The Lost Lamb's Trap - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Stars

The car drove farther and farther away, and the scene felt very much like a farewell.

Lin Ke’s body felt hot, and her heart was trembling slightly.

The project at Ta Shan was urgent. The R&D team was already waiting at the airport and had called Lin Ke several times. Lin Ke gripped her phone. The female colleague who borrowed her car was in the driver’s seat. “Director, I’ll take you there first.”

Lin Ke got into the car. The female colleague, afraid she was in a hurry, quickly set up the navigation. After driving for a while, Lin Ke said, “Turn a corner and head towards Nanjin Lin Yuan.”

Nanjin Lin Yuan was a wealthy villa area. It was a place for the rich. The female colleague, suppressing her surprise, drove there.

Lin Ke showed her face, and no one stopped them at the gate.

Chen Ziqing suspected that she was chasing after Duan Jiayang.

When they arrived, she looked up.

A white, Western-style villa stood there. Two graceful figures were on the balcony. Moonlight fell quietly. One was wearing a form-fitting camisole with long pants. Although she looked cool and sexy, she couldn’t hide her gentleness. Her hands were in her pockets, and the evening breeze revealed a smile in her eyes. The other was wearing a brown bodycon skirt. She was tall and slender. The two of them always spoke with a hint of quiet arrogance and self-indulgence, not annoyingly, but with a certain nobility. The night was soft and sprawling, the tree branches intertwined and crisscrossed. This scene was like a quiet summer painting sealed in a frame, rich in color.

Their car stopped by a tree. Dense leaves covered the car. Unnamed insects chirped one after another. Chen Ziqing looked at the person in the back seat through the rearview mirror. Her face was expressionless. She was hidden in the darkness.

It was getting late. The female colleague had borrowed the car and planned to go home early and bring it back to the company for her tomorrow. Time passed little by little. Just watching the two people on the balcony was awkward, but she was also driven by gossip. Lin was so angry, was she going to go up and argue? Would the three of them get into a fight?

Lin Ke took out her phone in the back seat. She had many messages. She told R&D to go ahead and that she would catch the red-eye flight, and she would reply tomorrow.

Upstairs, Duan Jiayang and Lan Yao had finished their chat. They had just sensed the uninvited guest below and were struggling to maintain the conversation. Lan Yao suggested they go out and have fun the day after tomorrow. Duan Litian and Lan Yao’s dad had planned to go fishing and later changed the plan to deep-sea fishing. Lan Yao seized the opportunity to take her along. The seaside was in another province, quite a distance from here.

Lan Yao took a book from Duan Jiayang’s bookshelf, the one Duan Jiayang had mentioned, Soseki Natsume’s I Am a Cat. Lan Yao asked curiously, “Did you find those two cats of yours… Have you read all the books on the shelf?”

“No, I just follow a book blogger on Weibo. I buy them if I like the descriptions,” Duan Jiayang said with a smile. “I’ve read all the young adult novels on the shelf, though.”

Duan Jiayang walked Lan Yao downstairs. She didn’t walk her outside the door. It was getting late. Duan Jiayang leaned against the door, arms crossed, holding her phone to her mouth, and said with a smile, “Okay, then you’re leaving pretty fast… Mm, good…”

Before she could finish the word “night,” she looked up and her eyes met Lin Ke’s.

The phone rang repeatedly in the quiet night. R&D kept urging Lin Ke. Her heart was empty and pitch black. Something had been taken from her.

The person she used to hate was now coming to steal from her again.

Work wasn’t that important to her. She had only one purpose for coming back.

Whatever she did to Duan Jiayang at this moment would only make Duan Jiayang hate her.

She should be gentle and generous like Lan Yao. That’s the only way she would seem competitive and the most suitable person for her. It seems people are always competing.

But.

If there were no more prey, what was the use of a trap?

Some prey can’t be coaxed or given sweets. You have to bite them, hook them, and capture them in a cruel and despicable way. As long as she’s alone, you have to leave your mark on her.

Duan Jiayang, do you know that one small gesture from you can make me lose all control? It makes me have to repeatedly suppress myself to extinguish the fire that rises.

The car turned around. As it drove out, it encountered a Xue Tang CEO car. The person in the car glanced at Lin Ke and honked the horn. The car window in the back seat rolled down.

Duan Litian’s face appeared. “Xiao Ke, what are you doing here? Haven’t you gone to Ta Shan yet?”

Lin Ke replied with a smile, “I’m about to leave. I saw Jiayang get into a car I didn’t recognize, so I followed her, feeling a little worried.”

“Oh.” Duan Litian urged, “You still need to hurry to Ta Shan. This project is very important.” He looked at the driver, who was probably an employee, and put on a kind expression. “Drive safe on your way back.”

Lin Ke nodded. The car drove away from the villa area. The female colleague changed the navigation destination again. After driving for more than ten minutes, they arrived at a high-end residential area.

There was still a flight to Ta Shan at midnight. Lin Ke didn’t seem to be preparing to go to the airport. Lin Ke gave the car keys to Chen Ziqing. “We’re at my place. You can drive my car back. Thank you for tonight.”

The female colleague was shocked. Director Lin’s temper was astonishingly good. She hadn’t done anything. If it were her, with that atmosphere and intimacy, she would have rushed up there and fought. The company gossip was a little different from reality.

The female colleague left. Lin Ke went back to her room. She took a shower. The water poured down her body. She closed her eyes. Her body was completely soaked.

Water washed over her neck and her face, drenching her repeatedly.

A moment later, she came out wearing a camisole dress and a towel, wiping her hair.

She called Duan Litian. He didn’t answer. She called Duan Litian’s secretary again. She said calmly, “Please tell Mr. Duan that he seems to have some misunderstandings about my work. If he thinks my current R&D is related to the Ta Shan project, I can stay in Ta Shan and not come back. If it’s not related, he can take a look at our original collaboration. I think I can resign. Your company… might be treating me like a slave who signed a contract in ancient times, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.”

With that, she hung up the phone.

She sat on a chair, and the wind blew gently.

She looked at the photos on her phone, flipping through them gently. Her finger rested on the keyboard. She never called Duan Jiayang at night.

She took a fountain pen from a locked box. When she was younger, she loved to show off. Even though a fountain pen wasn’t suitable for practice questions and the ink would stain her fingers if she wrote too much, she would always take the pen out to use it. Later, a student who was fighting in front of her accidentally bumped her desk, and the fountain pen fell and chipped. She was heartbroken and pushed the student against the wall, getting very angry.

After that, she lovingly locked the pen away.

A pen that wasn’t used for writing seemed to lose its meaning. But because she cherished it so much, it became a collection piece that was not easily shown.

Lin Ke calculated all the possibilities. Before she knew it, it was morning. She went to look at the documents from Ta Shan, put on her suit jacket, tied up her naturally dry hair, and started a video conference with her colleagues in Ta Shan.

Finally, she wrote a note on a sticky note.

“Treat her gently.”

…

At ten o’clock, Duan Litian arrived at the company. Just as he was about to ask about the progress of the Ta Shan project, the secretary relayed what Lin Ke had said yesterday, word for word. When he saw her yesterday, Lin Ke was fine, but in just two hours, her face changed instantly. She was faster at turning than he was.

Duan Litian’s face was dark. If you looked closely, you could almost see black smoke rising from him. The secretary tried to appease him. “We do need her right now. Her liquidated damages are minimal. There are many companies that would love to poach her.”

Duan Litian had made a fortune by using Lin Ke. Lin Ke took her salary, but he squeezed every bit of her talent out of her. A talent like her would be held in the palm of anyone else’s hand, being given stock options, houses, cars, and showered with bonuses. Lin Ke didn’t ask for anything. She was a free agent. She could leave whenever she wanted.

“She and her mom are playing me. I wondered why I could exploit her so much, and her mom never came to cause a scene.” Duan Litian took out a cigarette. The secretary lit it for him. Duan Litian took a hard puff. “Mother and daughter are just alike. The more they act like they don’t want anything, the more greedy they actually are.”

Lin Ke only showed one desire: she wanted Duan Jiayang.

Duan Litian had been using this to his advantage, thinking he was superior to Lin Ke. When the time was right, he would separate them. Who knew that Lin Ke would latch on and refuse to let go, staring at this piece of meat? He knew back then that Lin Ke was an untamable stray dog, and he was indifferent to her. But he forgot one thing: an untamable stray dog’s nature is hard to change. She would bite anyone who tried to steal her food.

“Where is Lin Ke?”

“I just called her. She said she has the flu and that it’s contagious. She took three days off.” The secretary said. “Do you want to go see her?”

Duan Litian got very angry. “Am I going to be held hostage by a junior? Damn it, what is this? Let that Xin-something go. Why would I go? Is she worthy of my presence?”

The secretary poured him a cup of tea and tried to soothe him again. They really did need her right now. It was fine to treat a talent with respect. Duan Litian didn’t need to go. They could let the general manager go talk to Lin Ke later. They couldn’t let her just walk away.

If not, they could give her some benefits to tie her to the company.

The logic was sound, and Duan Litian wasn’t unaware of it. But Lin Ke’s only desire was Duan Jiayang. If he pushed her too hard, she would just walk away without wanting anything.

The secretary coaxed him, “Let’s appease her first. Don’t be so anxious…”

All these words combined meant: Why did you have to provoke her?

“Don’t let her go to the Ta Shan project.”

“…Ta Shan said today that she has already taken over and had a meeting all morning.”

“What is she up to?”

Duan Jiayang had no idea about the company’s affairs. She hadn’t gone to work. The department didn’t rush her. Besides the last “hello” from the two assistants, to which she replied “hello to you too,” there hadn’t been much contact. She didn’t feel like going. She was repulsed by it. But since it was a weekday and everyone was at work, she couldn’t find anyone to hang out with. Being a bum was boring.

She stayed at home, playing on her phone. The weather forecast pushed a notification about heavy rain in Ta Shan. She refreshed the weather and cast a movie to her screen.

In the evening, she remembered she was going to the beach. She got ready and made a list of things to buy: a sundress, a short-sleeved shirt, sunscreen, and skincare products.

Duan Litian came home early. Duan Jiayang came out wearing a tank top and shorts. Duan Litian was sitting on the sofa, smoking one cigarette after another, looking melancholic. He looked up at Duan Jiayang and said, “Go back to the design department.”

Duan Jiayang thought she had gone deaf. “What are you saying? I don’t understand.” She was very unhappy. What was he treating her like, pushing her back and forth?

Did she not have any dignity?

“You don’t have to go find her. She will definitely come find you. When she does, just go with the flow. People will say she couldn’t bear to let you go. Be smart about it,” Duan Litian said.

Duan Litian exhaled a puff of smoke. For a moment, Duan Jiayang thought she saw a gray hair. Duan Jiayang looked at his cowlick. Duan Litian held the cigarette. “Duan Jiayang, why did you have to fall for her?”

Duan Jiayang bit her lip. “Can you stop talking like this all the time! What are you doing, going back and forth? I’m a person, too. You always do whatever you want. I guess I don’t have to work on the Ta Shan project anymore either?”

“Was I blind before? You don’t know what you’ve done?” Duan Litian shouted, sticking his neck out. Smoke came out of his nose, and the ashes from the cigarette butt fell off.

Duan Jiayang’s lips were tight. She didn’t say anything.

Duan Litian let out a heavy sigh and suddenly said, “Why can’t you be smart like your mom?”

“You’re bringing up my mom again!”

Duan Litian looked at her, his gaze a little melancholic, mixed with an emotion she couldn’t understand. He said, “I shouldn’t have listened to your mom back then and named you Jiayang. Jiayang, Jiayang, it sounds like someone who hasn’t seen the world, a tame sheep that lives in a pen, a sheep that wouldn’t even kick a wild dog or a wolf, a lamb to be slaughtered that can’t be taught anything.”

Duan Jiayang couldn’t tell if her dad was reminiscing about her mom or if he was calling her stupid. Her mom had given her that name. When she was little, she would lie on her mom’s lap and ask why she was named that. It had been so long that she couldn’t remember the exact reason. She just remembered her mom reciting a poem by Cangyang Gyatso: “I feared that too much love would harm my Buddhist practice, but I worried about leaving the beauty behind if I went into the mountains. How can there be a way in this world to have both, not failing the Buddha and not failing you?” She also said that in Tibetan, “Jiayang” meant wisdom.

Before her mom passed away, the poem became a few short words in her mouth: “I shouldn’t have failed the Buddha.”

“You mind your own business!” Duan Jiayang ignored her dad. She walked out in her flip-flops. The cook saw her about to leave and called out to her to eat first. She said she wouldn’t.

Duan Jiayang didn’t understand what her dad was doing. She came out of the house and called He Xiao. She felt that many things had gone out of control after that night when she was drunk. Lin Ke hadn’t done anything to her, or threatened her, or taken anything from her. It was just strange.

She hadn’t brought it up after she sobered up, and she didn’t dare to ask them about it either.

He Xiao had just gotten off work and was waiting for the subway. She replied, “You told her to get lost and go back to the United States. You kept telling her to get lost in the car, too.”

“…Nothing else?”

“And then I covered your mouth.”

What on earth did Lin Ke do?

After she went to Ta Shan, she didn’t come looking for her.

She hadn’t called her either.

Duan Jiayang’s heart sank a little. Had Lin Ke decided to go back to the United States?