Chapter 30 An Ex-Wife is Still a Wife

After hanging up the phone, Chen Ang checked the time—9:14 PM—and sat back in his car.

He had thought Yu Fei might wait a few days to dig into his background before contacting him, but he hadn't expected it to be this soon.

Counting it up, they had only parted ways twelve hours ago.

He lit a cigarette, rolled the window halfway down, shifted gears, and started driving.

Half an hour later, he arrived at Building 12 of Qiongjing Garden.

Pushing open the ajar door, he saw the living room lit by dim yellow lights. The room was filled with somewhat dated mahogany furniture, though the renovation itself was quite new.

Walking past the entryway, Chen Ang saw Yu Fei.

She was wearing a plain silk nightgown. The neckline was neither too high nor too low, revealing just a glimpse of snowy white skin. The hem of the skirt fell just past her knees, and her smooth, delicate legs were curled up on the sofa.

On the coffee table in front of the sofa sat a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

She watched Chen Ang walk in, then leaned over to pour the wine and pushed a glass toward the sofa opposite her. "Mr. Chen, please sit."

Chen Ang was surprised by the posture the woman had struck, but he wasn't worried about anything.

As he brushed past her, he smelled the lingering fragrance of her body wash, seemingly mixed with a hint of red wine's fruity aroma.

Yu Fei didn't mind Chen Ang's silence. She shifted her posture, picked up her wine glass, and leaned halfway against the sofa armrest.

From Chen Ang's angle, everything below her thighs was in full view, and her slender, rounded feet were particularly striking.

"How do you plan to handle this? When will you start?" Yu Fei took a sip of red wine, pursed her red lips, and asked.

"Using the Company to strike is just the first step. What happens next depends on whether your materials are authoritative enough."

Chen Ang replied without touching his wine glass, instead picking up the documents in the center of the coffee table.

After opening them, he found the transaction records, comparisons of actual materials, Tu Yuandong's private account numbers, and bank receipts for several falsified material payments—all clearly laid out.

Moreover, each page was organized chronologically, with key figures highlighted; it was done very meticulously.

Yu Fei drank on her own, not disturbing Chen Ang. A few minutes later, Chen Ang looked up, smiled at her, and said, "You went to a lot of trouble."

"I told you, it's not that simple, which is why I asked you how you were going to handle it just now."

"This is what I need to do. You must trust me, otherwise, you wouldn't have given these things to me."

Chen Ang dialed Yu Liang directly, turned on the speakerphone, and placed the phone on the coffee table.

The call connected: "Ang-zi, what's up?"

Chen Ang leaned in slightly: "I've obtained some evidence of tax evasion by Tu Yuandong. It's not a huge amount, starting about three years ago, roughly 1.7 million. What do you think?"

There was silence on the other end, only the sound of faint breathing. A moment later, Yu Liang spoke: "Don't move yet. For 1.7 million in taxes, if it's a first offense, the fine would be around 3.5 million. If he pays it all back, there generally won't be any criminal penalties."

"So, you have to cut off his finances first, then present this evidence. When the time comes, if he can't pay the taxes and the fines, the sentence could be up to seven years."

Chen Ang picked up the phone: "Mhm, I know what to do. I'm hanging up."

When it came to sending people to prison, Yu Liang was a professional.

Ending the call, he looked at Yu Fei, trying to see if she was satisfied with this plan.

"Who is your friend?" Yu Fei asked.

Chen Ang smiled: "He's from the relevant department. So, regarding the Road and Bridge Bureau project, you know how to reply to Tu Yuandong now, right?"

Yu Fei didn't say anything more. She only needed to know that she was about to hand Tu Yuandong a knife for his own suicide. She raised her glass and asked: "Not having a drink?"

Taking the glass, Chen Ang didn't act coy. After signaling to Yu Fei, he brought the wine to his lips.

"When he pursued me back then, half of it was to marry me, and the other half was to marry my father's address book. I only realized this after the divorce." Yu Fei's face was slightly flushed, and she looked at Chen Ang with a dazed expression.

Chen Ang leaned back into the sofa, watching her.

She was curled up on the other end of the sofa, one strap of her nightgown slipped down a little, and she didn't pull it up. The yellowish light from the crystal chandelier fell on her collarbone, casting a small, shallow shadow.

"When did you realize it? I know you used to be a rich second generation too." Seeing Chen Ang silent, she asked again.

The alcohol had already put her in a tipsy state, and combined with the reassurance Chen Ang had just given her, she was clearly becoming more talkative.

Chen Ang actually understood her; this was likely the pent-up frustration she'd been holding for a long time, longing to find a confidant to pour her heart out to.

And while he couldn't exactly be called a confidant, she felt he was a fellow sufferer who shared her plight.

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Before Chen Ang could finish, he was interrupted by Yu Fei's giggling laughter.

She stood up and walked around the coffee table.

The hem of her nightgown brushed against Chen Ang's knees, bringing a scent of body wash mixed with red wine.

She stood in front of Chen Ang for a moment, then leaned over and placed her hands on his shoulders.

"Chen Ang." Her voice was very low, a vibration in the air that only the two of them could hear. "We are the same kind of people, betrayed by the same two people."

Chen Ang didn't move, but he felt a wave of heat in his lower abdomen. He even felt that pressing this woman onto the bed and ravishing her might bring him a sense of cathartic relief.

She was leaning in very close, so close he could smell the red wine on her breath, so close that the curve of her collarbone, where the strap had slipped, filled his vision.

"Tu Yuandong's son called me 'Dad' for six years." Chen Ang tilted his head slightly, looking up at her smooth, rounded neck, and said calmly: "You don't want his daughter to call me 'Dad' too, do you?"

Yu Fei froze for a moment, then straightened up.

She wasn't angry or embarrassed; a trace of lingering amusement even remained at the corners of her mouth.

It was as if Chen Ang's answer had long been within her expectations. She wasn't disappointed, just curious about how far he would hold out.

She took half a step back, leaned against the sofa armrest, picked up her glass again, and sized Chen Ang up.

"Do you dare?"

Her snowy white teeth gently bit her lower lip, and her eyes gazed intensely at Chen Ang.

"Do you know what Tu Yuandong cares about most? It's that he thinks of himself as a man."

As Yu Fei spoke, she shifted her upper body slightly, and the strap of her nightgown slowly slid down to her arm.

Chen Ang felt his breathing becoming heavier, and his fingers gripping the sofa armrest were tensed tightly.

He had been abstinent for a long time, partly because his relationship with Wen Huilin was never harmonious, and furthermore, working like a horse every day left him with little energy to think about such things.

After his vow of celibacy was broken by Xiao Yue that night, the restless desires that Chen Ang had locked away were hard to control.

And today, the news of Director Xu Qingwan getting married and having a child had also given him a complex, indescribable sense of repression.

The woman in front of him couldn't be called breathtakingly beautiful, but her figure combined with her temperament, in an atmosphere like this, would be hard for any normal male to resist.

What's more, she was Tu Yuandong's ex-wife; this added identity triggered a twisted sense of revenge in Chen Ang.

An ex-wife, dammit, is still a wife...

He stood up abruptly, swept her into his arms, and then pressed her down onto the sofa right there.

The red wine glass in Yu Fei's hand fell onto the carpet, but neither of them cared.

Outside, the wind began to blow; inside, a fire had started.

...

...

...

After the storm calmed, Chen Ang stood up, panting heavily.

He looked back at Yu Fei, who was curled up on the sofa like a blooming begonia, still shivering uncontrollably from time to time, a sense of thorough clarity washing over his entire body.

Just as he finished putting on his clothes, the doorbell rang. Chen Ang looked through the peephole.

What a coincidence, it was President Tu.

President Tu, your former home—I've been here too.