Zhou Yutong was unable to run out of the yard because Chen Jinli, who had heard the news a long time ago, was already waiting at the door of the Zhou family's house.

When she ran out, the man's car was not even turned off. It was on, but the window was down. In the back seat, he was leaning against the window smoking.

The spark in his hand was the only source of light in the darkness.

He usually wears a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and has a wolf-dog personality, and people always question why he wants to play with He Jinxing, the wolf. At this moment, relying on the strong heating in the car, the shirt casually bent at the elbows reveals a little bit of his true nature.

The cold wind outside the window seemed to have nothing to do with him.

Only when the cold wind blew past did his hair become a little messy.

Chen Jinli bit the butt of his cigarette and squinted his eyes to look up and down at the little girl in front of him who was crying so hard that she couldn't see the road clearly. His eyes paused on her ankles which were only wearing slippers. After a moment, he said calmly: "Where are you going?"

His tone was lazy.

Asking even though you know the answer.

In the cold night it is like a heavy bass hitting the heart.

Zhou Yutong wiped her tears and let out a gasping sob. Facing the familiar yet unfamiliar mature face in front of her, this was the person she had liked since she was a child, when she vaguely knew what it meant to like someone.

If it were a different time, a different place, or a different opportunity, Zhou Yutong would probably grab him by the collar and ask him why he replied to Lu Wan's WeChat and why he approved her internship application...

But now she has no time to care about so much.

The moment Chen Jinli put out the cigarette in his hand and said "Get in the car", she had already opened the door and climbed into the back seat.

Chen Jinli let out a low laugh and let the tearful person crawl over his legs and go inside. After she sat firmly, he raised his hand and touched the top of her head.

Then he got up and went to the front, sent the driver away, and drove the car out of the neighborhood where the Zhou family lived.

The Zhou family was certainly not as powerful as the He and Gou families, and the community they lived in was not particularly far from the city. Chen Jinli drove the car to the downtown area before he heard the person behind him ask in a daze, "Where are you going?"

"hotel."

After Chen Jinli finished speaking, he heard a silence behind him. He felt that she seemed to have misunderstood something, so he added, "You are alone."

“…”

"You have to go to school tomorrow, right?" he said. "I'll find you a hotel closer to school so you can sleep two more minutes tomorrow."

When Zhou Yutong turned her gaze slowly toward the window, Chen Jinli really wanted to sigh——

When he received Xu Hui's call tonight, he was still in the laboratory. There was a shark in poor condition, and he originally planned to watch it all night, but the news he received on the other end of the phone was obviously a little more important than the shark.

Xu Hui and Zhou Chu hid it so well that even he didn't know that Zhou Yutong was the daughter they adopted out of spite.

After being the apple of the Zhou family's eye for more than a decade, how could a young lady like Zhou Yutong accept suddenly finding out that she was just a child with no blood relationship?

Xu Hui had anticipated this, so as soon as Zhou Chu brought Lu Wan home, she called him and asked him to come and block the way -

Sure enough, there was a traffic jam.

There was no much comfort or enlightenment along the way, and the car stopped at a five-star hotel owned by the Gou family.

It was already close to eleven o'clock in the evening. The whole day's plot was so full that Zhou Yutong had lost all her energy. She was tired of crying and was already drowsy...

I was woken up and got out of the car in a daze. When I was illuminated by the lights in the lobby, I squinted my eyes slightly out of discomfort.

I called Gou Yu and explained the situation, so I was able to check in smoothly without registering my ID card.

Chen Jinli was leaning against the front desk and telling the front desk staff the identity of the guests. When he turned around, he saw a little girl in thin clothes and fluffy slippers, standing alone and out of place in the middle of the magnificently decorated hotel lobby.

People passing by looked at her in surprise, but she didn't notice at all. It seemed that the light hurt her eyes. She half-closed her red and swollen eyes and raised her hand to rub them from time to time...

As pitiful as it can be.

She looked much more pitiful than when she usually acted coquettishly and pretended to be pitiful.

Chen Jinli was originally explaining to the person at the front desk which "Yu" was in "Zhou Yutong" when the word "xia" in "xiayu" was on the tip of his tongue, but he suddenly paused.

He stood up straight.

Under the puzzled gaze of the front desk staff, he waved his hand, casually said "forget it", and walked towards Zhou Yutong.

When Zhou Yutong raised her hand to rub her eyes for the third time, her elbow was held by a not-so-strong force.

She stopped and asked blankly, "Have you checked in?"

"No." Chen Jinli said, "I can't stay anymore."

Zhou Yutong's face was full of question marks. Before she could ask, she was pulled out.

Chen Jinli's Bentley was still parked in front of the hotel lobby.

He unlocked the car and said expressionlessly, "Stay at my house."

Chen Jinli's house has an electronic combination lock, and he was calm when entering the password.

But the moment the door opened, everything changed.

The little girl standing behind him pushed him, then jumped onto his back, and her cold, snake-like hands wrapped around his neck.

Chen Jinli turned his back to her, closed the door, then faced the empty living room and smiled.

The next second, he threw the person carrying him down, and Zhou Yutong was pressed against the wall by him. The two exchanged a kiss that was mixed with the salty taste of tears, the smell of blood and rust, and the unspoken breath of despair.

She didn't know when her hands had clasped around his neck again, tightening silently, and her chest, which was rising and falling strongly, pressed against his chest...

He picked up Zhou Yutong and pressed her onto the sofa.

Her legs were obediently hooked around his waist, and the slippers hanging on her feet were shaky and finally fell to the ground with a "click".

The noise seemed to have awakened the man's sanity a little. He propped himself up with one hand and raised his head from her collarbone, which had been bitten to pieces. "Are you sure?"

Zhou Yutong smiled miserably at him: "Chen Jinli, from any perspective, you are not my uncle anymore."

She was telling the truth.

Reality is always more magical than TV dramas.

He raised his hand and peeled off one of her socks. The sudden contact with cold air made her leg quickly break out in goose bumps. The bright moonlight outside shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the high-rise apartment, making every change in her visible.

Her eyes and nose tip were all red from crying, and now even her collarbone, neck and ears were also a beautiful red.

Chen Jinli lowered his head again and kissed her moist, red lips.

His hand reached in from the edge of her clothes, paused when it touched her warm skin, then bent down and kissed the tip of her nose, with a little self-mockery: "Your mother asked me to pick you up, probably not for us to do this."

When Xu Hui was mentioned, Zhou Yutong's eyes immediately became moist.

She sniffed and said, "It doesn't matter. No one will care about me anymore."

Chen Jinli sighed and muttered, "Why is he so pitiful?"

Tonight, the lost girl needs the kiss of the person she has loved since childhood to guide her. It doesn't matter whether the kiss itself symbolizes pity or something else.

She was like a drowning person grabbing a piece of driftwood, trying to get a little tangible warmth.

The skirt fell on the sofa, making a slight rustling sound. The low moan from her throat finally covered up the choking feeling of wanting to cry and the sore throat...

The cell phone thrown aside was ringing frantically.

Chen Jinli took a look and was forced to turn his face back by pinching his chin.

He lifted the edge of her last layer of covering with one hand and chuckled, "Zhou Yanji."

Zhou Yutong pursed her lips.

"Your cheap brother actually cares about you."

As Chen Jinli spoke, it was hard to tell that there was not a hint of sourness in his tone, but no one seemed to notice at the moment.

"He's not my cheap brother." Zhou Yutong protested, "He is my brother."

It's not common for Zhou Yutong to come up with this rare rebuttal.

Normally, she seemed to be possessed by Chen Jinli and would never go east or west, let alone talk back to him. The entire Zhou family and even the Xu family knew that Zhou Yutong was a devil who only listened to Chen Jinli since she was a child.

And now, she was pressed down on the sofa by him, hugging each other in the most intimate posture, but she was able to find reason from the chaos and emphasized, Zhou Yanji is my brother.

Chen Jinli's eyes darkened slightly, and he raised his hand to scrape the corners of her eyes: "Your tears tonight are given to you by the Zhou family."

Zhou Yutong lost her voice instantly.

"Brother is also the brother of Lu Wan." Chen Jinli said calmly, "Zhou Yutong, there is no need to swallow this anger. The Zhou family doesn't want you, but the Xu family does. You can still be your eldest daughter... but you are just a cheap brother, so just give it back to Lu Wan——"

Before he finished speaking, he saw the girl, who had been obediently letting him hug her, suddenly narrowed her eyes. The eyes that were still distracted a second ago suddenly flashed with brilliance, "'Also'?"

There was a huge force on my shoulders.

Chen Jinli was pushed away by her.

Seeing the person who was originally lying on the sofa suddenly sit up, "Why do you use this word?!"

Zhou Yutong asked, "When they brought me here, did they ask for my opinion? Why is it that everyone today - everyone! Acts like I've taken advantage of them and should quit while I'm ahead!"

Chen Jinli's eyes flashed with surprise at the sudden outburst. Facing the little girl with extremely unstable emotions who was suddenly ignited, he thought to himself: This child is really troublesome.

I even felt a little regretful. Tonight, for some unknown reason, I changed my mind in an instant and brought her back.

"But you did benefit from it." Chen Jinli frowned slightly and said, "Although it has nothing to do with me, if it weren't for what happened back then, Lu Wan wouldn't have lived in Zhaipu District."

"These two things are not related!"

"Unmarried children also have inheritance rights under the law."

"So sometimes the law has to cover pretty gross things."

Faced with Zhou Yutong's quick and aggressive answer, Chen Jinli stepped back a little. The fire that had been burning in him both psychologically and physically was completely extinguished at this moment. He leaned against the armrest of the sofa, and watched Zhou Yutong expressionlessly as she bent down to pick up her skirt and put it on with shaking hands.

He was indifferent from beginning to end, until Zhou Yutong failed to button her skirt for the third time, and he sighed.

He reached out and easily buttoned her shirt, saying, "I was wrong."

In past quarrels, she should have softened by now.

But she didn't. She waved his hand away, raised her head and looked into his eyes. There was something called "infatuation" in her eyes, which receded as quickly as the tide.

She just looked at him for a few seconds, then bent down and put on her socks.

Now she looked completely dressed as she had when she first entered the room. She turned her head to look at Chen Jinli and called out his full name.

"You all feel sorry for Lu Wan, but if I had been born in Zhaipu District, I wouldn't always blame others and think that other people's happiness is built on my pain."

Chen Jinli didn't say anything, nor did he plan to explain that he didn't care what Lu Wan was like or what would happen to him.

He just mentioned it casually.

The two of them were in a stalemate for a while, and no one spoke. Zhou Yutong grabbed her cell phone and looked at the caller. It was Gou An.

She answered the phone, said "Hello", and walked out.

Gou An just sighed on the other end of the phone, and Chen Jinli also reacted. Seeing Zhou Yutong's hand on the door handle, he frowned, stood up, walked over quickly, and pressed the door that was slightly opened.

With a "bang", the door closed again.

"It's almost minus ten degrees outside and it's going to rain tonight. Where are you going?" he asked in a deep voice.

Zhou Yutong looked up at him silently.

She didn't say anything, but Gou An was furious on the other end of the phone -

"Who is talking next to you? Why is there a man's voice? Is it Chen Jinli? Are you at his house? Zhou Yutong, are you crazy? Send me your location and I'll pick you up now..."

There was the sound of hurried bare feet tapping on the wooden stairs from the other end of the line.

Then the mumbling voice stopped abruptly, and Zhou Yutong heard the person on the other end of the phone choke again. The person who had been wishing he could grow wings and fly over just a second ago paused for a few seconds.

"He Jinxing was squatting in my living room like a guard dog."

The report from the other end of the phone made Zhou Yutong laugh out loud with genuine emotion for the first time tonight.

After a few seconds, she stopped laughing. When Gou An vaguely discussed with the guard dog at home that the dog would not block the road, he whispered to her, "It's okay. I'll leave now. You don't have to come. I'll find someone to pick me up."

After saying that, she hung up the phone.

Under Chen Jinli's increasingly gloomy gaze, she dialed another number that had been quiet as a chicken all night and had not called her actively, but she was sure that it would be picked up.

(End of this chapter)