Chapter 181 - 177: Good-for-nothing x Innocent Little Tyrant 16

Chapter 181: Chapter 177: Good-for-nothing x Innocent Little Tyrant 16

Li Liping returned home, distraught. She didn’t dare tell Ji Fu what had happened today.

Not only had she failed her task, but she also had to pay a huge sum of money.

She was trying to figure out how to pay back Jiang Manyun, well aware that the woman was not one to be trifled with.

Just as she was thinking, Ji Yao walked in.

"Mom, what’s going on with you and Dad today? You both look so worried."

"Yaoyao, do you want to marry Xu Ji?"

Li Liping asked, trembling as she held Ji Yao’s hand.

Ji Yao casually twirled the new Bvlgari Serpenti ring on her finger. Its diamond scales refracted a cold light under the chandelier.

"Marry him? Hah! Mom, do you know what Xu Ji said the day he gave me that yacht? He said that with champagne on my collarbone, I looked like a model from Country E he kept as a mistress twenty years ago."

She suddenly sneered. "That old man’s cologne can’t even cover up his old-man smell. The last time we kissed, the stench almost made my false eyelashes fall off."

Li Liping’s hand trembled, spilling hot tea onto the Persian Carpet. "Then why did you..."

"Why did I accept the jade bracelet he gave me? Why did I wear the couture gown he bought?"

Ji Yao kicked off her rhinestone-studded high heels. A scratch from a coral reef while diving last week was still visible on her ankle. "The day he took me to that reception, the vice president of the world’s top-ranked financial firm personally handed me his business card."

She leaned over and swiped a Tom Ford lipstick from her mother’s vanity. "Once Xu Ji gets me a letter of recommendation for that company, I’ll package up those scandalous photos and send them to a financial weekly."

"Yaoyao, our family provides for you. Why do you have to degrade yourself like this? Isn’t it better to find someone from a family of similar status to ours?"

Li Liping couldn’t understand. ’Didn’t I scheme so much just so I could live a life of obscene wealth, and so my children could have a better start and not have a mother like me? So why did the daughter I raised turn out like this?’

Ji Yao shrugged nonchalantly. "Those men from families of ’similar status’ look down on my birth. You’ve been married for years, and even though you have Dad’s love, what is a man’s love worth? You have no power, no assets to your name. What if Dad suddenly produces a son? Where would my place in this family be then?"

She opened her phone and pulled up a picture she had taken of Xu Ji yesterday.

"Mom, look at this girl in the schoolgirl uniform. She’s another art school student Xu Ji just found. These little schoolgirls are a hot commodity. What I can get from him is on a timer, too. Our relationship could end at any moment. The Ji family’s influence isn’t enough to get me the business card of the VP from the world’s top financial firm."

"Yaoyao, your father wants you to marry him."

CRASH!

Ji Yao grabbed a blue-and-white porcelain vase and hurled it at the entryway mirror. Flying shards of glass grazed Li Liping’s cheek.

"You want me to marry Xu Ji, that man covered in age spots? Why don’t you marry him yourself!"

She ripped open her collar, revealing a hickey on her collarbone. "The night before last, when he had me pinned to the yacht’s deck, he was screaming Jiang Manyun’s name!"

Ji Fu walked in just in time to hear Ji Yao’s words.

He kicked over a Ming-style armchair. The crack of the huanghuali wood splitting sent Li Liping cowering into a corner.

"Xu Ji controls three of the Ji family’s shipping lines. The board of directors gets re-elected next month."

He grabbed his daughter’s chin, forcing her head up. "Either you walk down the aisle in a wedding dress, or you get the hell out of this house naked!"

"Dad!"

Ji Yao suddenly grabbed the ice bucket from the coffee table and threw it at her father. Whiskey and ice soaked his silk Tang suit.

"Last month, you took your secretary gambling and mortgaged the south-side property to a loan shark. Should I let Xu Ji hear about that?"

She pulled out her phone and waved it. On the screen, a video showed Ji Fu shoving a contract at a tattooed man. "I wonder if Mr. Xu will still be willing to be your prized son-in-law after he sees this?"

The storm hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows. Trembling, Li Liping bent down to pick up the torn compensation agreement from the floor.

The penalty payment Jiang Manyun demanded was stained with red wine. She suddenly screamed and threw herself at the grappling father and daughter. "Stop fighting! Jiang Manyun said she’s going to ruin Ji Yao’s reputation..."

Ji Fu backhanded his wife away. The back of Li Liping’s head slammed hard against a curio shelf.

As a jade ornament crashed to the floor, Ji Yao let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Mom, you got into this family by being the other woman while pregnant with me. Now you’re selling your daughter to plug the hole?"

Stepping on the scattered jade fragments, she advanced on her father. "Believe it or not, I’ll start a livestream right now and let the whole internet see how a rich family forces their own daughter to be an old man’s plaything."

"You dare!"

Ji Fu pulled out his phone and swiped to a freeze notification. "Starting this second, all the credit cards, apartments, and sports cars in your name are cut off."

He grabbed Ji Yao by the hair and dragged her onto the terrace where the storm raged. "Xu Ji’s driver is downstairs. Are you going to walk down yourself, or should I have the bodyguards carry you into the wedding car?"

Li Liping sat limply in a pile of shattered jade, watching her daughter’s rain-soaked white nightgown disappear at the elevator entrance.

The compensation agreement was crumpled into a ball in her palm. The final ultimatum from Jiang Manyun’s lawyer flashed on her phone screen.

Ji Fu thought that Xu Ji had already approved of Ji Yao, and he also thought Li Liping had settled the matter.

So, when Xu Ji’s driver was waiting downstairs, Ji Fu thought he could complete Ji Xiaosong’s task today.

However, Xu Ji’s driver was only there to pick her up and treat her like a toy, just like always.

Ji Yao’s eyes were red. After being forced into the car, she put on a wronged and pitiful expression.

"Miss Ji, you had best freshen up a bit. Mr. Xu is waiting in the presidential suite at the Kait Hotel."

The driver suddenly reminded her. But this time, Ji Yao wasn’t her usual obsequious and fawning self. She just gave a faint "Mm."

The moment the sandalwood doors to the presidential suite opened, a wave of cigar smoke mixed with the sour smell of whiskey hit her.

Xu Ji stood with his back to the door, facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. His tailored suit outlined a still-straight back. In his left hand, he rolled a string of jade prayer beads—an antique Jiang Manyun had bought at a Sotheby’s auction last year.

"I heard your mother used secretly taken photos to force Man Yun to sign the divorce papers?"

He didn’t turn around. The cold light reflecting off his watch swept across the coffee table, where the compensation agreement Li Liping had signed at the private restaurant was spread out. Every page was marked with a bloody thumbprint.

Just as Ji Yao was about to speak, Xu Ji suddenly snipped a red rose with his cigar cutter. "You and your mother are a pair of hereditary bitches."

He turned and threw the ruined flower in her face. "Years ago, your mother faked a paternity test to trick her way into the Ji family. And now you’re trying to blackmail me for a villa with a condom you poked holes in?"

She stumbled back into the crystal bar, her bourbon-soaked shirt clinging to her skin. "But Mr. Xu, you clearly said..."

"That you’re wilder in bed than Man Yun?"

Xu Ji loosened his tie and advanced on her, his hawk-like eyes filled with ice. "Do you know why I keep you around?"

He suddenly grabbed the back of her neck and slammed her face down onto the coffee table. Under the tempered glass was Jiang Manyun’s recent charity ambassador trophy. "Every time I see this face that looks so much like hers crying beneath me, I’m reminded of the humiliation of her father forcing me to be a live-in son-in-law!"

Ji Yao struggled, her hand fumbling for a fruit knife, but Xu Ji twisted her wrist, disarming her.

As the tip of the knife flicked open her buttons, he chuckled at a hidden surveillance camera. "Man Yun is watching this live. What do you think she’ll say when she sees the birthmark on your collarbone—"

The blade suddenly pierced her skin. "—the one that’s identical to your biological father’s, the one who died in a slum? Will she laugh out loud?"

"You investigated me..."

Blood beads rolled onto the silk carpet. Terror finally showed on Ji Yao’s face.

Xu Ji tossed out a yellowed file. In a news report about a fire in an urban village back then, the watch on a charred corpse was the same Bvlgari model Ji Yao was wearing now.

"Why do you think Ji Fu was willing to raise a bastard?"

He ground out his cigar on her shoulder, searing a red mark. "That fire didn’t just kill gamblers and prostitutes. Have you forgotten what happened to the Shen Family?"

Outside the windows, the storm raged. Xu Ji suddenly grabbed Ji Yao’s hair and dragged her toward the bathroom.

The mirror reflected his violent image as he tore off his suit jacket, a stark contrast to the refined financial tycoon he was during the day.

"Go back and tell your mother that if she doesn’t pay back the eighty million by sunrise tomorrow, I’ll take the evidence of Ji Fu hiring a hitman, stuff it into your biological father’s urn, and mail it to the police!"

As Ji Yao choked on bubbles and struggled, she heard Xu Ji’s gentle tone as he spoke on the phone with Jiang Manyun:

"Don’t worry, darling. A toy should know its place as a toy..."

In the reflection on the water’s surface, the wedding ring on the man’s ring finger was seared into her fading vision.