Chapter 31: The Simp Bites Back

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Of course, the lawyer did not mean to tell Bai Jing and Wang Shanshan to give up.

He was telling them that, given the current state of Wang Yifu’s case, they should stop placing their hopes in the lawyer. In a case with such conclusive evidence, there was only so much a lawyer could do.

What they needed to do now was obtain a letter of forgiveness from the victim’s family.

In their present circumstances, such a letter would be far more useful than hiring a good lawyer. As long as they obtained the victim’s family’s forgiveness, Wang Yifu definitely would not be sentenced to death.

But if they failed to obtain it, then judging by Wang Yifu’s conduct in the case, there was a very real possibility that he would be sentenced to death.

Unfortunately, a letter of forgiveness from the victim’s family was not easy to secure.

The victim’s family had already come to the police station, so the lawyer had taken the opportunity to make some inquiries. From what he had learned, the victim’s parents were not short of money.

In other words, Yellow Hair’s family was quite wealthy, and he was their only son.

Under those circumstances, obtaining a letter of forgiveness from his parents would require at least three to five million yuan.

If they offered less, his parents might refuse even to negotiate. They would rather receive nothing and make Wang Yifu pay with his life for their son’s death.

And that was precisely what happened.

With Bai Jing and Wang Shanshan’s consent, the lawyer obtained the victim’s parents’ contact information from the police station and contacted them on their behalf.

The answer was unequivocal: three and a half million. If they were short by even a single yuan, they could forget about receiving the family’s forgiveness.

When Bai Jing and Wang Shanshan heard the figure, they were both plunged into despair.

Three and a half million!

Even if they sold themselves, they could never scrape together that much!

Forget three and a half million—even one and a half million was beyond their means.

For starters, Wang Shanshan’s family home was an eighty-square-meter two-bedroom apartment. At the market price in Xia County, a small county town, it was worth no more than five hundred thousand yuan.

Apart from that, her family had savings of roughly two hundred and fifty thousand yuan.

Adding everything together, they could raise at most eight hundred thousand.

They were still nowhere near three and a half million!

“Mom, please go and borrow it. If you can’t, Dad is going to die.”

Inside the private room of the café, after seeing the lawyer off, Wang Shanshan looked at Bai Jing through tear-filled eyes.

At that moment, she was experiencing the helplessness and pain of having no money more deeply than ever.

If they could produce three and a half million, Wang Yifu could live.

If they could not, Wang Yifu would die.

There was no doubt that Wang Shanshan wanted Wang Yifu to live. He was, after all, the father who had loved and cared for her for eighteen years. But she truly had no way to come up with three and a half million.

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What were they supposed to do?

There was only one option: borrow it.

Faced with Wang Shanshan’s choked, almost pleading voice, Bai Jing’s brows drew tightly together.

She suddenly felt that her daughter was unbelievably thoughtless, utterly incapable of putting herself in anyone else’s shoes.

Even after counting every last asset, the family could raise only eight hundred thousand. They were still short by a full two million seven hundred thousand.

Where was she supposed to borrow that kind of money?

And on what grounds could she borrow it?

The lawyer had said that even if they obtained the victim’s family’s forgiveness, Wang Yifu would most likely still receive a life sentence.

That meant Wang Yifu would be in no position to help her repay the two million seven hundred thousand. She would have to shoulder the debt herself.

Two million seven hundred thousand!

If she truly took on such a debt, she might as well forget about doing anything else for the rest of her life. She would be lucky if she managed to repay it before she died.

So was her own daughter brainless, or simply an idiot?

Did she really intend to push her mother into a pit of fire?

If Bai Jing had not known that her daughter was heartbroken, she would have cursed her outright.

Just then, Cao Kun, who was sitting across from them, spoke.

“Shanshan, calm down. You can’t hold Aunt Bai hostage like this.”

Wang Shanshan froze.

She was holding her own mother hostage?

When had that happened?

But when Bai Jing heard Cao Kun’s words, her heart tightened and her eyes immediately filled with tears.

At last, someone understood her.

“Cao Kun, what do you mean? How am I holding my mother hostage?”

Clearly, Wang Shanshan had not realized that she was morally blackmailing her own mother.

No—she was using their family bond to blackmail her.

She was exploiting the love between mother and daughter to force Bai Jing to do something she did not want to do.

“You’re holding your mother hostage right now,” Cao Kun said bluntly. “Shanshan, all you can think about is making Aunt Bai borrow the money. But have you ever thought about the fact that borrowed money has to be repaid?”

“Have you ever thought about how it would be repaid, or who would repay it?”

Wang Shanshan opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Cao Kun continued, “You clearly never considered repaying it yourself. If you had, you wouldn’t talk about borrowing the money as though it were so simple.”

“You need to understand that this is a massive debt of two million seven hundred thousand. Have you thought about how Aunt Bai is supposed to live the rest of her life if she has to carry that burden?”

“I’ll be blunt: once she takes on this debt, Aunt Bai will spend the rest of her life repaying it.”

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“So you cannot drag Aunt Bai into an abyss simply to achieve your own goal. She raised you to adulthood. You owe her gratitude; she owes you nothing.”

“If you want to repay Uncle Wang for raising you and keep him from dying, that’s fine. I can completely understand. He is your father, after all.”

“But Aunt Bai should not be the one to borrow this money. You should borrow it yourself, and you should be the one to shoulder the debt of two million seven hundred thousand.”

“Because you are the one who owes Uncle Wang for raising you—not Aunt Bai.”

Cao Kun’s words left Wang Shanshan flushed with embarrassment and staring at him in stunned disbelief.

For a moment, she even wondered whether the Cao Kun standing before her was still her devoted lapdog.

How could he speak to her like that in front of her mother?

He actually wanted her to shoulder a debt of two million seven hundred thousand?

That was two million seven hundred thousand—not two hundred and seventy!

She was only eighteen. If she took on a colossal debt like that, her entire life would be ruined.

Damn it!

What had happened to Cao Kun? How had this lapdog suddenly turned around and bitten her?

Could it be that she had not been giving him enough encouragement lately?

That had to be it.

He had been running himself ragged for the past two days, arranging this and handling that, giving so much of himself, while she had offered him no decent reward. Naturally, he was dissatisfied.

Honestly, what was wrong with him? Couldn’t he see how difficult things were for her right now? And yet he was still throwing a tantrum like a spoiled dog.

Forget it. She would find an opportunity to reward him properly once.

He was only a lapdog, but for the moment, she truly could not do without him.

In the brief span of a moment, countless thoughts flashed through Wang Shanshan’s mind.

Beside her, Bai Jing’s eyes were wet as she repeatedly dabbed at them with a tissue.

She was crying partly because Cao Kun had spoken the thoughts in her heart.

But more than that, she was moved.

Today, for the first time, she had experienced what it felt like to be protected.

Her idiotic daughter wanted to push her into a pit of fire, while Cao Kun had shielded her with his powerful arms and then kicked that foolish girl away.

It was difficult for any woman not to feel drawn to a man who protected her like that—not to develop feelings for him.

If the circumstances had been more suitable, she would have wanted to get him into a car at once and press the accelerator all the way down.

For the words Cao Kun had spoken in her defense today alone, he deserved at least a hundred nights with her.