Looking at the roomful of staff reporting on their work, he cleared his throat with two coughs. "Give me a moment."
The golden retriever in his arms refused to get down, so he had no choice but to carry him outside.
The employees in the meeting room immediately crowded against the glass to watch, the atmosphere perfect for eating melons.
"President Chang is as gentle as ever. He didn't even get angry when a dog jumped on him, and he carried the golden retriever outside to soothe him!"
"Boohoo, President Chang has money, looks, and a great body. Being his dog must mean a happy life at home every day!"
Hearing this, Yan Junye looked toward the glass with a melancholy expression.
-Why don't you come try it? You have no idea your President Chang is gentle in public and a hothead in private.
-So what if he has a great body?
His muttered complaints took on a more disgruntled tone.
-I can't even see it.
Chang Yu looked down at the furry head. What? You wanted to see it, too?
He could keep dreaming.
He turned his attention back to the dog killing.
There was no one suspicious in the corridor, either, and his company's security had always been excellent. How could a dog killer have barged in?
But Xiaotu's cries didn't sound like an act.
He stroked Xiaotu's head to soothe him and took out his phone to call his assistant. Before the call connected, three people approached from the elevator.
Chang Yu's hand paused on the dog's head, and the golden retriever in his arms barked toward the people opposite them.
"Woof, woof, woof!"
[He's the one trying to kill me!]
Chang Yu came back to himself and called out, "Mother, what brings you here?"
Mother?
For a moment, Yan Junye couldn't process it. Liao Mei was Chang Yu's mother?
He had often seen Liao Mei in the consulting room before and had heard plenty from his colleagues about her family.
He had never expected to become part of it one day.
Liao Mei affectionately linked arms with the woman beside her, her red lips parting slightly. "You and Yaoyao haven't seen each other in ages. You should spend more time developing your relationship before the wedding."
Then she looked at the golden retriever in his arms with a gentle expression. "Do you like the dog I picked out for you?"
Downstairs just now, she had seen the therapy dog and wanted to go over and pet him, but something had frightened him and he had run off.
"Xiaotu is very perceptive." Chang Yu ignored the subject of his fiancée without even looking at her.
He still remembered Xiaotu saying that the man beside her killed dogs. He looked the man over. "And this is?"
"This is my therapist, Gu Hongzhuo," Liao Mei said. "Thanks to him, my depression has improved a great deal."
Chang Yu said nothing.
Liao Mei's improvement had nothing to do with her therapist. It depended on whether he obediently got married, or whether he disobeyed her and went looking for men.
This therapist was simply taking their family's money for nothing.
Hearing himself mentioned, Gu Hongzhuo extended a friendly hand in greeting.
But after waiting for quite a while, he found that the man opposite him had no intention of shaking it. He didn't even lift his arm.
He could only try to pet the golden retriever in the other man's arms to ease the awkwardness. Before his hand even touched him, he was fiercely barked at.
"Woof, woof, woof!"
[Keep your hands off me. You disgust me!]
Gu Hongzhuo curled his fingers and withdrew his hand.
All right, they looked fairly cordial, but the relationship between mother and son probably wasn't very good.
As though she hadn't noticed, Liao Mei had eyes only for her son. "I know you have no plans tonight, so I specially booked a candlelit dinner for you two. Make sure you go."
When no response came, she added, "Don't break your mother's heart."
Chang Yu was long accustomed to Liao Mei's tactics.
He knew that if he didn't comply, his mother would once again say she couldn't go on living, that her depression was flaring up and she wanted to die.
"Were you the one who sent someone into my home yesterday?" When he had heard noises at home, he had thought a burglar had broken in.
Once the person outside the door left, he rushed into the bathroom and fought with the person inside, only for them to cry and say Liao Mei had sent them.
He hadn't called the police and had reluctantly let them go.
Liao Mei was becoming increasingly excessive, trying to infiltrate every detail of his life without leaving him any personal space.
In a few more days, once the collaboration with his father's side ended, he would make sure Liao Mei behaved herself completely in front of him.
Feeling guilty, Liao Mei fell silent.
Chang Yu then looked at Zhang Yao beside her, whom he was meeting for the first time. She had accepted the betrothal gifts from Liao Mei yet still dared to cuckold the Chang family. She certainly had nerve.
Noticing Chang Yu's gaze, Zhang Yao's fair, delicate face flushed faintly, and she lowered her head shyly.
"Don't blame Mother. My parents thought our families should meet before the wedding."
Chang Yu sneered. He had spent the day dealing with work that had piled up over the weekend and hadn't had time to bring out the surveillance footage.
He called his assistant to bring over the USB drive.
As they waited, Xiaotu gestured restlessly in his arms. His two front paws were clearly making a very earnest X.
-This cheating fiancée of yours has more up her sleeve!
Yan Junye still remembered Zhang Yao accompanying Liao Mei to the consulting room not long ago.
While Liao Mei was inside, Zhang Yao had stood in a corner, furtively responding to plans from the person on the other end of the phone.
At the time, he hadn't realized that Liao Mei was Chang Yu's mother, or that the woman who had shaken his worldview was Chang Yu's fiancée.
-Barring any surprises, Zhang Yao was after the Chang family's assets from the start. She's probably come prepared to engineer a one-night stand tonight, then use the baby in her belly to force you to marry her.
Naturally, the child wasn't Chang Yu's. It was probably the other man's on the phone.
Yan Junye hadn't paid much attention at the time.
He had heard colleagues at the company gossip that Liao Mei's son, Chang Yu, was young and accomplished.
Instead of joining his father's company, he had started his own and built it into a large, strong business.
It wasn't hard to see that Chang Yu wanted to break free of his family of origin completely, nor was it hard to see that he wasn't a brainless idiot. On the contrary, he had ideas of his own.
With modern technology, a DNA test could easily establish whose child it was.
Even if they married and the child was born, the law wouldn't protect a woman who lied. Zhang Yao would still lose her reputation.
If Chang Yu was smart, he would probably keep an eye on this woman at all times to make sure she didn't miscarry.
But Zhang Yao had planned everything flawlessly from the beginning.
-After the wedding, before the baby is born, Zhang Yao will publicize that she's a poor wife trapped in marriage to a gay man, and that the emotional distress caused her miscarriage.
-She'll ruin the Chang family's reputation, win everyone's sympathy, and get a huge sum by suing for divorce. Three birds with one stone. What a brilliant scheme.
Chang Yu hadn't known that so many people knew he was gay.
He stroked Xiaotu's pleasantly soft head and smiled at the people before him, each harboring their own ulterior motives. "See you tonight."
The dog in his arms began struggling violently again. Only after the three had gone some distance did he say quietly, "Relax. I'm not planning to find you a mistress yet."
Only then did Yan Junye settle down.
-At least you still have a brain.
-But I'm not worried about a mistress. I'm just worried you'll go broke before I find my next home.
He hadn't expected that even as a dog, lying flat would be so difficult.
Chang Yu put away the USB drive himself, then handed both lunch and Xiaotu over to his assistant.
He also instructed, "Look into that man just now. His name is Gu Hongzhuo."
He had no idea what connection Gu Hongzhuo had with Xiaotu.
Could they be business rivals, and he resented the therapy dog for stealing his clients?
Surely he couldn't be that deranged?
After giving his instructions, he went back inside to continue the meeting. The employees who had been enjoying the show were already back in their seats.
They just kept sneaking glances at their boss.
For no other reason than that his shirt, which had been perfectly smooth without a single wrinkle, now looked somewhat disheveled.
More importantly, his previously clean black suit was now covered in conspicuous golden and white dog hairs.
Chang Yu could only wait until the meeting ended to change.
Yan Junye obediently followed the assistant away.
They never disclosed clients' private information, but as an insider, he had heard that Liao Mei had gone mad because she couldn't accept that her son was gay.
That included the man who had been in contact with Chang Yu before; Liao Mei had ruthlessly severed their connection.
No wonder Chang Yu had such a bad temper.
Every day, he faced a family member who claimed to act for his own good, and who had fallen ill because of him, forcing him to do things he disliked.
Over time, those feelings of repression and guilt would drown a person sooner or later.
Yan Junye, who was gay himself, swished his tail. Perhaps Liao Mei would never know, even on her deathbed, that she had personally picked out a gay golden retriever for her son.
He was brought to the lounge again. Liao Mei and Gu Hongzhuo hadn't left yet and were sitting downstairs talking.
Gu Hongzhuo glanced at his phone and walked to a corner to take a call.
After making sure he hadn't been recognized, Yan Junye sat a short distance away, ears pricked, eavesdropping on whatever Gu Hongzhuo was discussing so furtively.
Fortunately, a dog's hearing was sensitive enough that he could hear clearly even from a distance.
"You're sure Yan Junye isn't dead, right? As long as he's still hanging on by a thread, it doesn't matter if he's in a vegetative state."
Gu Hongzhuo kept scanning his surroundings warily and lowered his voice. "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing. The doctor said a second operation would be very risky."
"I bribed the doctor not to perform the operation that might save his life, and to take the conservative surgical approach instead."
He had consulted the doctor about the lifesaving operation at the time. There was a thirty percent chance he would wake up and a seventy percent chance he would die on the operating table.
That meant a very high likelihood of dying within forty-eight hours.
And he needed Yan Junye to hold on for the full forty-eight hours.
Once forty-eight hours had passed, he wouldn't have to pay compensation for a workplace injury.
As for the outcome of the conservative operation, naturally, it would leave him neither dead nor truly alive, in a vegetative state.
Yan Junye's tail was no longer wagging. It was pounding furiously against the floor.
A large dog's tail was powerful, and it struck the floor with repeated thuds.