Chapter 89: Without Her, It’s My Turn Now, Sister

Su Qinghan’s breath stopped for a moment.

Her father’s voice continued.

“I’m canceling all your credit cards, your supplementary cards, your savings accounts—all your sources of funding will be frozen. You’ll have to find a way to cover these losses yourself. When you’ve filled the hole of over a hundred million, then you can come back and talk to me.”

“Dad.”

“Also, the apartment you’re living in is under my name. You’ll pay next month’s rent yourself.”

The phone hung up.

The busy tone came from the receiver, beep beep beep, beep beep beep, sound by sound, like something slowly collapsing.

Su Qinghan held her phone, sitting motionless in the driver’s seat.

Outside the car window, the city’s nightscape was still dazzling. The distant skyscrapers were dotted with dense lights, like an inverted starry sky against the heavens. On the nearby streets, pedestrians were still walking, in twos and threes, laughing and chatting, creating two entirely different worlds from this black car parked on the roadside.

Su Qinghan suddenly felt a chill throughout her body.

That cold didn’t seep in from the surface of her skin; it radiated outward from the crevices of her bones. It was like tens of thousands of ice needles stabbing into her blood vessels at once, slowly draining the warmth from her blood, leaving a numb, rigid cold that rendered her immobile.

She lowered her head and looked at her hands. Those hands were fair, slender, and well-maintained, with clear nail polish on her fingernails, faintly gleaming under the dashboard light.

These hands had never worried about money. Never. In her world, money was just a number, something she never needed to consider. From childhood to adulthood, she got whatever she wanted and bought whatever she wanted.

But now, her father had told her it was all gone. Credit cards were stopped, accounts frozen, even the apartment she lived in would require her to pay rent.

‘How is she supposed to maintain her relationship with Jiang Muyun?’

Jiang Muyun’s words from earlier still echoed in her ears. “You just said you’d give me whatever I want, right?” She had said “Yes,” and “Money isn’t a problem.”

‘But what if money really is a problem? What if she has no money? Would Jiang Muyun still look at her like that? Would she still say “Let’s be together after graduation”?’

Su Qinghan didn’t dare think about it.

She leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

‘Who did this? Why did that agency make a mistake? How was the hidden clause added to that contract? Was it negligence, or was someone pulling strings behind the scenes?’

She didn’t know. All she knew was that her entire life, her pride, and her confidence were built on the foundation of her family’s wealth. She was Su Qinghan, the young miss of the Su family, the heiress of the Su Group. These titles gave her everything: respect, admiration, adoration, and Jiang Muyun.

‘If all of that is gone… who is she?’

Su Qinghan opened her eyes and stared at the blurred night outside the windshield in the dark cabin.

‘No.’ She was born with a spirit that refused to lose. From childhood, she, Su Qinghan, had never bowed to anyone or accepted defeat in anything. When she was young learning horse riding, she fell off the horse seven times, and each time she gritted her teeth and climbed back on. On the eighth try, she rode better than everyone else. When she learned skiing, she broke her collarbone and spent a month at home in a cast. The day after the cast was removed, she was back on the slopes.

‘I refuse to believe I’ll lose to this.’

Since her father cut off her financial resources, she would earn it herself. Start from scratch, build from nothing. She had knowledge, ability, and connections. She could use those to make money, to fill that gap, to prove to her father that she, Su Qinghan, was not someone who was nothing without her family. She believed she would always have a chance to turn this situation around.

But before that, she needed to borrow some money first. At least to pay next month’s rent and maintain her daily life.

Su Qinghan picked up her phone, opened her contacts, and found the person she trusted most among those dense names.

Dai Feng.

She tapped into the chat interface and typed a line.

[Su Qinghan: Dai Feng, are you free? I want to talk to you about something.]

After sending it, she placed the phone back on the passenger seat and restarted the car. The engine roared, and the car slowly drove into the night.

This secret must not be revealed. No one could know that the Su family’s young miss now had no money at all; no one could see her embarrassment. She had to maintain that composed, dignified, and unapproachable image, at least in front of others, at least for now.

Su Qinghan gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road ahead. The headlights illuminated a small patch of darkness, but more darkness still lay ahead waiting for her.

—

The bathroom was filled with dense steam.

Bai Yan’er closed her eyes, reclining against the edge of the bathtub, her entire body immersed in the warm water.

The bathtub was large, large enough for two people to lie in at the same time. She had specially ordered it from Italy, made of pure white marble, smooth like a stone polished by a thousand years of flowing water. A layer of fine, dense foam floated on the water’s surface, as soft as clouds, obscuring the body beneath. The air was filled with a mixture of sea salt and lavender, crisp with a hint of sweetness.

Bai Yan’er’s hair was loosely pinned up with a dark blue shark clip, with a few strands escaping from the clip and clinging wetly to her slender neck.

Her phone was placed on a waterproof stand by the edge of the bathtub, the screen still bright, the call already ended.

That call was from her personal assistant. The assistant had reported in great detail, with a trained calmness, going over everything that had happened tonight.

The contract for the Binjiang New City project had gone wrong, causing the Su Group to lose nearly 150 million.

Actually, this incident wasn’t entirely Su Qinghan’s fault. The reason Su Qinghan ended up in such a miserable state was because Bai Yan’er had spent two months getting a thorough understanding of Su Qinghan’s weaknesses.

Su Qinghan’s greatest weakness was trust—she trusted her team and trusted the process. For the Binjiang New City project, Su Qinghan had outsourced the negotiation to a consulting firm. Bai Yan’er bribed a project manager from that firm, hiding a clause extremely unfavorable to the Su Group in the contract while showing Su Qinghan a clean version.

Su Qinghan hadn’t checked the contract herself. She was too busy, too used to delegating things to others.

As for the legal department, Bai Yan’er had already found out that a deputy director was going through a divorce and was short on money. She didn’t directly bribe him; she just made sure he “happened” to overlook the hidden clause during the initial review. She didn’t need him to deliberately make a mistake—she just needed him to be insufficiently careful.

The contract was signed, the clause activated, and the Su Group lost 150 million. Su Qinghan’s father, in a rage, canceled her cards and froze her accounts. Throughout the entire process, not a single thread could be traced back to Bai Yan’er.

Everything was proceeding according to Bai Yan’er’s plan.

She extended her right hand and lightly brushed the foam on the water’s surface with the back of her hand. The milky white foam parted at her movement, revealing the clear water beneath, then quickly surged back from all directions, covering the surface again.

Bai Yan’er let out a long breath. The breath condensed into a white mist in the steam, rising into the air and disappearing into the shadow of the ceiling.

“You’re even easier to handle than I imagined, Miss Su.” She said quietly.

Su Qinghan was, to put it bluntly, a spoiled young miss who relied on money for everything. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she got whatever she wanted. Money had never been a problem she needed to consider; it was something as natural as air.

When people like her had money, they were full of confidence, carrying an innate sense of superiority wherever they went, making others feel that she was born to stand at the top, born to be admired.

But what happens when the money runs out? When those credit cards are stopped, accounts frozen, and she has to pay her own rent every month? What kind of expression will Su Qinghan show?

‘Will it be panic? Or forced composure? Will she cry and beg her father on the phone? Or will she grit her teeth and stubbornly maintain that lofty facade?’

Bai Yan’er really wanted to know.

But no matter how Su Qinghan reacted, one thing was certain. That woman’s most important support had been destroyed by her.

“So now, that woman has no means left to attract Elder Sister…” Bai Yan’er said softly.

She raised her hand and watched the drops of water fall from her fingertips back into the bathtub.

“It’s about time you came over to my side, isn’t it? Elder Sister.”

She smiled.