Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

"Hello?" Wang Guifen had no idea how the exchange had gone, and assumed Li Ge had backed down. She quickly took back the phone.

"Just pay him the money," came the voice on the other end.

"Huh?" Wang Guifen was stunned. It was a long moment before she thought to ask, "Why?" But the line had already gone dead. Wang Guifen was no fool. If her third aunt was washing her hands of the matter, that meant she did not want to provoke the other side's people—or could not afford to. At the thought, Wang Guifen could not help but feel thoroughly deflated. If even Third Aunt could not afford to cross them, then she certainly could not. And now, what was she to do about this fifty thousand yuan?

By then, the men the young man had called had arrived. From two Jiangnan Ruifeng business vans, six or seven men in black got out and converged on them.

At the sight, Wang Guifen was dumbstruck. She had assumed the young man was only trying to frighten them, but now it seemed these men were no good sorts at all. Could they be gang members?

Zhao Daquan could read the situation too. He hurriedly said to Wang Guifen, "Let's just pay the money."

"But how do we have that kind of money on us now? The fixed-deposit passbooks are all at home, and there isn't enough in the bank card either!" Only now did Wang Guifen panic. She was the sort who was fierce enough in ordinary times—but only toward people weaker than herself. The moment she met someone with real power, she was struck dumb.

"What's going on? Weren't they supposed to land at four-twenty?" Zhao Ying checked her watch, then said anxiously, "It's almost five now. Why haven't they come out? And I haven't seen any notice of a delayed flight."

"I said we should go in and wait, but you insisted it was too cold and we should stay in the car," Yang Ce said with a shrug. "We didn't miss them at some other exit, did we?"

"Then let's go in and take a look," Zhao Ying said with a nod.

In truth, the reason Zhao Ying had not gotten out of the car was that she was rather displeased by her parents' surprise visit. She had come to pick them up, yes, but she meant it as a show of protest.

The two locked the car and headed toward the domestic arrivals exit. Zhao Ying knew her parents well, and spotted them at a glance—except that they were surrounded in the middle of a crowd.

"Dad! Mom!" Zhao Ying had no idea what had happened and ran over in a hurry.

By now Yang Ce had more or less guessed it too—the two people hemmed in the middle were Zhao Ying's parents.

"Yingying, you're here." Zhao Daquan gave a bitter smile. At a moment like this, it was better not to drag his daughter into it.

"Dad, Mom, what's going on? Who are these people?" Zhao Ying eyed the men in black around them with open hostility.

"Perfect timing, your family's here," Li Ge said. "Miss, your mother scraped my car. You pay for it."

To be continued.

749. An Embarrassed Zhao Ying (Part One)

Li Ge, distracted by the crowd, had not noticed Yang Ce following close behind Zhao Ying, and went on talking: "Though, come to think of it, your old lady's nothing much to look at, but you—you're quite the fresh little thing."

Li Ge was only taking a cheap verbal jab; he had no intention of doing anything more. But the men he had brought along had no such restraint, and one of them, a dark-faced fellow, chimed in: "How about this—you keep us brothers company and have some fun, and we'll foot the bill for you. Sound good?"

Li Ge ordinarily followed Sun Lin, so it was impossible for him to do anything reckless. Arrogant he might be, but if he went too far, Sun Lin would never let him off.

His underlings, however, were another matter—utterly without scruple. Though they nominally worked for the Sun family, they were, plainly put, directly managed by the Tian family, and even Sun Lin found it hard to interfere too much.

Still, just because Li Ge would not go too far himself did not mean he would stop others from doing so. The pent-up anger in his chest had yet to find an outlet, so he was only too happy to watch the show.

Yang Ce bristled at the dark-faced man's words. Setting aside the rather particular feelings he held for Zhao Ying, on the simple strength of their bond as elder brother and younger sister alone, he would not allow anyone to make a joke of her. Otherwise, he would never have dealt so ruthlessly with that idiot Jingang back then.

"Save your money for your own mother to have her fun with," Yang Ce said. He knew Li Ge, but did not bother greeting him. The man was only Sun Lin's driver; there was no need for Yang Ce to spare his feelings.

Startled by this sudden, hard-edged remark, the dark-faced man's face turned several shades darker. He reached out to grab Yang Ce by the collar: "Where the hell did you crawl out of, you son of a bitch?"

The moment Li Ge laid eyes on Yang Ce, his expression changed and his heart clenched. How could Li Ge not know of the relationship between Yang Ce and the Sun family? Hearing Yang Ce's words, he understood at once which side Yang Ce was standing on.

To hell with sparing the face of the Sui family of Jingshan—Li Ge could ignore that. But with Yang Ce, it was no longer merely a question of saving face; Yang Ce might not give him any face at all, and he had no right to demand any. It had to be said that many a driver for a big boss or CEO was a master of the about-face, saying whatever suited whomever he met. Li Ge's face shifted from its earlier swaggering insolence to utter humility in an instant: "Brother Yang, you—"

"What's going on here?" Yang Ce swept a cold glance over the people nearby, then said, "Are these the bodyguards you've assigned to my guests?"

"Who the hell is this guy?" The dark-faced man did not know Yang Ce. Though he had heard Li Ge call him "Brother Yang," he was not convinced, and asked Li Ge.

"The boss's son-in-law," Li Ge whispered, not daring to raise his voice, leaning in close to the dark-faced man's ear.

"Which boss?" The dark-faced man was taken aback.

"How many bosses do I have?" Li Ge glared at him and hissed, "If you don't want to die, watch your mouth."

The dark-faced man finally caught on. The boss was Sun Lin—and Yang Ce, then, would be the "boyfriend" of the Sun family's eldest daughter, Sun Jie. "My apologies, Brother Yang, a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding," Li Ge hastened to say with an ingratiating smile. "This—this auntie here accidentally scraped my car, and we were just discussing how to settle it."

Li Ge called it a misunderstanding, but he dared not conceal what had just happened. He knew it could not be hidden—Yang Ce had only to ask the people on the other side and everything would be clear. Then, if his own fabrications left Yang Ce with a bad impression, and Yang Ce put in a bad word with Sun Lin, he would be finished for good.

Yang Ce glanced at the scratch on the car, then took out his phone and dialed Sun Lin's number.

"Hello, Uncle Sun? It's Yang Ce. Here's the thing—I ran into your driver Li Ge at the airport," Yang Ce said.

"Did that brat offend you?" Sun Lin knew Li Ge for the sort who bullied others on the strength of his master's power, and Yang Ce would hardly call him just because he had run into Li Ge. Li Ge was not anyone important anyway.

"Not at all. It's just that my friend scraped his car—your Rolls-Royce. I thought I'd let you know and see whether I should have it repaired for you," Yang Ce said.

"You brat, talking nonsense just to get scolded. Scraped is scraped, so what?" Sun Lin laughed and cursed. "That's all?"

"That's all," Yang Ce said.

"Next time, smash the car first and then tell me about it." Now that Sun Lin knew who Yang Ce really was, he spoke to him far more casually, with none of that elder-lecturing-junior tone.