"You want to intern at Yanhuang Group?!"
Li Yan was so shocked that his voice pitched several notches higher.
Li Qiao expressionlessly rubbed her ear. "Why are you yelling…"
Li Yan stared at her, then down at the business card in his hand. The next second, he crumpled it up, rolled down the window, and—completely disregarding any manners—tossed the pieces out onto the street. "No way. Don't even think about it. I don't approve."
"Oh," Li Qiao replied coolly, clearly not taking his objection seriously at all.
For the rest of the drive, the car sped through the streets while the cabin echoed with Li Yan's impassioned, almost desperate attempts to talk her out of it.
Nearly half an hour later, he was parched from all the talking. Just as the Li family gates slowly opened and lights outside flickered, Li Yan turned to look—only to find that this little brat had fallen asleep.
Li Yan, utterly defeated: "…"
A moment later, the car came to a stop, and Li Qiao slowly opened her eyes.
As the driver opened the door for her, she turned to look at the still-worried Li Yan and, with some patience, said, "Second Brother, let's make a deal."
Li Yan narrowed his eyes warily. "No. Doesn't matter what the deal is. I'm not letting you work at Yanhuang Group."
"Last month, Nan Xin found a Qi Baishi painting, Ten Miles of Frog Songs, near the border. If you don't want it, then I'll—"
"Holy crap! I want it!"
Hook, line, and sinker.
Li Qiao's lips curled faintly into a smile. "The painting's yours—on the condition that you keep my internship a secret."
Li Yan fell silent, pursing his lips in distress as if grappling with a monumental moral dilemma.
…It lasted about three seconds.
He slapped his thigh with a sigh of defeat. "Fine. But promise me, Qiao, take care of yourself. And whatever you do, don't let that idiot know who you really are."
Li Qiao agreed cheerfully. "Deal."
Li Yan sat in the car watching Li Qiao's figure disappear into the hallway, and within seconds, he was grinning like an idiot.
Damn—Ten Miles of Frog Songs! He was about to strike it rich.
That's right. The second young master of the Li family, self-proclaimed art mogul, was also a shameless money-grubber.
…
The next morning at 7:30 a.m., Li Qiao was jolted awake by her phone's buzzing ringtone.
She was still groggy, her eyes slightly red as she lazily fumbled for her phone. It was a call from Tang Yiting.
"Talk," Li Qiao answered with a soft, husky voice full of irritation and drowsy impatience.
Tang Yiting, known for her fiery temper, didn't bother with pleasantries and practically shouted through the phone, "Why are you still sleeping?! The school forum is blowing up because of you!"
Li Qiao draped an arm over her forehead, eyes half-closed, and frowned. "What now?"
The school forum blowing up over her? That was practically a weekly occurrence.
"Did you go to the Royal Hotel last night?" Tang Yiting scrolled furiously through the forum on her tablet. "Someone took a photo of you entering the hotel with a man. They're saying you're a homewrecker who seduced someone's husband and are even calling you out by name, saying you're going to pay for it!"
"Get up already! The post is so hot that the school's official academic office account had to step in to calm things down. If you don't explain soon, you might get delayed from graduating for misconduct!"
The belle of Nanyang Medical University, now accused of being a mistress—it only took one night for the scandal to tear through the university's alumni forum like a storm.
After all, gossip was the idle masses' favorite pastime.
Several seconds later, Li Qiao, eyes still heavy with sleep, slowly pulled the blanket over her face and replied with a cool, indifferent tone, "Let them talk."
Couldn't they at least make up a better story?
Since when did her second brother get married?