Chapter 15 - Long Xiulan
If it weren’t for Jin Liwei’s quick reflexes, the damn girl would have already bloodied and broken his nose.
His hands reacted before thinking and caught her fist. His eyes contracted, silently shocked at the power packed behind the dainty fist.
"Be good," he growled.
The damn girl, no, the damn young woman jumped off the couch the next second and moved far away from him. Her eyes looked fierce as she glared at him, looking like a tigress about to bite his head off.
He raised an eyebrow, walked around to the front of the couch where she was sitting just a second ago, and picked up the Russian book she dropped on the floor.
"I was just going to ask a question. No need for such overreaction," he said, flipping through the pages of the book. He frowned. He couldn’t read a single word.
Feeling like she really overreacted, Iris Long forced herself to calm down but didn’t let her guard down.
For some reason, she felt that the man was dangerous. He wore a sharp business suit, looking powerful and handsome.
Her heart beat faster. Huh?
Jin Liwei sat down. "Long Xiulan, can you even read this thing?"
She inhaled sharply, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. How did this damn man know Iris’ birth name?
"Who are you?" she asked, suspicious.
"Do you even know Russian?" he asked, completely ignoring her question.
historical
She frowned. "What I read or what I know is none of your business." Then she added, "Sir."
She cautiously approached him, intending to take her book back from his hands and her purse on the couch and then run far away from this suspicious man. Dom should be arriving soon.
Jin Liwei rummaged inside his briefcase and took out a folder. "Let’s see if you can read this." He pushed the folder to her.
She slapped the folder away and tried to take her book back. The damn man, however, took her poor book hostage.
"Read the folder first and tell me what it’s about. Then maybe I’ll believe that you can really read this Russian book," he told her.
He was mocking her, right? How dare he? She didn’t give a whit whether the damn man believed her or not. Besides, who was he anyway?
She considered abandoning her poor book and leaving immediately, but her eyes caught something familiar printed on his folder. She grabbed the folder and started reading.
Jin Liwei watched the damn girl—no, she looked like a young woman now—looking so serious as she read the Russian business proposal. He smirked but maintained an indifferent expression on his face.
Did she really think that she could impress people by pretending to know Russian?
He already investigated everything about her. She started working in showbiz from a young age, barely attending school. If not for her father’s influence, she wouldn’t even graduate from senior high school. Her grades weren’t impressive either.
So unless she secretly studied on her own, which he seriously doubted, he wouldn’t believe that she knew any foreign languages aside from English, much less Russian.
He was also inside the restaurant earlier attending a business lunch with fellow investors. Like everyone else, he turned his attention to the young woman singing and playing the piano.
He thought that she looked familiar, later realizing that she was Long Xiulan, or more known by her stage name Iris Long―the damn girl he ordered to be monitored.
Reports about her kept on mentioning how she acted very differently to how she was before the accident, but it was only now that he understood when he saw her with his own eyes. However, he didn’t believe that someone could change just like that. The damn girl must be acting.
Like her, he was also waiting in the lobby for his assistant to pick him up. He wouldn’t even bother speaking to her, but he couldn’t stop himself when he saw her pretending to read a Russian book.
He just tapped her shoulder to get her attention when the damn tigress immediately went into attack mode.
"You’re Jin Liwei of Jin Corporation?" she finally talked after reading for a few minutes. "You plan on partnering with Galaktika?"
A trace of surprise appeared in his eyes. Galaktika was the Russian trading company who prepared the business proposal, wanting to partner with his company to enter the Chinese market. The business proposal was written completely in Russian, so how did this damn girl know?
He couldn’t even read it and had to read the Chinese translation. Could she actually read Russian? Her next words surprised him even more.
"I don’t think it’s a good idea to partner with Galaktika. If you’re really interested in partnering with Russian companies, there are a lot of other better choices. Galaktika’s higher-ups are involved with an international prostitution ring, human trafficking, and the smuggling of weapons. Jin Corporation is the number one company in the country. I don’t think you would want to tarnish your company’s reputation by getting involved with this kind of company, do you?"
Jin Liwei looked at her deeply. His eyes showed suspicion. "How do you know all of these?"