigating and recovering several major global financial cases like Wall Street case B6 and H7. Such financial cases require large funding as a lead, initially, the financial magnate invited by the FBI withdrew funding halfway, nearly causing us to fail. It was Qin Zhifeng who timely invited Mr. Jing."

"I assisted Mr. Jing in handling cases, and not just one, he got along well with Qin Zhifeng, so I worked for him under his command for almost two years. He’s a very admirable and respectable person, even though he no longer intervenes in those American financial cases, staying away from the bloody and stormy financial battlefield in the United States, I have left the FBI, but Mr. Jing is still like a deity to me. I never thought I would encounter him in Jiang City and even more not about the relationship between you both."

Shi Su looked up at Wen Ke on the driver’s seat: "I thought your only deity was Mr. Qin."

Wen Ke automatically avoided those three words, with a straight face said, "That’s different."

Shi Su didn’t ask further, only thought of that girl in the photo snuggled with Jing Jihan, withdrew her gaze, and said mildly, "There’s nothing between us."

The photo Shi Yunyin gave her had a Weibo logo in the lower right corner, she remembered it with just a glance.

Just now, she conveniently searched that Weibo name, it’s a small account with only a few dozen followers, named "Little Squirrel Following Jing", and the entire Weibo showed only this one photo, with only one sentence in the content: [Happy birthday, my dear is back~]

The Weibo post was from September, indeed during those days when Jing Jihan was in London.

The reason Shi Su used to avoid Jing Jihan was that she was a woman with a past and a future full of unknowns, an unmarried woman pregnant out of wedlock, what right did she have to stand by such a dazzling man?

To her, Jing Jihan was like a mirage, beautiful yet too ethereal, she feared a start too easy and an end too painful for herself.

Should she step into his world?

His world was too high, too grand, too unreachable, how could she ever attain it?

But that day he clearly asked, should they try it?

Then what does this mean now?

Shi Su, at this moment, didn’t even know how to express her anger, as though she was very furious yet very calm, but when she looked at Jing Jihan’s WeChat, she felt an impulse to delete him directly.

Adult feelings really don’t need to be so childish and capricious, it all hadn’t even begun, so why break off contact without saying a word?

Moreover, Wen Ke’s timely appearance now was all because of him.

But let each issue be treated separately.

No matter how many women desire Jing Jihan, no matter how superior this man is, what right does he have to toy with her?

Looking at her, alone with a child, pitiful yet amusing?

In the end, Shi Su couldn’t suppress her anger, couldn’t control herself, and called Jing Jihan’s phone.

The phone returned a mechanically cold female voice: "Sorry, the number you dialed is powered off..."

It felt like a bucket of cold water was poured over Shi Su’s head instantly, as if there was a little person inside her mocking her for indulging in self-delusion.

It was as though a ship drifting on the sea for a long time had finally seen a lighthouse in the fog, approached full of hope, but the light suddenly went out, it seemed she was hallucinating, it seemed the lighthouse never existed, it was all just her own wishful thinking.

So absurd.

Deleted from WeChat, blocked, phone contacts deleted, blocked, without hesitation, in one go.

Wen Ke saw through the rearview mirror that Shi Su threw the phone onto the seat, and from her expression, it seemed she was very angry.

Tsk, hadn’t she already eaten, why suddenly so angry?