Chapter 3

“If she’s so good at mingling with guys, why hasn’t she moved out yet?”

That was what I couldn’t figure out either. She had a rich second-generation boyfriend and my dad; renting a place outside would be a piece of cake.

“It’s because she has bloodsucking parents and a deadbeat younger brother. Back in freshman or sophomore year, some old guy named Luo gave her an apartment, and her parents took the whole thing. She was throwing tantrums in the dorm every single day.”

Cui Miao continued to drag me into her endless chatter, but I used the excuse of being new and needing to handle paperwork at the logistics office to escape the room.

A year ago, I was still attending college in the US. The card my dad gave me had no limit, and I’d always used it to pay tuition, until one day it was suddenly frozen.

Thinking something had happened back home, I contacted Assistant Sun overnight. “Uncle, my card was suddenly frozen and I don’t know why. Could you look into it?”

“They stopped your card? The boss recently hired a new assistant, and she handles all his personal affairs now. Let me go ask her why.”

The shock in Assistant Sun’s voice didn’t seem fake. A new assistant? Personal affairs?

Was she even in charge of my dad’s personal bank cards? Trusting my intuition, I asked, “Is it a girl?”

“Yeah, the boss thinks young girls are more meticulous.”

Great, a young girl at that.

During that conversation with Assistant Sun, fraught with hidden meanings, I gathered the latest intel on my dad.

That night, a large sum was transferred to my personal savings account; it was my dad sending money for my tuition.

Turned out the young girl thought no one was using the card, so she canceled it.

I laughed out of sheer anger and immediately called my naive, sweet-tempered mother. She was leisurely playing mahjong, and her tone revealed her disdain for my making a fuss out of nothing.

“Listen to me, what kind of waves can a little girl make? You’re just making a mountain out of a molehill. If the card is frozen, just get it unfrozen. Your dad won’t shortchange you anyway.”

My dad wouldn’t shortchange me? He was still dreaming of having a son at fifty.

My mom was unreliable, so I had to ask friends back home to investigate. Sure enough, two properties under my dad’s name had already found their way into that little girl’s pockets.

That little girl’s name was Qu Fang.