To anyone else, this would surely have looked like a melodramatic tale of tortured romance among the wealthy.
Reality, however, was far crueler than a romance novel...
Jin Xia's lashes trembled, and her heart jolted with them!
Creditors...
Lu Mingchuan actually knew everything!
She abruptly looked up at the man before her. "You knew?"
"Socialite training courses aren't cheap, even for a single term. You spent tens of millions just for a ticket into high society. Now you're asking to break up. Can you really bear to give it up?"
Lu Mingchuan bent down and leaned close to her, lowering his voice dangerously.
A trace of mockery and contempt flashed through those sharp, captivating eyes.
Jin Xia suddenly understood...
No wonder no one in the Lu family had questioned her when she said her parents had to make a last-minute trip to Europe for a royal banquet and could not come to Jing City for their engagement party.
No wonder Mrs. Lu had remained lukewarm toward her all this time.
It turned out that someone had seen through all her pretenses long ago!
Jin Xia felt a lump in her throat. She paused, struggling to keep her emotions in check.
Coco, however, smiled brightly. "Socialite training courses? There's actually such a thing? Who would've thought our Mr. Lu's fiancée had gone to such painstaking lengths to marry into a wealthy family!"
"Kneel down and apologize to Coco now, and I can let bygones be bygones!"
He pointed at Jin Xia's nose and rebuked her harshly.
After all this time, Jin Xia had not begged him even once, not even when she agreed to break up!
Even when he had brought different women home before and stirred up so many scandals, she had remained as meek as a quail!
On the eve of their engagement, Jin Xia had played dumb despite knowing perfectly well that he was going out to fool around with another woman. Not only had she not tried to keep him there, she had even reminded him considerately, "The family doctor said your digestion is poor. Don't drink too much."
Then Jin Xia had packed all the daily nutritional supplements she had prepared in advance into a box and handed it to Lu Mingchuan.
In everyone else's eyes, she was the ideal wife and mother. Even Lu Mingchuan's friends often teased him that a man should marry someone like Jin Xia.
But no one understood his misery. What was the point of living with someone who sat at home like a figurine or the AI assistant Doubao, who never hit back or talked back?
Lu Mingchuan's mindset had gradually grown warped, or perhaps... rebellious!
Jin Xia looked at Lu Mingchuan, her lips curling into a mocking smile. "I wish you and Miss Coco a lifetime of happiness together."
With that, she turned to leave, without a single accusation or insult.
Lu Mingchuan blocked her at the door like a madman, roaring at her in fury, "Jin Xia, do you have no heart? You're just leaving? I'm warning you, if you walk out that door, our engagement is over! Don't ever dream of marrying into the Lu family!"
Marrying into the Lu family and becoming Lu Mingchuan's wife had indeed once been Jin Xia's greatest aspiration.
But she had discovered that some things could not be resolved through human effort, and that trying hard was not necessarily any use.
So she had chosen to give up.
"You want to break up, right? The house, the car, everything the Lu family gave you-I'm taking it all back! Jin Xia, you brought this on yourself!"
He stood in the doorway, bellowing hysterically at Jin Xia.
Yet Jin Xia remained unmoved.
She strode out of the villa. A light rain had begun to fall outside.
The dress Jin Xia wore, worth a million, was soaked by the drizzle, and its hem was stained with mud, leaving her looking utterly bedraggled.
The Lanting Garden villa complex was in a remote location, where getting a taxi was difficult.
The droplets clinging to her lashes could no longer be distinguished as tears or rain.
At half past three in the morning, after Jin Xia had stood waiting until her legs went numb, a notification finally appeared on her ride-hailing app: a driver had accepted her request.
"Phone number ending in 9899?"
The driver lowered his window and looked toward Jin Xia.
Jin Xia nodded and confirmed her address with the driver.
She returned to the hotel where she was staying temporarily in Jing City, the Murphy Hotel, which belonged to the Lu Group.
She opened the wardrobe and packed her clothes one piece at a time. She had not expected that, after several years in Jing City, she would have so pitifully little luggage.
When Jin Xia left the hotel early that morning, she pulled only one rolling suitcase, containing a few items of intimate clothing and a plane ticket to Southeast Asia.
Lu Mingchuan was right. She was indeed deeply in debt, and she had indeed paid a considerable price to squeeze her way into high society.
Jin Xia was an orphan. Before graduating from university, she had worked part-time at a mobile phone shop. After carelessly losing a phone, she had her meager monthly wages withheld. With no source of income, she still had to work to repay the debt, living in a tiny rented room in an urban village...
On one side, she had debts to repay and a boss who pushed her around; on the other, she had to endure harassment from her sleazy old landlord.
Just when she thought her life was heading into a dead end, with nowhere left to turn.
Jin Xia had spent her last two yuan on a lottery ticket and won the jackpot: ten million!
After tax, she still had eight million. Once she received the money, she splurged 29,999 on a course sold through a livestream, supposedly offering major results and a way to rise above her social class. Then she had headed to Hong Kong City for an intensive socialite training program.
She had spent five years in the socialite training program, exhausted her eight million, and borrowed over ten million more in high-interest loans through Sister Amy's connections, all for the sake of moving up in society!
Jin Xia truly was terrified of being poor. She never wanted to experience going hungry again for the rest of her life.
After taking the wrong path, one wrong step had led to another...
By now, even Jin Xia herself could no longer count how much debt she carried.
She wandered aimlessly down the street, her phone ringing incessantly.
The call was not from the Lu family, but from an unknown number.
"Jin Xia, today is the repayment deadline we agreed on! Don't force us to come looking for you!"
The man on the other end spoke viciously, his Mandarin carrying a Hong Kong accent.
Jin Xia glanced at the call screen and gave a mocking smile. "We live under the rule of law now. Loan-sharking isn't protected by law either."
With that, she hung up and got into a taxi.
Jin Xia had thought that in Jing City, right under the nose of the imperial capital, she had nothing to fear for her safety.
But when she looked up and saw the man in the driver's seat, she instantly panicked...
Brother Biao looked at Jin Xia through the rearview mirror. "Aren't you about to marry into the wealthy Lu family? How come you can't even repay this little bit of money? The boys and I came all the way from Hong Kong City to Jing City for you. Having to stake you out over this bit of cash really took a hell of a lot of effort!"
"What do you want to do?"
Jin Xia looked at the man, utterly at a loss.
Brother Biao's smile deepened. "Nothing. We just want our money, that's all!"
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