It was already early winter. After accompanying Gou An shopping in the afternoon, Ye Lang, who was still on vacation, returned to the tube building early. Unexpectedly, he met Lu Wan again on the stairs.

Lu Wan, who had clearly already moved out, was holding a birthday cake in her hand. She stood on the stairs and said to him with a smile, "I suddenly remembered that Yangyang's birthday is today, so I went to buy a cake. Let's have dinner together?"

Yangyang is the grandson of the uncle downstairs. He is in the last year of kindergarten this year and will go to elementary school next year.

Lu Wan cooked the meal herself, and cut the cake after dinner. There was an Ultraman on the cake. Yangyang was super happy and kept clapping.

Ye Lang glanced at the ribbon of the product from the same bakery as the butterfly cake, which meant that the cake was very expensive. He glanced at Lu Wan.

The girl seemed to always know what he was thinking. She raised her hand to tuck the soft black hair behind her ear and whispered, "I bought it with my own pocket money from working part-time."

After a few seconds of silence, Ye Lang looked away in embarrassment.

After dinner, Ye Lang saw Lu Wan out of the tube building. It was raining and they only had one umbrella. Ye Lang held the umbrella awkwardly. He saw that half of Lu Wan's shoulder was soaked, so he moved the umbrella towards Lu Wan.

Lu Wan chuckled and raised his hand to straighten the umbrella: "It's all soaking wet, why are you still covering yourself up?"

Ye Lang had a wooden face.

"Yelang."

"?"

"Actually, do you look down on me a little bit?"

The sentence structure of the question was so strange that Ye Lang didn't react. He just said "hmm" blankly to express his confusion.

"I always hang out with these rich kids. Then I was with He Ran first. Suddenly, the groom turned out to be He Jinxing at the engagement party. I agreed to continue the engagement without blinking an eye..." Lu Wan smiled and said, "In fact, I know how people outside see me in this matter. They say that I am materialistic and only want money, to climb up, to have a better life, to get out of this slum——"

Ye Lang was in a daze for a moment, not understanding why she said this. In his opinion, there was nothing wrong with working hard to climb up and working hard to live.

However, as Lu Wan was laughing, she started crying.

Ye Lang blinked, not knowing what to do. He reached out his hand to pat her and comfort her, but for some reason, he thought of Gou An's face in an instant, and his hand that was about to touch her shoulder retracted.

"Gou An probably also hates me," Lu Wan said, "To be honest, I never thought of going against her, but starting from the cat incident——"

"…She's fine."

When Gou An was mentioned, Ye Lang finally spoke.

He was a little dazed again as Lu Wan cried. He vaguely remembered that the person crying so sadly in front of him was his childhood sweetheart whom he had known since kindergarten...

Now she is about to have a new life.

Everything is getting better, moving towards where the sun is.

Ye Lang was silent for a while, and finally said ambiguously: "Be careful recently."

He said it very tactfully, but Lu Wan was so smart that she guessed what he meant at the first moment.

The crying stopped abruptly, and the girl looked up at him blankly, "What is Gou An going to do?"

In an instant, as if possessed by some strange force, compassion took over his whole being. He forgot about the butterfly cake and only thought of the cheap corn candy.

His eyes dimmed, and at that moment, it seemed that he had finally made a choice.

He shook his head. "You'll be fine."

Throwing a stone from the sky can hit ten people who are short of money in a casino.

Ye Lang randomly found a gambler, transferred money with Gou An, and easily arranged an outrageous murder. When the motorcycle rushed towards Lu Wan, she screamed and fell on the curb, bruising her knee.

Standing across the street, Ye Lang watched the whole process, breathed a sigh of relief, and turned away.

At this point he thought that the farce was over.

I never expected that it wasn't over yet.

The follow-up was overwhelming and hit in a way that no one expected.

Lu Wan got up from the ground and called the police, insisting that the person who hit her shouted words like "I'm going to kill you" and she was very scared.

A traffic accident suddenly turned into a premeditated murder with strong malicious content. Facing He Jinxing's fiancée, no police would neglect it——

So they immediately arrested the madman and interrogated him, and easily got the key words "someone gave me some money" from the frightened madman's mouth. Then they followed the clues and found Gou An with almost no effort.

The transfer is physical evidence.

motivation?

Don't take too much.

Gou An and Lu Wan are the biggest mess. Their dark history could fill up an entire page of Jiangcheng Evening News. The recent issue of the German study tour quota was probably the last straw that broke the camel's back.

It's too normal to seek safety and hire someone to kill you.

This incident alarmed Jiangcheng. The title "The daughter of Gou family committed suicide" was explosive enough. Overnight, Jiangcheng almost changed.

No one knew whether it was for some other reason or simply to vent his anger for his fiancée, but on the day Gou An was taken away, He Jinxing personally showed up and followed the police car to take him to the Public Security Bureau.

He Jinxing stayed with her at the police station for a night. When he came out, he only said to everyone, "She's fine. I just told her not to be stubborn at this time."

Detention, trial, and sentencing were all done in one go.

He was sentenced to nine years and seven months in Qingshan Prison for the crimes of illegal drug trafficking, poisoning, and premeditated murder.

The Gou couple was devastated by their daughter’s incident. Since the incident, Gou’s stock price has plummeted, hitting the daily limit for several consecutive days, and major brokerage firms have successively issued risk notices to their customers...

The building is about to collapse.

Ye Lang wanted to find Lu Wan to ask her what was going on, but Lu Wan had already packed her luggage and left Jiangcheng and flew to Berlin on the same day Gou An was imprisoned.

It was He Jinxing who found him.

In order to mobilize the liquid funds of his own company abroad to inject capital to rescue the market for several consecutive days, He Jinxing had dark circles under his eyelids. He sat down opposite Ye Lang, and the man with a tired and impatient face only asked one question -

"Where were you when you discussed hiring a killer? And were there other people there?"

Gou An's family, there is no one else at the dining table.

He Jinxing made a "tsk" sound, remained silent, and then left.

A year later, Ye Lang naturally resigned from the Gou family and returned to the Lower City District which originally belonged to him.

Occasionally, I heard the subordinates gossiping with each other, talking about some gossip about the upper class. They said that He Jinxing now holds 49% of Gou's shares, and Gou Yu has been almost sidelined to the point of retirement and no longer concerned with worldly affairs, and the area in front of Gou's house is deserted.

Also, Gou An didn't have a good time in Qingshan Prison.

I had a fight with someone over an apple, and it caused a huge chaos.

Ye Lang listened to these bits of gossip without any extra reaction. He just heard that when Gou An was fighting with others, he paused to refill the teapot with water, and the water overflowed and burned his hand.

Throwing away the teapot, he casually picked up the butterfly cake on the coffee table, broke off a piece and put it in his mouth, then split it in half. The heart-shaped butterfly cake was as popular as ever.

It’s just that Ye Lang can’t get used to it.

The chocolate half was too sweet and the butter crust half was bland.

"Boss, I remember people saying you don't like sweets." One of the subordinates turned around and asked, "When did you change your personality?"

Although he obviously doesn't like sweets, there is always a piece of butterfly cake in Ye Lang's office. When he is in a good mood or a bad mood, he will take it, break off a piece, and put it into his mouth with an expressionless face.

In the first month of Gou An's imprisonment, Ye Lang applied for a visit.

Gou An refused.

He never went there again.

Things like a flash of inspiration don't even count as metaphysical worries. It was just that one day, at a certain moment, when I was standing outside the high walls of Qingshan Prison in a daze, I made eye contact with a bird on the wire mesh.

Ye Lang suddenly understood the difference between "pity" and "like".

The sweet and greasy butterfly cake melted in the mouth after being chewed and swallowed. Then, the greasy feeling of nausea and dizziness in the chest came up after several minutes.

Ye Lang discovered that the reason he was called "facial paralysis" since he was a child might just be because he was slow to react.

He is really slow to react, so much so that he may miss many important things in life.

A year later, Ye Lang heard from his neighbors that Lu Wan had returned home.

He turned a deaf ear to all those compliments, such as "flying onto the tree and becoming a phoenix", as if he was listening to the story of a completely unrelated person, and passed them by with a blank expression.

When I got home, I didn't want to eat dinner. I turned on the old TV and watched it absentmindedly. I touched the coffee table and touched a butterfly cake.

I grabbed it and took a bite. What news was playing on the TV? [A 38-year-old man was arrested for suspected drunken assault, causing a woman's nose bone fracture. The judicial appraisal result was a minor injury. According to relevant laws of our country, the man will be charged with intentional injury and face criminal detention of up to three years——]

The facial nasal bone fracture was so serious and happened less than three years ago.

Ye Lang snorted softly, turned over, and faced the back of the sofa, thinking in a daze, the one with a scratched knee was sentenced to nearly ten years...

Yelang fell asleep.

But he didn't know whether the remnants of the news were still in his ears, or whether the news of Lu Wan's return caused a series of chemical reactions, he had a dream -

In the dream, a man in a suit and tie with bloodshot eyes sat opposite him and asked him, "Where were you when you discussed hiring a killer? And who else was there?"

There was a loud thunder in the sky and the winter rain fell heavily. The man on the sofa opened his eyes without warning and suddenly remembered that they had discussed this matter not only at the dining table that day.

One month later.

Ye Lang knew that He Jinxing had been frequently visiting Gou's house recently.

Rumor has it that he's looking for something.

Some people said that he was after the extra 2% of shares in Gou Yu's hands, which symbolized Gou's complete control;

Others said that he was looking for trouble with the Gou family on behalf of his soon-to-be-married fiancée. After all, his fiancée had just returned home, and new and old grudges had to be recounted. Later, after going to the Gou family for several days in a row, He Jinxing probably didn't find what he wanted, so he stopped.

When Ye Lang heard these trivial rumors about the person in power of the He family, he remained silent and acted as if he didn't care at all.

On this day, after meeting with the lawyer, Ye Lang returned to the stairs of the tube building and met Lu Wan again. The difference was that this time Lu Wan came specially to wait for him——

He still thought it was quite miraculous that she had the guts to come to him.

Lu Wan was not as proud as the legend said. On the contrary, she had lost a lot of weight. Her black and shiny hair half a year ago had become dry and dull, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She was wearing a white dress with a long down jacket on the outside.

Even a luxury down jacket that costs more than ten thousand yuan does not make her look any more radiant.

Her eyes were red, like a frightened deer, and she opened her mouth as follows: "Alang, help me."

Ye Lang raised an eyebrow.

After half a year, he seemed to have learned to be immune to everyone's tears——

There was no ripple in his heart, not even a trace of the pity he had felt before.

My brain has been brainwashed and filled with the sweetness of butterfly cakes. I can't remember the smell of other sweets at all.

"I'm pregnant." Lu Wan's hands clasped her sleeves tightly, "The child needs a father."

Are you looking for me to be your father? Ye Lang was struck by this absurdity.

"He Jinxing didn't want to." Lu Wan frowned irritably, "He owed me a favor. He promised to agree to one of my requests, but when I went to him, he didn't want to. He said that next time I hear a man swear, remember to ask him to sign a document—"

Oh, not me.

While Ye Lang breathed a sigh of relief, he was immediately struck by the humor of He Jinxing's "written agreement". The man who did not keep his word was so shameless and dared to do so with a clear conscience.

"My suggestion," Ye Lang said, "Find the child's biological father... Don't tell me you don't know who it is."

Lu Wan bit her lower lip fiercely.

Ye Lang's eyes were calm.

"He Ran." Lu Wan took a deep breath and said a name. "He went to Germany to help He Jinxing monitor the land planting project. We were drunk that day. He knew that my engagement with He Jinxing would end in failure—"

Ye Lang thought, oh.

"Even if it's He Ran," he said, "He Jinxingxi shouldn't be allowed to be a father."

Although the tone was serious and objective, the undisguised teasing in the words still made Lu Wan shrink her shoulders in fear. She raised her head, as if she was very panicked to hear such words, and her black eyes stared at the man in front of her blankly and unfamiliarly.

It was like the first day I met him.

Ye Lang did not avoid her hurt gaze. In fact, he was a little curious why she didn't just get rid of the child instead of making so many fuss...

But he endured it and felt that this was none of his business.

She didn't want to say anything, and just saying "The doctor said I have a special body type and I'll never be able to get pregnant again after the abortion" would only be a waste of his time listening to one more word of nonsense.

So the man just looked at her calmly and chose to get straight to the point, "So, why did you come to see me?"

Lu Wan's tears rolled down from her eyes.

Tears left a trail of water on the pale face.

"He Jinxing said that he can recognize this child, since he is the offspring of the He family anyway... I just need to come to you and convince you to give him what he wants."

Others may not know, but Ye Lang knows in his heart that He Jinxing’s frequent entry and exit of the Gou family today was not because he wanted any shares, nor was he looking for any treasure hunting secrets. What he was looking for was a surveillance video.

Perhaps it was the determination of Gou An in prison that would kill him sooner or later that reminded this person of something -

He Jinxing began to blindly search every corner of the Gou family's house for surveillance videos that could record sound during that period.

He should have found the car in which they had the conversation, and he should also know that the in-car surveillance recording equipment of the Bentley during the corresponding time period had been taken away.

Just got a new one a few days ago.

Now the surveillance recording equipment is kept in Ye Lang's home.

The conversation inside is enough as evidence to overturn the case.

[How are you going to treat her? You have to make her remember this lesson, okay?]

This unintentional additional question from Gou An was enough to save herself.

This proves that Gou An's intention to instigate Ye Lang was at most to instigate intentional injury, which had nothing to do with intentional homicide, and that Ye Lang misunderstood.

Ye Lang recalled the conversation he had with his lawyer in the office this afternoon.

"If the case is overturned, Miss Gou's sentence will be shortened immediately. Since Miss Lu's injuries were very minor, if her team is strong, it probably won't be a problem for her to be released from prison immediately..."

"But if this recording is submitted as evidence to overturn the verdict, the result will most likely have some impact on you."

"It doesn't matter."

Ye Lang remembered that he answered like this:

"I can go to jail instead. It really doesn't matter."

(End of this chapter)