Mrs Fox Heinous Revenge: Can You Love A Villainess like Me?
Chapter 215: The Winner Takes It All

Chapter 215: The Winner Takes It All

Mrs. Hua Valentine had just stepped into her office when she noticed a familiar figure standing outside the door. A cigarette dangled between his fingers, its ashes carelessly falling into the potted plant she had placed there to brighten the otherwise gloomy air.

Upon seeing her brother’s face, Valentine’s lips curled slightly, not in amusement, but in something closer to resigned familiarity. She rarely allowed emotion to touch her features, a habit she had long perfected to shield those she loved from their mother’s madness. It was a habit that never failed to irritate her younger brother, the golden child of their family.

"There you are!" Mr. Hua IngRan called out, clapping his hands together in exaggerated applause.

Valentine’s gaze flicked over to the staff. Their faces had turned pale the moment they spotted IngRan. Though most of them clenched their teeth and forced their attention back to their work, a few couldn’t hide their disgust, slipping away from the office for an impromptu break rather than endure his presence.

Of course, IngRan noticed none of this. He had never been required to. Unlike her, he had been born with a golden spoon in his mouth, coddled endlessly by their mother and allowed to remain blissfully ignorant of the weight of his actions. He had never needed to learn how to read a room, or care about it.

What he also failed to realize was that every single person in this office had been handpicked. Not for their skills, but for their hatred. Each one carried a quiet, burning resentment toward Elder Hua and his favored son. Each one had suffered at their hands. And each one was waiting, watching like an eager prey and he was nothing but a mouse in a cheese trap.

This was what IngRan had yet to understand.

"You seem to be... searching for me?" Valentine eyed him up and down while crossing her arms, enough to set IngRan’s mood to sour. "Oh come on, relax brother. I’m happy to see you, I am just curious why you would be here considering how you have told me you despise the tense air here."

"Well I do hate it and it would have been nice to see you somewhere else but mother hadn’t allowed you to make any more appearances in any events so I couldn’t see you," IngRan didn’t want to mention the fact that Valentine had also not reply to his calls, ignoring it deliberately. It had vexed him and he wanted to confront her about it but to yell this in front of everyone and made the whole world know that he was being ignored by his lesser sister was worse than his annoyance.

"I see, well what is it?"

Valentine could already tell what his brother had came from but pretended not to know about it smoothly. The first reaction that spilled from IngRan was flustered. He was flustered on the spot, not knowing what to say or do and then bite down his lips in a brief sense of frustration. He snapped his head to the side, and muttered with a frown, "Let us speak about this inside your office."

"But-"

"Tsk just come in," he burst the door and invited himself inside, annoyed and more on edge than before. Valentine shrugged her shoulders and came in. She placed her bag on the chair and sat down while she watched IngRan taking her chair and sitting down as if he had the whole building under his palms. "Have you heard about the new project that Li Corporation have advanced?"

Valentine shook her head but remained relaxed, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the armrest of her chair. "Hmm, I did hear that the eldest son of the Li family has begun making changes inside the company. The shareholders aren’t too happy about it, though. They wanted someone else to take his position."

IngRan scoffed, leaning back against the desk like he owned the space. "That’s because Li ZiChen is crazy." He tapped the side of his head with two fingers. "Have you heard about him beating a child senseless?"

"I did," Valentine admitted, voice even. "But I also heard it was because that child had hurt his younger brother first."

IngRan rolled his eyes. "Hey, why are you protecting his good name? Everyone knows that was just an excuse the Li family came up with so they wouldn’t lose their reputation. The therapist diagnosed him when he was seven. Extreme OCD. Antisocial personality disorder. PTSD. The whole package." He smirked. "The way people talk about him, haha, he’s just a broken, pretty doll, held together with pretty thread of lies."

Valentine’s fingers stilled. Her eyes, half lidded in thought, gave nothing away, but inwardly, she weighed IngRan’s words.

Li ZiChen was troubled. That was undeniable. A young man riddled with scars mental and physical and shackled by expectations. He was not perfect. But then again, who was? Who ever was when they’re put in this Hell hole?

At least he didn’t wear his madness like a crown, parading it for the world to see. Unlike some... unlike her mother who parade her authority and madness for hurting others as if it was her trophy.

No. Next to the Hua family, Li ZiChen was almost normal. Flawed, yes. Wounded, more certainly yes. But he had not let himself break down completely. He had not turned on those who stood by him and he had learned to love, something which she had almost lost the ability to do if not for her current husband.

She wished she could say the same for the person sitting across from her.

Her lips curled, not quite a smile. Hard to guess that we’re even family at this point.

"You’re awfully invested in Li ZiChen’s story," she mused, tilting her head. "Jealous?"

IngRan’s expression twisted. "Jealous? Of a man who should be locked away? Please." He scoffed, shaking his head. "It’s just entertaining, watching someone so obviously damaged try to hold an empire together. It’s like watching a porcelain doll balance on a sword’s edge."

Valentine exhaled softly, tapping her fingers against the wood once more. "You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?"

His gaze snapped to hers, a flicker of something dangerous behind his eyes. But she only smiled a slow, knowing curve of her lips.

They were both porcelain dolls, weren’t they? The difference was, Li ZiChen knew how to mend his own cracks.

And IngRan?

He only knew how to shatter. More than that he’s not even a pretty doll to look at.

"Anyway, I’m sure you’re not here to simply gossip with me." Valentine shrugged, ignoring the crack in IngRan’s expression. "What is it? Why are you really here?"

IngRan straightened slightly, rolling his shoulders back as if shedding whatever momentary slip she had caught, "Well, that project. It would be bothersome if it goes on successfully. I heard he would be building a large shopping mall connected to a fancy hotel with the view directly toward the snowy mountain. It’s the piece of land that mother wants."

"You have to be more specific," she sighed as she pushed herself to stand and walked toward him. When she reached to the table, she leaned her body forward and let out a softer sigh, "What does this project have to do with mother?"

"Everything," answered IngRan, clenching his teeth as he spoke, "You see, Li ZiChen would directly be appointed as the main shareholder of Li Corporation in case he succeed. So not only will he be stealing what is ours and the Li Family once again thriving above us, but he will also be untouchable."

Valentine watched the way her brother’s fingers curled tightly into a fist, the way his voice dipped into something bitter and resentful. For all of IngRan’s arrogance, for all his spoiled nature, there was something else lurking beneath, the ugly truth that he knew he wasn’t as powerful as he pretended to be.

"And let me guess," she murmured, her tone edged with amusement, "Mother has decided this is unacceptable?"

IngRan scoffed. "Of course it’s unacceptable. You think she’ll sit back and let the Li family rise again while we, no-, she, falls into irrelevance?" His lips curled in disgust. "If Li ZiChen secures this project, the balance shifts. He’ll have more influence, more control, and then... we’ll be nothing more than footnotes in history. Considering how that young boy also despise us, it won’t be an exaggeration for him to make his goal by destroying the Hua Family."

"Mother has always despised him," Valentine chuckled, "Is it because she knows he couldn’t be tamed? But fine, if that’s what she wants however you have to know that you’re rather asking for the moon with this request. Sure I can try buying the the land before him-"

"-Not try but you have to."

She rolled her eyes, "What about him being the next appointed head of the shareholder? Is not something just me could do as I wish. Sure he would perhaps lose this project but you forgot that he’s the eldest son of the family. Even if the other shareholders won’t acknowledge him, if he gathers his own share to with his father he would have more than 49%"

"Yes but you see, we aren’t the only one who dislike the idea of him being the next CEO of Li Corporation. His family also don’t take this idea kindly."

For a moment Valentine’s eyebrows flicker, she turned to him, "Oh I see. You have a spy inside the Li Corporation."

"Spy? That’s beneath me, Jie," he grinned after calling her sister, "I have done even better than that. They have came crawling to me for help so now we are partners with same need."

Oh so it seems everything was going to soon fall into place.