The car fell into dead silence for a long while.
Bo Jingzhou tilted his head and looked at her. "Because you're an idiot, your brain's defective, and you're blind."
"I really am..." Shen Wanci let out an exasperated laugh. "Why waste my time talking to a pig?"
She turned to open the car door, but Bo Jingzhou yanked her back, his handsome face dark as still water.
Outside, Li Bai—seeing that there was still no movement inside—rapped on the window with growing urgency. "Wanwan, has something happened to you?"
"Wanwan?" A chill gathered in the man's eyes. "Sounds awfully intimate. Not even divorced yet and already itching to play the unfaithful wife? But your taste in men has really gone downhill."
That last line Bo Jingzhou practically ground out through clenched teeth.
Shen Wanci couldn't be bothered to clear up the misunderstanding the name had caused. It didn't matter anymore anyway.
"That's right, my taste in men has always been terrible—isn't that how I ended up marrying someone like you? Li Bai and I are only co—friends. You're the filthy one; don't go imagining everyone else is as filthy as you."
She could snipe at him, but she wouldn't drag an innocent person into it.
She'd stopped short of saying "colleagues" because she didn't want to keep going back and forth endlessly with Bo Jingzhou—and besides, surely this wasn't the topic the two of them most needed to be discussing right now.
"Whenever you're free, let's go to the Civil Affairs Bureau and finalize the divorce."
Hearing her bring up divorce again, Bo Jingzhou's brow gave a vicious twitch.
Shen Wanci paid no mind to his expression, just went on by herself: "If it's because the contract hasn't expired, I can pay you the breach penalty."
Something in those words struck a nerve in Bo Jingzhou—the man's eyes practically blazed with fire.
"Does your new lover know you're a married woman? If he saw you and me doing it here in the car, how do you think he'd react?"
Shen Wanci: Damn it, was he listening to a single word she said?
But catching that knowing glint deep in his eyes, her heart suddenly lurched!
The next moment, Bo Jingzhou showed her through action that he wasn't joking.
His hand clamped around her slender waist and pressed her toward him, then he bent his head and kissed her—
There was a console between them, but it did nothing to stop the man.
One hand found the seat control below while the other braced her waist; the seat reclined flat, and she was pinned entirely beneath him.
It was the first time Shen Wanci had seen Bo Jingzhou so out of control. She twisted her body. "Let go of me!"
As she struggled, the car rocked along with her, and the knocking outside abruptly stopped.
This scene...
It would be hard for anyone NOT to think the wrong thing!
Shen Wanci instantly went still. She glared at Bo Jingzhou, her eyes rimmed red, her kissed lips swollen and flushed, looking utterly bullied.
Seeing her like that, Bo Jingzhou's mood eased as well. He raised a hand and pressed at his brow. "Get rid of him and I won't touch you."
The instant he withdrew, Shen Wanci hurriedly threw her rumpled clothes and hair into some semblance of order, then pushed the door open, got out, and slammed it shut with a furious bang!
Bo Jingzhou: ...
Seeing the door open, Li Bai outside quickly stepped aside. "Wanwan, did the man in the car bully you?"
In the instant the door closed, he'd caught sight of the man inside, those eyes flickering bright and dim like a bottomless dark pool.
And that suit the man wore—Li Bai had seen it in a magazine before; it cost at least seven figures.
Then there was the car...
No matter how you looked at it, a man like that couldn't possibly be a ride-hailing driver.
Shen Wanci knew what Li Bai was guessing. She only shook her head. "It's nothing. Thank you—go have your meal. I'll be off now."
Not waiting for him to say anything more, she flagged down a taxi, gave the address of the newly rented complex, and the car sped off in a cloud of dust...
Back home, Shen Wanci went into the bathroom, and after she'd washed up, she made a call to the lawyer who'd helped her draft the divorce agreement earlier—
"Lawyer Lu, in my situation, if I want to sue for divorce, are my chances good?"
"If we go by the property division you wanted before... it'll be very difficult." Lawyer Lu remembered Shen Wanci's case especially well—first, for the enormous assets involved, and second, for the man's identity.
"What if I don't push for the property?"
Shen Wanci had never expected to get any of Bo Jingzhou's assets to begin with. She'd only listed them out at the time to disgust him a little.
"Then it depends on how willing Mr. Bo is to divorce. The suit can still be filed, but if Mr. Bo refuses, it'll drag on for a very long time. Without domestic violence or irreconcilable conflict, judges generally favor reconciliation; if the first hearing doesn't grant the divorce, you have to wait three months before appealing."
Shen Wanci thought it over. The biggest reason Bo Jingzhou wouldn't let go was probably that the divorce had been her idea first—it had wounded his pride. And then there was the timing, which was too coincidental; it could easily lead people to think Jian Weining was the mistress.
But theirs was only a secret marriage. If they took it to court, then everyone would learn the two of them were married, and the label of mistress would be stuck on Jian Weining for good!
For Jian Weining's sake, Bo Jingzhou would surely agree to the divorce.
Shen Wanci pressed her lips together. "Lawyer Lu, draft a lawyer's letter for me first and send it to him."
After hanging up, she let out a long breath...
Lawyer Lu was quick. Early the next morning, Bo Jingzhou received the lawyer's letter.
Every piece of mail delivered to Bo Jingzhou had to pass through Chen Xu's hands first, and the moment he saw this thing, he had a bad feeling.
Sure enough, the air pressure in the office had now dropped several degrees. Looking at Mr. Bo's frost-cold expression, he ventured timidly, "Mr. Bo, Miss Shen is probably just messing with you."
Bo Jingzhou looked up and shot Chen Xu a cold glance. "Go find out what Shen Wanci has been up to lately."
Just what kind of money-raking job had she landed, or what person had she latched onto, to give her the nerve to send him a lawyer's letter!
Tracking Shen Wanci's whereabouts wasn't hard. By noon, Chen Xu had solid news: "Miss Shen is now working at Jingyuan Studio."
"Jingyuan?"
"A studio that specializes in cultural relic restoration—very famous in that circle. They only take on the most difficult artifacts, and everyone who gets in is a top talent, a national-treasure-caliber figure."
Bo Jingzhou frowned. As far as he could recall, he'd never once seen Shen Wanci fiddle with such things—though it seemed she'd graduated from some art academy.
"She can restore cultural relics too?"
"No, not quite. Miss Shen, inside there... is a cleaner."
On this point, Chen Xu had gone in person and seen with his own eyes Shen Wanci sweeping the floor. Afraid of getting it wrong, he'd even deliberately found someone to ask, confirming that she was indeed working as a cleaner.
"A cleaner?" Bo Jingzhou sneered and flung the lawyer's letter in his hand away—
"So the pampered rich wife who never lifts a finger has finally had enough and is bored enough to go experience the common life. These past two years I shouldn't have indulged her—if she'd had to scramble for a living every day, she wouldn't have had the spare energy to act up."
Chen Xu: "..."
In truth, he felt Miss Shen had had a pretty raw deal these past two years. As the wife of the Bo Group's president, it was one thing that no one knew, but she'd also had to do the menial work of serving tea and fetching water—even the takeout she ordered had all been thrown into the trash.
Anyone else would probably have smashed the takeout box onto Mr. Bo's forehead long ago!
"Get out." Having dismissed Chen Xu with a wave, Bo Jingzhou dialed Shen Wanci's number...
At that moment Shen Wanci was in the middle of a delicate restoration job, and the buzz of her phone nearly made her slip.
Already in a bad mood, then seeing the name flashing on the screen, her temper flared even worse.
She knew why Bo Jingzhou was calling—by this hour he should have received the lawyer's letter.
As the call connected, before she could even speak, the man's mocking voice came first—
"Shen Wanci, do you have any idea what housing prices in the capital are these days?"
"What?"
"On a floor-sweeper's wages like yours, I'm afraid you can't even cover the rent."
Apparently feeling he'd needled her enough, Bo Jingzhou softened his tone a little. "A little squabbling between husband and wife is spice; squabble too much and it just becomes tiresome. I don't have time to play these games of divorce-then-remarry with you. Move back tonight, and I won't hold this period of acting up against you."
Shen Wanci hadn't listened closely to his words, much less stopped to consider what he meant by "floor-sweeping." All she heard was him, over and over, sneering that her wages were too low, that she couldn't afford rent—and calling her a drama queen!
"Bo Jingzhou, are you sick in the head? No matter how low my wages are, even if I have to sleep under a bridge and gnaw on plain buns, I will absolutely never move back. Either you come with me right now and get this done cleanly, or we'll see each other in court!"
She hung up on the spot and dropped the man straight into her blacklist—