Chapter 450 - Bitter Coffee
Chu Lui bent his body towards Li Manni and grabbed her chin hard. All he had seen in the past was her gentle face and kind nature. This was the wife he had chosen for himself. In order for her to be able to marry him, he dealt a deadly blow to another woman.
This was the wife he had doted on for the past four years, and this was how she had treated him.
“Li Manni, tell me. Is the baby in your stomach mine?” Chu Lui’s hand rested on Li Manni’s stomach. His cold fingertips were cold devoid of any body temperature. It shook Li Manni’s heart, and she felt pain in her stomach. She almost thought this man was going to shove his hand straight into her stomach.
Her face became pale in an instant as she stared at the gloomy-faced man before her. Her hands and feet went numb. Did he know something?
No. No way. He couldn’t have. There was no way he could have known about that.
Chu Lui gripped Li Manni’s chin harder with his hand, and her face went ashen. At the same time, her heart was thumping with anxiety as unease began to well inside her. She could also feel that his hand was sucking all the heat from her body.
“Ah Lui…” Song Wan wanted to go to him, but Chu Jiang pulled her back. He shook his head at her. This was their son’s personal matter. It would be best if they didn’t interfere or question him. He would resolve it in his own way.
Chu Lui’s face was emotionless. He simply stared at Li Manni with indifference in his eyes. There were no feelings, emotions, or love. Not even sympathy. Her evasion meant she was afraid that he would see her through. After all, he was Chu Lui. If he didn’t possess even a tiny bit of observation, he wouldn’t be worthy of the Chu family name. Neither would he be worthy of running such a big company like Chu Enterprise. He knew the conclusion, but he still wasn’t able to accept it when he saw the confirmation in Li Manni’s eyes.
“Tell me, Li Manni. Is it?” Chu Lui’s voice became softer and softer. A gust of wind blew at them bringing along the frigid and piercing cold from the frosty snow.
It took Li Manni a long time to find her voice. “Lui, are you trying to treat me like how you did to Xia Ruoxin four years ago? You can smear my character and doubt my loyalty. However, you can’t doubt the identity of our baby.”
As Li Manni said, two rolls of tears fell from her eyes down her ashen face. Finally, they landed on the back of Chu Lui’s hand.
Chu Lui merely sneered. Such beauty in those tears. In the past, he had been blinded by this woman. He thought he was a smart man, but in reality, he was the stupidest man who had been played by this woman.
He was such a failure to live his life in vain.
“You tell me.” Li Manni was determined to deny it to the till. “Natural medicine will tell you if the baby inside me is yours.” Li Manni was dead set on betting on this fifty-percent chance.
She said it before. It could be Mi Dongfeng’s, or it could be Chu Lui’s. If she didn’t hold on to this chance, she would fall into without any possibility of redeeming herself right here before this man.
“You want to know why?” Chu Lui suddenly laughed. It was an icy and terrifying laugh. He walked to the cabinet at the side, opened it, and took out a document. Then, he came back and shoved it into Li Manni’s face.
“Do you want to take a look at what you have done to me?
“Do you want to see why I’m so confident that the baby in you is not mine?
“Do you also wish to see why I am not allowing you any leeway? Li Manni, no two may keep counsel putting one away in this world. As long as you have done it, someone will find out the truth one day.”
With her shaking hands, Li Manni flipped through the document. Her expression became more dramatic as she read. Before she could finish reading, there was a loud slap. Her hands were grabbing at her hair. This wasn’t possible. How could it be? Didn’t he say that this was medicine for nerve suppression? He said this wasn’t poison. Even if it really was—with modern medicine being so developed, how could it eliminate a man’s fertility?
However, that was the way it was supposed to be. Mi Dongfeng had really done it. He had obtained the medicine from somewhere, used a woman’s unwillingness to reconcile with her fate, and a man’s trust for his plan to succeed. It had been four years since Chu Lui had consumed the medicine. Why wasn’t it detected during his body checkups all these years? To put it simply, the medicine wasn’t easy to detect. As long as the man was not checking on his fertility, no one would have thought of it.
It was stated clearly in the report. Within the first year of consuming this medicine, it would greatly affect a man’s fertility. After two years, that man would lose his ability to get a woman pregnant. Chu Lui had been taking it for the past four years. There was no way he could have conceived a child with any woman.
Song Wan was feeling sorrowful at the sight of the report. Her body wavered, and she fell on the floor.
Du Jingtang was stunned. He quickly moved and carried Song Wan onto the sofa. He shoved everything that was on the sofa onto the floor to make space for Song Wan. He almost landed a kick at Li Manni who was occupying most of it.
“Auntie. Auntie, how are you feeling?” He kept patting his hand on Song Wan’s cheek. She opened her eyes and felt her hand on that document. There were no tears in her eyes, although she was sad. She gave Du Jingtang everything she was holding
Then, she laid her hands over her face and covered her eyes. That was a feeling of despair and heartache.
Du Jingtang was stunned. He stood up and read the report page by page. His expression became worse as he read. Suddenly, he had the urge to destroy that report.
He finished the last page.
Finally, he understood. He truly understood why his cousin had changed overnight and not bothered about what was happening to the Li family’s company. Chu Lui’s tolerance was indeed high. If it had happened to Du Jingtang, he would rather risk everything and bear the murder charges so as to kill Li Manni, that vicious woman.
Wait. He recalled something.
“Cousin, did you realize something wrong with your coffee?” he suddenly asked. Li Manni froze at his question. A look of panic flashed across her eyes. Du Jingtang registered everything about her. Naturally, so did Chu Lui.
“The coffee she made is always too bitter.” Chu Lui put stress on each word as he replied. He was staring intently at Li Manni’s face. Until now, he was still in disbelief. The one who had made him like this was the same person who had been sleeping beside him for the past four years. The same person who had fed him the medicine so easily without his knowledge.
“That’s right.” Du Jingtang stepped forward. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. She had put something in your coffee. It happened more than once. She said it was cocoa powder. At that time, I was puzzled. How can your taste bud be so strange to love that kind of thing? So, that was not cocoa powder, but poison.”