The Masterful Trickery

"Is Evan here?" Della Jiang asked the attendant standing at the club entrance as soon as she stepped out of the car.

She was dressed in a simple white dress, every inch of her elegant and beautiful. She looked nervous, but beneath her anxious expression there was a healthy, rosy glow to her flawless complexion. Her large, doe-like eyes, misty with tears, sparkled with mesmerizing intensity. She looked as though she had walked right out of a painting, but the effect was somewhat ruined by her messy bangs, which had clumped together from the sweat on her forehead.

The club attendant was so taken by her natural beauty he gaped at her for a few moments. He had seen many gorgeous women working at the club, but all of them had achieved the effect with layers of thick makeup. Della Jiang's beauty, on the other hand, was the real deal.

"Mr. Evan is in the private room at the end of the hall." The attendant clapped his hands over his mouth when he realized what he had done. It was club policy to protect the privacy of their guests, but he had forgotten all about it in the face of the angelic beauty before him.

As soon as Della Jiang heard that Evan Xiao was inside, she stepped past the attendant and hurried into the club without a second thought.

"I think that's Mr. Xiao's wife!" another attendant blurted out as he watched Della Jiang disappear behind the door.

The two attendants broke into a cold sweat. Was Evan Xiao's wife here to catch him in the act of cheating on her?

Inside the club, Della Jiang entered the private room and began to weave her way through the guests milling about inside. Everyone stopped to stare at her, but she didn't care. "Evan! Evan, where are you?"

Evan Xiao was seated in a corner. He saw Della Jiang stumble among the crowd, shouting desperately for him like a drowning woman. His expression hardened into a chilly frown as he took in her disheveled hair and frantic shouting. Her undignified behavior was embarrassing him.

Della Jiang spotted him. She squeezed past the other guests to reach him, and held out her hand.

"Evan, why didn't you pick up the phone? I've been trying to call you all day. Grandpa's sick again. We have to go to the hospital, right away." Evan Xiao slapped her hand away.

"Della, you're unbelievable. How shameless can you get? I only married you because you said that Grandpa was seriously ill. You forced me into the marriage. And now you're back to cry wolf again? I won't fall for the same sob story twice. What is it this time? What do you want from me?" Evan sneered Xiao. "Are you trying to trick me into sleeping with you? You want to have babies with me, is that it? Well, you can forget it. You'll never have my children. Never."

Della Jiang stared at him, stunned. It took her a minute to finally spot the attractive red-haired woman sitting on his lap.

"Ooh, I'd like to have your children. Can I?" Lana Luo purred seductively as she wrapped her arms around him.

Evan Xiao smirked. He lifted her chin and said, "You're more than welcome to try."

His icy expression seemed to soften as an uncharacteristic glimmer of warmth crept into his cold eyes. Della Jiang realized with a bitter pang that she had never seen her husband look at her that way.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she pleaded to her husband, "Evan, please..."

"Don't call me Evan. It makes me sick," Evan cut her off impatiently as he fixed her with an icy glare.

Della Jiang shrank back. The warmth had fled from his expression. His dark, contemptuous eyes seemed to pierce her as his sharp, angular features settled into his usual disdainful frown. For a brief moment, she was struck by a strange, terrifying thought: perhaps the man before her was made of ice and stone. That would explain why she had never succeeded in any of her attempts to warm his icy heart.

"Evan... Evan, please..." Evan Xiao merely glared at her. His frown deepened, and Della Jiang suddenly realized that she had used his name again, despite his warning. She dropped her gaze and continued meekly, "Let's go to the hospital to see Grandpa. That's all I ask. Grandpa is seriously ill this time. The doctor said that Grandpa may not be able to make it through the night."

The memory of Evan's grandpa lying on the hospital bed with tubes of every kind attached to his frail body sprang unbidden into her mind. She began to cry again.

Evan Xiao's suspicions faded at the sight of her tears. He had nothing but contempt for his wife, but she looked and sounded so sincere he found it difficult to believe that she was lying. He got up to leave, but Lana Luo stopped him with a gentle tug on his shirt.

He narrowed his eyes at her, but Lana Luo merely winked at him, undaunted. She turned to Della Jiang and said, "I know that I don't have the right to stop Mr. Xiao from leaving to attend to family matters. Still, I can't help but feel that this is unfair to the rest of us. He just arrived, and now he's going to leave without having had a single drink. People will say that he is so bored with our company he jumps at the first opportunity to get away."

"That's right. How do we know his grandpa is actually sick? Maybe you're lying," someone chimed in.

"Maybe Mr. Xiao's hen-pecked, and he's just looking for an excuse to leave," another young man said with a snicker.

"That's hilarious!" The whole room erupted into laughter.

Evan Xiao's face darkened. He knew that Lana Luo was trying to embarrass Della Jiang, but he couldn't intervene without making it look like he was afraid of his wife.

His friends were rowdy and rude, but they were also excessively thin-skinned. Evan Xiao wasn't afraid of any of them, but he knew that it wasn't a good idea to offend all of them at the same time. He decided he would say nothing, and take this as an opportunity to see whether Della Jiang was telling the truth.