At 3 a.m., Gu Chenzhou received an anonymous email with a screenshot of CCTV footage of Chu Yu and Qin Man in a coffee shop attached. In the footage, Qin Man pushed an envelope over, and as Chu Yu opened it, half of a yellowed drawing was revealed—the very core formula that the Gu family had accused Yi'an of plagiarizing years ago.
He stared at Chu Yu's trembling eyelashes on the screen, suddenly remembering the torn page she had torn when signing the document. It turned out that from the very beginning, this marriage was a double trap: he thought he was using Chu Yu to stabilize the board of directors, but little did he know that she had already laid a trap, intending to use the Gu family's resources to restart Mingzhu Building Materials, and even more importantly, to uncover the truth behind the acquisition case from back then.
The downpour subsided quietly before dawn. Gu Chenzhou stood before Chu Yu's door, his fingertips hovering over the doorknob. A soft rustling came from inside, like the turning of pages of documents. He chuckled softly, turning to find his wedding ring digging into his thigh—this marriage, born of mutual benefit, was destined to be tossed about between truth and lies, and he eagerly awaited the moment Chu Yu would reveal her true colors.
As the morning light pierced through the clouds, Chu Yu was putting on her jade bracelet at her dressing table. In the mirror's reflection, her wedding ring lay quietly in the corner of her jewelry box, the engraving on the inside glaringly bright in the sunlight. She touched a USB drive deep in the drawer, containing encrypted files sent by her father before his death. One of the files, a surveillance video, showed that the fire at the Yi'an warehouse years ago was arson ordered by Gu Chenzhou's father.
The doorbell rang suddenly, and Chen Li's voice came through the door: "Madam, Mr. Gu requests your presence in his study. He says he wants to discuss a cooperation proposal regarding 'Mingzhu Building Materials'."
Looking at her reddened eyes in the mirror, Chu Yu suddenly curled her lips into a smile. It turned out that Gu Chenzhou had already seen through her identity, yet still chose to sign this marriage contract. Fine, she needed Gu's connections to reach the key figures from back then, and more importantly, to seek justice for her father in this business game.
In the study, Gu Chenzhou was signing a document. His gaze swept over the jade pendant on her wrist as he looked up: "Regarding the restart plan for Mingzhu Building Materials, I had Chen Li add an additional clause." He pushed the document towards her. "After marriage, you can use Gu's supply chain, but 15% of the profits from each order must be invested in Gu's environmentally friendly building materials research and development—this is a requirement of the board of directors."
Chu Yu glanced at the terms and conditions and suddenly realized that the so-called "environmental protection research and development" was the very project that Yi'an had failed to complete back then. She suddenly understood that Gu Chenzhou had already seen through her purpose, but chose to play along and use Gu's resources to complete her father's unfinished business.
"President Gu is certainly shrewd," she said, taking the pen and signing her name under the additional terms. "However, I have one condition—" she tapped the pen lightly on the table. "I want to participate in Gu's quarterly board meetings. After all... as the president's wife, I should have some real power."
Gu Chenzhou's pupils contracted slightly, then a meaningful smile appeared on his face. This woman was far more dangerous than he had imagined; she not only wanted to restart Mingzhu Building Materials, but also to seize control of the core power of the Gu family. But it was precisely this danger that made his blood boil—dancing with an evenly matched opponent was clearly more interesting than dry business reports.
Outside the window, the rising sun pierced through the clouds, casting their intertwined shadows on the floor. Two signed documents lay quietly on the table: one a marriage contract, the other a business cooperation proposal. Both bore a tiny, old Yi'an Building Materials logo printed in the corner of their title pages—a logo that Gu Chenzhou had secretly replaced the previous night, which Chu Yu had already noticed but chose to remain silent about.
This marriage, which began with a conspiracy, ultimately became, in the eyes of the two clever individuals, a game of mutual benefit. But they both knew that when the jade bracelet and the wedding ring were both worn on Chu Yu's wrist, and when Gu Chenzhou's tattoo and Chu Yu's notebook appeared at the same time, the fire from twenty years ago was destined to carve out a new world within this contractual marriage.
Meanwhile, in a café on the other side of the city, Qin Man was handing the envelope Chu Yu had received to the mysterious man. Outside the surveillance camera, a man wearing sunglasses opened the envelope, revealing a tattoo photo of Gu Chenzhou inside. On the back was written: "The witness from the warehouse years ago has been found."
The sunlight after the downpour was particularly dazzling, yet it couldn't penetrate the layers of business intrigue and family feuds. When Chu Yu and Gu Chenzhou looked at each other in the study, they both knew that this business war called "marriage" had only just begun.
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