Chapter 171: Want Her Cousin To Help Her

Chapter 171: Chapter 171: Want Her Cousin To Help Her

"What?!" Shen Lin Ya shrieked, the colour draining entirely from her face.

She whipped her head toward the secretary, her eyes bulging in sheer terror as she struggled and failed to process the nightmare unfolding around her.

He... he personally escorted her here under the director’s orders?

Slowly, as though moving in horrific slow motion, Shen Lin Ya turned her neck back toward Qiao Meixia. The teenage girl remained unbothered, still sitting in a posture of total tranquillity upon the sofa, casually holding her notebook as if the unfolding verbal execution had absolutely nothing to do with her.

For the very first time, a horrifying and irreversible reality came crashing down upon Shen Lin Ya. Her face drained of all color as she finally realized the catastrophic seriousness of what she had done.

"Miss Shen, you should leave my office for now. I will let the HR department handle your case accordingly." The secretary stated in a cold, unforgiving voice.

Shen Lin Ya did not dare utter another syllable. She immediately scrambled out of Jiang Suhan’s office and hurried back to her own workstation. Her mind was trapped in a chaotic tailspin, and she could not stop obsessing over what punishments might await her after committing the cardinal sin of offending Director Jiang’s own younger sister.

When she finally reached her desk and collapsed into her chair, the colleague seated directly beside her turned to look at her with deep concern.

"What on earth happened to you? You look entirely ghost-white. If you are feeling physically ill, you should just log some sick leave and head straight home." Her colleague advised, noticing how terribly shaken Shen Lin Ya appeared.

Then, as though suddenly jolted by a stray memory, her coworker continued, "Oh... by the way, the landline phone at your desk kept ringing incessantly earlier. I went ahead and answered it on your behalf. I believe it was someone calling from the ground floor reception desk. She mentioned she was your cousin and urgently wanted to speak with you. I informed her that you had stepped away to the ladies’ room, so she disconnected the line. You ought to call her back whenever you catch a breather. Her voice was trembling quite a bit earlier, and she sounded genuinely terrified. Something must have gone seriously wrong on her end."

Shen Lin Ya could only offer a weak, mechanical nod, utterly lacking the physical energy to frame a proper response.

With trembling fingers, she unlocked her desk drawer and hastily pulled out her personal smartphone. The moment she powered on the screen, she was greeted by a frantic cluster of a dozen missed messages and text notifications sent by the exact person her colleague had just referenced.

The frantic caller was indeed her younger cousin, Shen Weiwei, who happened to be stationed as a receptionist in the ground-floor lobby.

Shen Lin Ya unlocked her messaging app immediately and began scanning through the digital texts one by one.

The further down she read, the more profound her shock became. Her face grew even more ghastly pale as she realised that something utterly disastrous had befallen Shen Weiwei as well. It appeared, with terrifying coincidence, that both of them had managed to cross paths with and offend the exact same person.

"How on earth could something like this possibly happen..." Shen Lin Ya muttered under her breath, a cold sweat breaking out across her forehead.

She found it entirely surreal that both cousins had managed to step onto a conversational landmine on the identical day, especially when neither of them could have ever guessed that the seemingly ordinary high school girl they harassed was actually Director Jiang’s long-lost sister.

Without wasting another microsecond, Shen Lin Ya stood up abruptly from her chair and bolted out of the open-plan bullpen once more.

Her colleague watched her frantic exit with utter bewilderment.

"Seriously, she really should just take emergency leave and go home." The coworker muttered to herself, shaking her head before turning back to her spreadsheet.

Meanwhile, Shen Lin Ya sprinted toward a secluded, completely deserted stretch of the upper-floor corridor where she would not be overheard. Unlocking her phone, she instantly dialled Shen Weiwei’s direct line.

The cellular ringtone sounded a mere fraction of a second before Shen Weiwei frantically accepted the call.

"Sis! Oh god, you have to help me out right now! I have completely screwed my life up!" Shen Weiwei shrieked through the earpiece, her voice drenched in raw, unadulterated panic.

She was instinctively throwing herself upon Shen Lin Ya for salvation. After all, because Shen Lin Ya held a secure administrative position within the prestigious Secretary Department, Shen Weiwei had always assumed her older cousin possessed deep internal connections within the corporate hierarchy and could easily pull strings to bail her out of trouble.

However, before Shen Weiwei could even begin unpacking the finer details of her catastrophic mistake, Shen Lin Ya cut her off flatly.

"I can’t help you." Shen Lin Ya stated in a hard, definitive tone.

"What?! Are you insane, Shen Lin Ya? You can’t just abandon me like a piece of trash!" Shen Weiwei screamed in total disbelief. "Auntie specifically told you to look after me! If you sit back and refuse to bail me out, I am calling your mother right this instant to tell her everything you have done. Let’s see how much peace she grants you after that!"

Shen Weiwei attempted to deploy their shared family matriarch as emotional blackmail. She knew her older cousin desperately avoided provoking her mother, and she prayed the manipulative threat would force compliance. Unfortunately for her, she had picked the absolute worst possible moment to try and bully Shen Lin Ya.

***This novel is a contracted work with w e b n o v e l. c o m. If you do not read this novel on w e b n o v e l. c o m, that means it has been stolen. Thank you, from your shameless author, ZerahNeko***