Lily smiled the moment she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was her husband staring at her lovingly. The fact that his head was propped on his hand as a blissful smile graced his face suggested that he’d been up worshipping her for some time. “Are you going to just stare at me all day? What about breakfast?” Lily asked with laughter apparent in her tone.
“Done,” he answered before his lips captured hers. “Do you have plans for today?” he asked.
“What kind of question is that? It’s Tuesday, I am planning to go to work. Don’t you have plans to go to work today?”
“I’m not talking about work,” he clarified before handing a folder to Lily. She lazily arched an eyebrow as she accepted the folder and opened it.
“Qin Yuanfeng hacked into your computer?”
Zhuo Jingren nodded. “He made sure to let me know that it was him. What a jerk.”
“And did he find anything important?” she asked.
“Nah… the jerk lacked the skills to breach my firewall. Turns out that the trouble that I encountered with the back security yesterday was also him. I was able to trace it to his place. The jerk happily sent me some emojis. I can see him enjoying this. Aside from having mental issues, he must not be in demand as an actor as he clearly has loads of free time,” Zhuo Jingren said as he let his petty side roam freely.
Lily remained silent as she continued reading the contents of the file. A bit of intel piqued her interest: “Zhang Yifei is planning to visit the Qin Family in Hong Kong?” she asked.
“She is coming with her husband, Qin Chuan, as well as Qin Hao and the Patriarch of the family. For some reason… I have the impression that they don’t know that Qin Yuanfeng is here,” he answered.
Lily went silent for a second, her gaze on the ceiling as she pressed the folder to her chest. Zhuo Jingren assumed that she would start scheming with this new bit of intel, and he was right. Lily needed to know what Qin Yuanfeng wanted from her, and she needed to know as soon as possible.
“First and foremost, China is a patriarchal country. Certain roles are firmly established in most of the prominent families, so allowing or encouraging Qin Yuanfeng to pursue acting instead of forcing him to study business management makes no sense at all, especially when you consider the fact that he is the only male in his generation. All of his cousins are females. He is also the only legitimate heir, but instead of using him and his brilliant mind they chose a mediocre female cousin to become the CEO of their company. This makes no sense at all,” Lily said. Most families would unanimously choose a genius male over a mediocre female to run their company.
Some families force their heirs to study business, even if they love and their passion for a profession lies in another direction.. How could the Qin Family be any different? Moreover, Qin Yuanfeng is the son of the eldest son of the patriarch. He is a senior in both intelligence and birthright. So how could he chose acting instead of running a company that he was born to manage? Why would the Qin Family allow such a thing to happen?
“This family is very complicated,” Zhuo Jingren said. “However, I believe it has something to do with Qin Chuan’s inability to walk. If my guess is right, then after his accident years ago, his father placed all of his hope son his second son, Qin Hao, and now that Qin Hao is too old to be truly impactful as a leader, he’s given the position to his only daughter. While she is mediocre and lacks any outstanding talents, she is very shrewd and cruel. With her father as her adviser, she is qualified enough to run a company.”
“Hmmm…” Lily nodded. “Well… I will take this one step at a time. Someday, the truth will reveal itself.” The first thing she needed to do was talk with Qin Yuanfeng and clarify his purpose in looking for her.
“Do you know where he’s staying?” she asked while staring straight into Zhuo Jingren’s eyes. Lily had seen Qin Yuanfeng in Sky City a few months back, but who knows if her brother had already shifted to some other place?
….
Qin Yuanfeng was livid.
He looked at the series of documents that were on his table and furiously started cursing. “Stupid,” he sneered. How could Zhang Yifei assume that he was still unaware of the number of people that she had following him around? He was lucky that he was able to evade them and switch places with another person who was using prosthetics to look like him.
A few months ago, Qin Yuanfeng decided to visit Hong Kong to look for Qin Jinghua. He wanted to know everything about her, but he couldn’t investigate while he was still in Mainland China being treated as an imbecile by his own grandfather and stepmother. He needed a way out, and the only thing that he could come up with was to study abroad. He used his garbage acting skills so he could enrol at a prominent acting school abroad.
Of course, Zhang Yifei instantly fell for it. It was a great opportunity for her to make Qin Yuanfeng leave Mainland China. Moreover, she had planned to have her men follow her stepson around 24/7. She was sure that Qin Yuanfeng would listen to whatever she had to say and would even feel thankful that she agreed to have him take lessons abroad.
The more thankful and dependent Qin Yuanfeng was,the more opportunities there were for her to control him.
Qin Yuanfeng’s plan was smooth sailing, as expected. He had calculated everything and was sure that no one would find out that the Qin Yuanfeng studying abroad was a fake. However, he never expected that Zhang Yifei would visit the Qin Family in Hong Kong.
Is it possible that her people saw him when he was with Lily a few days ago? But that’s impossible! He made sure to delete his traces on all of the CCTVs, and he even hacked into the mobile system in Hong Kong to check the cell phone activity of the people around him when he was with Lily.
On that day, no one who saw him made a call to Mainland China. Moreover, that was the second time that he’d walked out of the building wearing a prosthetic jawline, subtly altering a memorable detail about his appearance, making him look a bit different than his usual face.
On typical days, his disguise was perfect. He had been switching his disguise so no one would be able to recognize him.
The only reason Lily recognized him was because he was wearing the same disguise as when he first met her in the elevator and when he visited the bar. It was all a coincidence — a lucky coincidence.
Qin Yuanfeng let out a loud sigh of frustration as he eyed the different set of wigs and prosthetic materials on one of his tables. He then looked at his face in the mirror. The face that was identical to Lily’s.
“Fraternal twins,” he uttered before he stroking his jaw. He narrowed his eyes as he remembered Lily’s expression when she saw him. She had suffered so much, he thought inwardly. The naïve and dumb woman as described by his uncle was nowhere to be seen. In her place was someone calm and collected, smart and cunning, kind but devious.
Qin Yuanfeng’s thoughts were interrupted when he heard someone knock loudly on his door. Who the hell would knock at this time of the day? He let out another curse before grabbing one of his wigs and a black contact lenses to hide his true eye color. He quickly donned a pair of glasses and a baggy knitted sweater with ‘Made by mom’ knitted into the pattern in a larger than life size.
He heard another loud knock as he examined himself. He looked just like the nerdy mama’s boy that he wanted to portray when he rented this place months ago. He checked his laptop one more time and made sure that no one was standing in the corridor before he decided to walk out of his room.
A loud knock echoed for the third time. “What the…” he did not complete his sentence. Was someone trying to destroy his door? He hastily closed the door and proceeded to walk towards the living room to check the front door.
He looked through the peephole, and just as he expected the owner was standing there with a slight smile on his chubby face. Without a second thought he opened the door, “It is still early in the morning. What are you…”
“Hello… brother.”
Qin Yuanfeng was unable to complete his sentence as his eyes widened at the woman who was smiling sweetly at him.
