Qi Ruixi’s pregnancy was kept a secret for the time being.
She still commuted to the office as usual, but she began watching what she ate, and Zou Yu picked her up and dropped her off every day. When their colleagues saw Zou Yu had quit and was now escorting Qi Ruixi, nobody thought anything of it. Before he became head of security, Zou Yu had been Qi Shifeng’s personal bodyguard. It made sense that he’d become Ruixi’s private guardian now.
No one read more into it. Besides, the two of them never showed any unnecessary intimacy in public. That had been Qi Shifeng’s rule. He’d warned Ruixi: if she didn’t want the family to find out too soon, she’d better keep things discreet.
Ruixi trusted him completely, and she’d never been the sort to flaunt a romance anyway, so she complied without fuss. Zou Yu, while quietly preparing for his exams, took on the task of looking after her day-to-day needs. No one knew they were living together.
Meanwhile, Xu Tingyu and Qi Shifeng had taken Youyou to the island resort as planned. The resort was one of Qi Group’s investments and did healthy business. The happiest member of the trip was Youyou. He’d been to many places with his father—ski trips in winter, islands in summer—but he’d never been away with both parents at once. Their villa even had a private pool, and as promised, Qi Shifeng taught him to swim.
Youyou was a quick learner. In under an hour he could already swim out a good distance on his own. Watching from the shore, Xu Tingyu couldn’t help but remark after Qi Shifeng climbed out of the water, “When you taught me to swim, it wasn’t like this.”
Qi Shifeng’s face softened at the memory. “Of course not. I couldn’t teach him the same tricks I used on you.”
Xu flushed with embarrassment and mock scolding. Qi had a point: back then some ‘training’ involved unorthodox methods—closely held breath practice disguised as kisses, strokes learned away from the water, and a lot of moments that blurred into something else. It had made her learning take longer.
“You’re devious,” she said, half laughing and half exasperated. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes.
Qi Shifeng didn’t mind being called out. He grinned. “I was just being careful. The water can be dangerous; better to practice on shore first.” He said it solemnly, but the way he leaned down toward her was anything but.
On the fourth day of their beach holiday, Qi Shifeng’s phone rang. He hadn’t meant to answer—Xu and Youyou were absorbed in a picture book and ignoring him—but he picked up out of habit.
“Shifeng, is your sister hiding something from us?” Liu Ning’s voice was sharp with worry. “I found a man’s slippers at her place. Is she seeing someone?”
Since Ruixi had returned, Liu Ning had been doing her best to push her toward young, eligible men. She’d arranged a few blind dates, all of which Ruixi had declined. The pair had argued more than once over it—periods of silence lasting weeks at the worst. But Liu Ning loved her daughter fiercely; even when she pushed, it came from that worry.
Today, on a whim, she had dropped by Ruixi’s apartment to drop something off. At the entryway she’d seen a pair of men’s slippers and panicked. She’d gone through the apartment, found two toothbrushes in the bathroom—one ordinary, one electric—and opened every closet she could. She found nothing else. Still, she couldn’t shake the unease. When she called Ruixi and asked point-blank if she was dating, Ruixi denied it—then flew into a rage when she found out Liu Ning had been in her home.
“How many times must I say it? Don’t come to my place without asking,” Ruixi had snapped down the line. “I’m an adult. I have a right to privacy. If I were really seeing someone, do you think barging in unannounced like that is what I’d want?”
This was hardly the first time Ruixi had gotten angry at her mother for invading her space. Liu Ning’s care tended to smother: discarding clothes she deemed unsuitable, throwing away groceries she disliked, rifling through drawers and, once, even reading her diary. Ruixi hated it. Her reaction now was predictable—but Liu Ning remained unnerved.
That was why she’d called Qi Shifeng. “Does she have a man? I saw the slippers. You must know.”
Qi Shifeng’s voice over the line was cool and detached. “She’s not the kind to be completely unsocial. Is it so strange to have a pair of men’s slippers? People have friends, colleagues. Guests come over.”
Liu Ning’s gut told her something was off. She knew her daughter well: Ruixi would never invite colleagues home; she disliked living under the same roof with people she didn’t know. She didn’t even have a full-time housekeeper. So why the slippers?
“She won’t have strangers staying over. She wouldn’t prepare men’s slippers for guests she barely knows,” Liu Ning pressed. “You haven’t even been to her place, have you? Is there something you’re not telling me? You two are suddenly on the same page about not arranging matches—did you help her dodge it?”
There was a hard edge to her next barb. “You know, Ruixi wouldn’t be so defiant before—she learned that from your ex-wife, didn’t she?”