novelbin Chapter 186: Even the Heart is Rotten
Chapter 186: Even the Heart is Rotten
She really didn’t like Cao Jiajia, but she didn’t truly hate her either.
To her, Jiajia was just a passerby whose name she knew.
But to Cao Jiajia’s ears, those words were like a needle that pierced her last bit of self-control.
She had only been sniffling, but upon hearing this, her entire body suddenly trembled.
Her breathing grew ragged, and her chest heaved violently.
She dug her hands into the carpet, her fingertips sinking in deep.
She covered her face and collapsed onto the floor, sobbing her heart out.
Her cries were sharp, punctuated by intermittent, choked sobs.
A slight commotion came from the next table. Someone shifted their chair, while others began to whisper amongst themselves.
This outburst left her seniors completely stunned.
The two of them exchanged a look, their brows furrowing even deeper.
They hadn’t expected things to escalate like this.
"Oh no... this is bad. She’s not going to try and blame this on you, is she?"
They were worried Shanshan would be dragged into unnecessary trouble, since the situation had clearly gotten out of hand.
"She won’t."
Shanshan shook her head, her tone firm. "We lived together for a while as kids, but I hated her and she couldn’t stand me. We’re just two strangers who happen to know each other’s names."
As she spoke, her gaze remained fixed on Cao Jiajia, without avoidance or pity.
She knew she had made herself clear enough. Whatever reaction followed was not her responsibility.
Seeing they were still worried, Shanshan added quietly,
"How about... we move tables?"
Her suggestion was calm and practical.
Her senior scanned their surroundings, his gaze sweeping over a corner of the restaurant.
He noticed that several well-dressed young people at a nearby table were staring at them.
Their gazes were anything but friendly.
Just then, Cao Jiajia suddenly lifted her face.
She gritted her teeth, her lips trembling, her eyes shot with blood.
"Ling Xueshan, you have no idea how much I hate you! Why did you get to be raised in the palm of someone’s hand by such good people, while I had to suffer day in and day out with that bastard? Do you have any idea how I’ve survived these past ten-plus years? No one cared about me, no one looked after me. Cao Daqiang changed women on the outside faster than he changed clothes, having son after son. I don’t even know how many there are now!"
"He’s out there living it up, surrounded by people, with a whole new flock of wives and kids. But what about my mom and me? We were just thrown aside at home, like two expired pieces of scrap paper that no one would spare a glance for."
"What about your mom? Didn’t she always dote on you? I remember she treated you like the most precious thing in the world. How could she let you end up like this?"
Shanshan frowned, a little baffled.
Logically, Liu Yingzi had placed high hopes on Cao Jiajia back then; there was no way she would have let her fall into such a state.
At every gathering, she would see Liu Yingzi personally put food on Cao Jiajia’s plate, reminding her not to eat anything too spicy and not to stay up late.
That level of care, so meticulous it was almost excessive, now seemed like a hallucination in hindsight.
"Hahaha... The most precious thing?"
Cao Jiajia suddenly let out a strange laugh, her voice dry and grating.
She grabbed the half-full glass of alcohol left on the table and downed it in one gulp, choking and coughing uncontrollably.
"Heh, so what if I’m her own daughter? They all said I was finished, that medicine couldn’t save me and my heart was rotten to the core, so they just washed their hands of me. I don’t have a single cent to my name right now. I even have to scrounge for other people’s leftovers to eat. Did you know that?"
As she spoke, her gaze was unfocused, one moment on the ceiling, the next locked tightly onto Shanshan.
Shanshan stood her ground, quietly watching her cry and scream about the unfairness of fate, snot and tears streaming down her face, but felt not a single ripple of emotion in her heart.
In the end, her seniors had to drag her to a different spot, and she didn’t look back at Cao Jiajia even once.
Thankfully, the bar had rules, which kept Cao Jiajia from making a major scene on the spot.
After they moved to a quiet private room, the atmosphere became lively again.
Everyone started chatting about the shows they were currently filming and the new "little fresh meat" popping up in the industry, and soon they were all laughing together.
Someone suggested playing Truth or Dare, but Shanshan declined with a smile.
After a flurry of suggestions from her seniors, she finally picked out a gift for Ling Anxun’s thirty-ninth birthday.
It was a hand-polished fountain pen with a subtle pattern engraved on the cap, almost invisible unless you looked closely.
She said that Ling Anxun enjoyed writing, and especially loved to use a pen to make notes while reviewing documents, so this one would be perfect for him.
Ling Anxun’s birthday this year was a quiet, lonely affair, so low-key that almost no one mentioned it.
When he left in the morning, the driver wished him a "Happy Birthday" as usual, but he just nodded without responding.
His office was piled high with documents as always, and the cake his assistant brought sat untouched on the coffee table until evening.
Everyone in the family could see his mood soured on this particular day, so no one dared to poke the bear. They just had a simple family dinner to go through the motions and get it over with.
The dining table was set with a few home-cooked dishes. There were no candles, no birthday song—only mechanical well-wishes and polite small talk.
Each person presented their gift, said a few words of blessing, and the ritual was considered over.
Old Mrs. Ling gave him a custom-made cashmere shawl, and Ling Zhiwei shoved a crudely wrapped box at him, saying it was a vintage lighter he’d picked up at an antique market.
When it was Shanshan’s turn, she gently pushed the gift box containing the fountain pen toward him.
But even so, they couldn’t get through the meal peacefully.
Halfway through the meal, Ling Anxun suddenly received a call from his superiors. He got up, went into the study, and didn’t emerge for a long time.
The voice on the other end of the line was stern and urgent. After listening, he replied with just one word: "Understood."
Shanshan winked at Ling Zhiwei. The two of them were instantly on the same page, and they tiptoed to the study door.
The floorboards were slightly cool, and the seams between the wooden planks creaked faintly.
They held their breath, trying their best not to make a sound with their footsteps.
The two of them pressed against the crack of the door, squatting down to listen like children trying to steal candy.
"...informant planted for several years... Rest assured, I will definitely... Understood!"
The voice from inside the room was intermittent and incomplete; each word seemed to float out as if it had been snipped to pieces.
The brother and sister exchanged a look, and Shanshan quietly pushed the door open a tiny crack.
This time, it was much clearer.
It turned out the investigation into the mole had hit a snag, and a superior was calling to press for progress.
Ling Anxun stood before the window with his back to the door, a document in his hand and his brows tightly knitted.
The two of them were listening intently, holding their breath, when the door was suddenly yanked open with a RATTLE. They tumbled right in, falling into a heap.
Ling Zhiwei reacted the fastest. He shot up and bolted, disappearing in the blink of an eye.
His leather shoes made a rapid TAP-TAP-TAP on the hallway floor before the sound faded around the corner of the stairs.
Shanshan scratched her head and looked at him with a sheepish grin.
"Uh, Dad, if you run into a dead end with the investigation, I can lend a hand, you know."
"No need. You stay out of this, you hear me?"
Over the years, Ling Anxun had received no small amount of secret help from Shanshan.
On the surface, he pretended not to know anything, but deep down, he was well aware of how much she did for him behind the scenes.
Through every crisis, she had been silently clearing obstacles for him.
Every time he asked, she would casually say it was nothing, but he understood that if anything ever truly happened to her, he wouldn’t even have a chance to fix it.
Although the current situation was tense, it hadn’t reached a dead end yet.
He was unwilling to drag her into this again, especially not like this.
They weren’t at the end of their rope this time; he didn’t want to pull her into it.