Xiaozhouzi pulled a long face. "But I don't dare say it."
Bai Le patted him on the shoulder and said earnestly, "Be brave. You can't let your brother get the upper hand."
The women the floor manager brought in varied in height and type. Bai Le chose one with long, straight hair who looked very quiet. After chatting with her for a bit, he learned that she studied ballet. He didn't ask why she was there, and kept the conversation light.
Actually, they had called these women over to drink with them and liven things up. A few of the men got drunk and reached out to grope them, but none of them would cross the line.
To put it bluntly, these rich kids were driven by a sense of superiority and would never sleep with women like these. Most of them kept clean little lovers. They occasionally went out looking for a fling, but not with women like these.
Bai Le still hadn't really fit into this circle. The only people here he truly knew well were Wu Hua and Xiaozhouzi.
The group started playing drinking games. Wu Hua and Xiaozhouzi were having a great time, but Bai Le had to drive later, so he could only resist his craving for alcohol and look down at his phone to distract himself.
The long-haired woman beside him nervously raised a glass, hesitating as she tried to offer her a toast.
She rarely saw such a good-looking customer, but this customer didn't seem interested in her. Still, that made sense. Why would someone like him take an interest in her?
To her surprise, this customer was different from the others. Although he looked like a flirt, he spoke to her very politely and never took his jokes too far.
"I don't feel like drinking today. You don't need to remember what the floor manager said about toasting us, either. Relax."
Hearing this, the woman looked at him with some gratitude. She hadn't expected him to think of that.
Another ten-odd minutes passed. Bai Le was bored and preparing to leave when the door to the room was suddenly pushed open from outside.
"...Brother." Xiaozhouzi spoke hesitantly, swallowing the words "Why is it you again?"
"Why are you here?" He immediately pushed the woman beside him away and stood up, rubbing his hands together.
Zhou Kun's gaze swept over everyone in the room. For some reason, it paused slightly when it fell on Bai Le, and he addressed him as President Bai.
No matter what, Bai Le was different from these good-for-nothing rich kids. Although there was no apparent difference on the surface, Zhou Kun still had to show him respect.
"I was upstairs discussing business with someone, and your fourth uncle was there too. Halfway through, someone came in and told me my good-for-nothing little brother was here having fun too, and had called a few women over to keep him company. Naturally, I had to come see whether they were to my little brother's liking."
Zhou Kun was seething, holding back the urge to kick his disappointing little brother.
He didn't know what the idiots at the club were doing. They had dared to bring these women over for his brother, and had even hired the woman who had offended Fourth Uncle earlier as a waitress.
That woman had just been wandering around in front of them again. Even setting aside her suspicious identity, there was the sheer coincidence of it. Although Fourth Uncle hadn't said anything, Zhou Kun couldn't just let it go.
Hearing his cold laugh, Xiaozhouzi's legs trembled with fright. He hurriedly assured him, "Don't worry, Brother. Why would I get involved with women like these? They're filthy."
Unexpectedly, Zhou Kun's expression grew even uglier when he heard that, and he glared at him bitterly.
"Idiot, don't go around saying things like that again. Luckily for you, you were fortunate today. Otherwise, even I couldn't have saved you."
Everyone was baffled, but Bai Le understood what he meant. Xi Yan's biological mother had sold her body for a living. If Xi Yan had followed Zhou Kun downstairs and heard those words, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
In the original novel, Xi Yan treated her mother worse than a stranger, not entirely because of the shameful business she had once engaged in, but because she had abused him for more than a decade.
His methods of revenge were also very different.
After he returned to the Xi Family and reclaimed his original surname, he also climbed step by step to a height ordinary people could scarcely imagine. To everyone's surprise, after his biological father died, he brought his biological mother back to the Xi Family over everyone's objections.
Others could only sigh at how he had let bygones be bygones. They were related by blood, after all. But only Bai Le knew that this was the true meaning of killing someone by destroying their heart.
He gave this seemingly happy family of three a choice, asking his mother whether she was willing to go back with him and enjoy a life of wealth and luxury.
And so the woman abandoned her husband and son and left with the son she had always looked down on.
Just like that, he destroyed their false happiness with ease.
And in the fifth year after Tan Lianxin entered the Xi Family, when she was fully immersed in the extravagant life of a wealthy household, he sent her to a psychiatric hospital on the pretext that she was ill.
Just as she had become completely absorbed in a life of luxury and indulgence, he suddenly took everything away from her, including her freedom.
Whether by design or coincidence, this was the same psychiatric hospital Tan Lianxin and the others had once sent him to.
And it was worth mentioning that Xi Yan had probably chosen a five-year limit because, while he was living with his stepfather's family, Tan Lianxin had been cold to him before he turned five, but had not abused him, since the matter had not yet been exposed.
So he gave her five years in return.
After Zhou Kun left, Xiaozhouzi angrily told the woman beside him to get lost. "How dare they sell me out? Fuck, just watch me teach those people a lesson."
Bai Le couldn't stand it anymore. "Give it a rest. You're making things difficult for them. Your brother was sitting right upstairs, after all. Tell me, are they more afraid of you or your brother?"
At the mention of his brother, Xiaozhouzi's tone weakened considerably. "Fuck," he muttered sheepishly. "They only know how to bully the weak and fear the strong."
It wasn't until after eleven that night that the group, thoroughly drunk, took the elevator down and left the club.
Swinging his car keys, Bai Le whistled in an excellent mood. "I can only give one person a ride."
Seeing his eyes light up and how eager he was, the drunkards teased him between hiccups. Bai Le was in too good a mood to hold it against them.
As soon as he got into the car, Bai Le stroked the steering wheel back and forth as though it were a treasure, his grin nearly reaching the sky.