32 2.15

Feng Mian rang Li Haoran's number. On the third attempt, it finally connected.

"Where are you?" There was a sound of loud music and people talking loudly in the background from Li Haoran's end. Li Haoran had to close his other ear to hear his older cousin's voice.

"Cousin? I'm at Club X across the-" The phone call ended with a beep. Feng Mian slid her phone in her pocket, grabbed his coat and moved to wake the sleeping Hao Junli up.

Roughly around 15 minutes later, a white BMW car was parked in front of Club X. Li Haoran's phone rang once again.

"Come out, I'm outside the club." Before Li Haoran could get a word in, Feng Mian had once again prematurely ended the phone call.

Li Haoran looked at his phone in discontent. His cousin was such a party pooper.

Feng Mian waited for a good five minutes before Li Haoran got into the backseat and the car drove off to old man Li's house.

Li Haoran tapped Feng Mian on the shoulder. "Hey cuz, do we have to go back to the house? Can't we just spend the night out at a hotel or something? Grandpa is gonna chew me out when we get back, I can feel it in my bones."

"Your bones should have warned you not to go partying out so late. Grandpa was worried and asked me to come pick you up. You deal with him yourself."

At the mention of his grandpa, Li Haoran slapped the two palms of his hands together as he begged Feng Mian. "Put in a good word for me ah cousin, I promise that this will be the last time."

Feng Mian snickered. "For a branch manager, you sure have a lot of free time on your hands."

Li Haoran playfully shook Feng Mian's shoulder. "Coussinnn~".

Seeing that Feng Mian was unmoved by persuasion, he smartly changed targets to Hao Junli.

"Cousin-in-law~ help me ah~ Persuade grandpa to let it go this once. Grandpa likes you a lot, he'll surely listen to you."

Hao Junli reacted the same way he would react when one of his classmates begged him to them copy his homework- with a cold shoulder. Feng Mian became annoyed by Li Haoran's constant begging and decided to concede.

"Alright, alright, just shut up. I'll say something to grandpa. But only this once."

Li Haoran broke out into a wide grin. "Cousin is the best!"

By the time they got home, old man Li was already asleep. Li Haoran tip-toed his way up the stairs and into his room.

As they expected, early next morning on the breakfast table, Li Haoran got an earful.

Feng Mian and Hao Junli walked into the scene of grandpa Li beating his younger grandson with his walking stick. Feng Mian had seldom seen old man Li needing to walk with his stick, and he was actually fine walking without it. She suspected that the stick was meant to beat others with.

Li Haoran looked imploringly at the two people coming in, his eyes blinking SOS signals at them. Old man Li had also noticed the incoming pair.

"Look at this unrepenting brat! If your cousin hadn't come to pick you up, you'll probably be coming home next New Year, right?!" He gave Li Haoran another smack.

Feng Mian and Li Haoran took a seat without minding the scene.

"I think his work at the branch as head manager was too easy for him, so he had too much time on his hands," Feng Mian spoke.

Old man Li gave up on lecturing Li Haoran anymore, and also walked over to sit at the dining table. His eyes narrowed into crinkled slits.

"Xiaofeng… you are saying…"

"Let him work for my company. There's an empty marketing manager position and with me there, I can watch over him." Feng Mian said without missing a beat.

Old man Li tapped by the proposition. Li Haoran swung his restless gaze, his eyes stopping at Feng Mian to assess whether she was serious or joking.

Old man Li's racked his brains, considering Feng Mian's suggestion carefully. Maybe having that boy Li Haoran under Xiaofeng's wing was not such a bad idea?

After thinking long and hard, old man Li expressed his agreement. "Okay. But if this Haoran brat causes troubles for you, don't be reserved and punish him well. This old man won't say anything about it."

Li Haoran who was silent gave a sulky pout. "Grandpa is so bias. Cousin will definitely not lay a hand on me, right, cousin Xiaofeng?"

Feng Mian smiled lightly without answering and sipped her tea. Her purpose in hiring Li Haoran was to put him under her eyes.

***

Feng Mian strutted over to the second male lead's company with Secretary Hong following suit two steps behind. Zhang Wei's staff greeted her in front of the company's entrance in two neat rows, all bowing in synchronization as she walked past them. This welcoming ritual was unnecessarily ostentatious.

At the foot of the lobby, Zhang Wei stood handsomely straight and as the other male figure approached him, he extended a firm, polite handshake. Feng Mian put on her most charming smile and walked shoulder to shoulder as she was led to the conference room on the fifth floor.

Two copies of the merger contract were placed on both sides of the long table and as Feng Mian flipped over the contract, page by page- her hand paused on the last paragraph. An additional clause had been to the original agreement.

Her hard angled eyebrows arched as she lifted her hooded eyes to look at Zhang Wei.

"What's this?"

Zhang Wei's face showed no panic and his posture remained relaxed as he explained, "It's a preventive measure for my company. A merger should be fair after all, I want half of the new board executives' seat from my side."

"You're renegotiating terms with me?" Feng Mian leaned slightly into the table, her expression unreadable.

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife. On the side, even Secretary Hong's face changed after realising that they may be inviting a tiger into their den.

"CEO Li, you proposed a merger, not an acquisition. This is my condition which is fair to both you and me. I don't think requesting my executives a place on the table is too big of a demand."

To Feng Mian's ears, this excused sounded too rehearsed.

Her fingers drummed on the table thoughtfully. "Adding on conditions at the very last minute is in poor faith, Director Zhang."

Zhang Wei had not brought this matter up before they finalised the contract.

"We will be future partners, trust is part of the equation. Right now would be a good place to start."

Feng Mian's throat let out a snort of laughter. "You're asking me to stick my neck out for someone who could potentially backstab me? I don't think you're hearing yourself. For starters, doing this behind my back doesn't exactly put you in the loyalty square either."

Both the company's representatives stared down at each other as they exuded intense vibes to pressure the other into submitting. Zhang Wei looked away first and swiftly signed his part of the contract in one stroke.

He slid his copy over from across the table non too civilly. "That's a take it or leave it. If you don't agree then this deal is invalid."

Zhang Wei rose from his chair, swerving around the desk to reach the glass door.

"Gang Chao, Li Wei, Fai Weizhe, Han Dong." Feng Mian swivelled in her chair to look at the starstruck Zhang Wei who was rooted by the door.

"Do you reckon if I do a background check on these executives, every one of them would show a record of purchasing stocks in the last ten days? The funny thing is, ten per cent of my company's stocks had also been bought out by anonymous buyers."

Zhang Wei's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed roughly.

Feng Mian continued talking. "And they think that they were so smart, using their cousin's, second cousin's, nephews, or any distant relatives from whichever part of god's green earth they dug out to fool me into thinking that these were random buyers."

The person in the room with the clear upper hand crossed her legs at a glacial pace. "Do you think I was born yesterday?"

Zhang Wei's slippery hand loosened its hold on the door's handle. Backtracking his steps, he sat down on his former seat, a bit more pliantly this time.

His chivalrous facade was cracking. "How do you know?"

"I trust a person about as far as I can throw them, Director Zhang."

Zhang Wei was smart enough to know that with all his cards laid bare in front of the opponent, he was on the losing end. "What do you want, CEO Li?"

Feng Mian let the air in the room stall in pregnant silence until she saw Zhang Wei's onset of nervous jitters running through his fidgety stature. "You're running on very thin ice, Zhang Wei. Now that you've pulled this stunt, our initial deal is off the table. Forget that two hundred million compensation, now you're going to pay me double that amount. Not just that, I want your affidavit saying that none of your filthy executives is going anywhere near my board. Understood?"

Zhang Wei's white-rimmed knuckled clenched in humiliation and he fought to keep his composure. "Understood, CEO Li," he said through gritted teeth.

Feng Mian threw her copy of the contract above him, letting the pieces of unbound papers scatter erratically from the air. "If you put shit in writing for me to read, you better f***ing hope I'm blind. And you pull something like this again, I won't mind levering a hostile takeover instead of a merger."

Her pair of feet dauntlessly walked out of the room without looking back at the red-faced Zhang Wei.

Secretary Hong speed-walked to keep up with his boss' long Adonis legs. Once he was sure they were out of earshot, he asked her eagerly, "CEO Li, how did you know that they were buying our company's shares?"

"I didn't know, but you don't add on conditions in agreements without letting the other party know first. It means you're either setting up a pit for them or you have something to hide. I put two and two together, but it was Zhang Wei who confirmed my suspicions."

Secretary Hong looked admiration for his boss leapt up by ten folds. With such good foresight, no wonder he was able to make it this far in life. Feng Mian, in truth, had law school to thank for her accurate foresight in contract matters.

Feng Mian had not managed to reach the lobby's revolving door before her chest was bumped into. She looked downwards.

Yu Yan?

Why is it the female lead again?

The female lead looked up, eyes widening in surprise after she saw that she had bumped into her company's CEO.

"CEO Li? What are you doing here?"

Feng Mian frowned. "What am I doing here? I have business. What are you doing here?"

Yu Yan's limbs lost their coordination altogether as she stammeringly pulls herself upright, stepping two feet away from Feng Mian in a set of skittish movements. She rambled on incoherently, "Ah- ah- I… I'm meeting a friend. Yeah, a friend. Soon. Actually, I'm a bit late now- see you later CEO Li!"

Feng Mian watched the female lead speedily walking away like a robber on the run with sceptical eyes. 'How suspicious!'