The Little Spoiled Brat Divorces with a Child, Driving the Big Boss Crazy - Chapter 85
Chapter 85
Jin Beizhou did not react.
His phone chimed twice. He glanced at it idly, as though the words “Young Master” from Chen Qi’s mouth could not compare in importance to a single message.
“Excuse me.” Jin Beizhou stood. “I have a class to attend, so I’ll be leaving first.”
The marital psychology class he had booked was today. It would begin in half an hour, and his assistant had just sent him a reminder.
Chen Qi rose with him. “Then after your class, we can…” continue our conversation.
Jin Beizhou slung his jacket over one shoulder and said in his usual irreverent tone, “We’ll see.”
Chen Qi sighed helplessly.
The class was held on the fifth floor of a psychological clinic, which happened to be beside the pet market. When Jin Beizhou drove over, he instinctively glanced toward the market several times.
He remembered that Lu Ying had bought Feibao there.
When he reached the reception desk, he inexplicably asked, “Which therapist did my wife book?”
The receptionist looked confused. “Who is your wife?”
Jin Beizhou pronounced her name. “Lu Ying.”
Suspecting nothing, the receptionist checked the computer. “Oh, Miss Lu booked an appointment with Dr. Wang.”
The moment she finished speaking, Jin Beizhou’s heart plunged to the bottom of the sea.
He had only been fishing for information because he had never stopped wondering why Lu Ying had suddenly come to the pet market that day.
She had said she was going to Yan Xia’s home for soufflé, then appeared at the pet market a moment later. The timing did not make sense.
Two things had made him suspect that Lu Ying had come to the psychological clinic. First, the timing fit. Second, there was something Lu Ying had once said.
That time when she had accompanied Chen Qi to a banquet, Jin Beizhou had pestered her.
At the end of her patience, Lu Ying had said, “That’s something you need to work through on your own.”
The phrase “work through” had sounded distinctly therapeutic, as though she had encountered it in specialized books or learned it from someone in the field.
Now that the receptionist had confirmed his suspicion, Jin Beizhou’s legs felt filled with lead. He could not take a single step.
Lu Ying had been ill.
Otherwise, she would never have come here.
When she fell ill, she had chosen to face it alone. She had hidden it flawlessly, terrified that he might learn the truth.
Jin Beizhou had clearly noticed that something was wrong with her emotions. He had simply assumed that her period was approaching and had made her temper worse, and that all he needed to do was coax her patiently.
He had never considered that she might be ill.
The receptionist looked at him in confusion. “Mr. Jin? Mr. Jin, you can go in now.”
Jin Beizhou froze.
He did not think he needed to speak with an expert anymore. He did not need someone else to help him identify the problem.
He already knew exactly where it lay.
In his blind arrogance and neglect.
He had been certain that Lu Ying loved him and certain that she would never leave him. Because of that, he had ignored her emotions and her emotional needs.
After her grandfather passed away, Lu Ying had not needed material comforts. There had been a void inside her, and the pillar that supported her was gone. Yet Jin Beizhou, her husband in name, had failed to take his place at her side.
Being lonely beside someone was more terrifying than being lonely alone.
No wonder she had stubbornly insisted that Feibao belonged to her alone, and that the baby did too.
She wanted to be someone’s one and only choice.
She had been searching for something to keep her afloat, struggling to turn anything outside herself into a lifeline. She needed a reason to keep going.
When he chose to help Jin Meimei, from Lu Ying’s perspective, she was the one being abandoned.
Every small matter Jin Beizhou had considered insignificant amounted to pushing Lu Ying away again and again, until he had driven her to the edge of a cliff.
Divorce and departure had been her way of saving herself.
What she wanted was his honesty and communication, his embrace and care reserved for her alone. She did not want his gifts, his weightless apologies, his empty companionship, or the things he self-righteously did “for her own good.”
Jin Beizhou suddenly understood what she had meant when she said:
I don’t have to accept something just because you want to give it to me.
He had given her the wrong things. Nothing he offered had ever been what she truly wanted.
After leaving the psychological clinic, Jin Beizhou did not return to the office. In truth, he wanted more than anything to go to Caotang.
But Lu Ying had forbidden him from going.
Jin Beizhou sat on the steps across from the clinic, allowing his handmade, tailored trousers to brush against the dust.
The sunlight was fierce. Holding a cigarette between the fingers of his left hand, he felt homeless for the first time.
He was the one who truly had no one left.
It was all retribution.
When Lu Ying had been alone, he had failed to give her the devotion she needed. Now she no longer wanted him, and it was his turn to taste what she had endured.
An emotion he could neither name nor explain threatened to crush him. With the unlit cigarette between his lips, Jin Beizhou dialed a number like a robot.
She answered.
“Lu Yingying.” In a corner where no one could see him, Jin Beizhou’s eyes were damp, but his voice carried a smile. “Your prenatal checkup is tomorrow.”
The other end was silent for half a second. “I know.”
Jin Beizhou simply wanted to say a few more words to her. Anything would do. It would be best if he could get her to curse him a couple of times.
He was a shameless glutton for punishment. He could only feel comfortable after she scolded him.
“What is Jin Qiuqiu doing?”
“…” Lu Ying was clearly restraining herself. “Lu Jiuyue is asleep.”
A smile cracked through Jin Beizhou’s frozen gaze. “I installed a holographic sleep-soothing…”
“Jin Beizhou.” Lu Ying abruptly called his name.
“Yes?”
“Did your mother skip every prenatal checkup when she was pregnant with you?”
“…”
“Or,” Lu Ying enunciated, “did she throw away the baby after giving birth and raise the placenta instead?”
Jin Beizhou could not hold it back. An unexpected low laugh escaped him on his end of the phone.
This little menace had gone straight for his worthless life.
Lu Ying had already hung up.
Jin Beizhou kept the phone pressed to his ear, listening to the repeated dial tone and grinning foolishly to himself.
He felt much better, just as expected.
A shadow fell across him and blocked the sunlight. Jin Beizhou narrowed his eyes and looked up.
Chen Qi met his gaze and repeated, “Young Master, it is time for you to return home.”
Jin Beizhou paused, then snapped the unlit cigarette in his palm without changing position. “Who the fuck is your Young Master? Don’t call me that.”
“Since you already know everything,” Chen Qi said, “you must also know Mr. Zhou’s background.”
His tone turned solemn. “You need to leave before news of your wife’s pregnancy reaches them. Otherwise, something like the cellar incident may happen a second time.”
Chen Qi was not threatening him. He was merely describing a fact.
Chen Qi stood while Jin Beizhou sat, yet their respective auras inexplicably conveyed a clear difference in rank.
Jin Beizhou gave a cold snort. “You certainly care about your brother.”
“Keeping him locked up is pointless,” Chen Qi said. “He was only following orders.”
Jin Beizhou scoffed. “Whose orders?”
“Mr. Zhou’s, of course.”
Jin Beizhou raised his eyelids. “You really don’t understand your brother.”
“…”
“When he kidnapped my wife, he wasn’t doing it for your precious Mr. Zhou,” Jin Beizhou drawled. “He did it for his childhood friend.”
Chen Qi looked startled. “A childhood friend? Someone from the orphanage?”
“After your adoptive parents took you away, a married couple adopted him too,” Jin Beizhou explained unhurriedly. “That couple had a daughter. A few years later, they died in an epidemic. Their daughter was adopted by the Jin Family, while your brother was left homeless and disappeared without a trace.”
Chen Qi thought for a moment. The pieces connected, and shock crossed his face. “Jin Meimei?”
