Marry by Relying on Favor: Chapter 152 - Go Take Care of Her During Her Postpartum Confinement
Qu Bixin had never seen Shen Fu truly angry. For a long time, he had been used to disguising his real temperament in front of her. He was even too lazy to argue with her, often making her look like a clown seeking attention. So she really wanted Shen Fu to taste this kind of self-inflicted humiliation too.
After a thin layer of red surfaced in Shen Fu’s eyes, he didn’t say a single word.
He picked up the certificate from her medical abortion and laid it flat on the table. Then he went to the study to fetch his laptop and, right in front of her, began searching and interpreting the professional terminology on it line by line.
Qu Bixin’s heart tightened completely as she stared unblinkingly at his calm profile.
Expressionless, he even verified the hospital listed on the document.
After a long while, the glow of the laptop screen finally went dark.
Shen Fu’s exquisitely cold features were reflected in the black screen.
His long, pale fingers clenched the certificate tightly. If not for the veins bulging on the back of his hand and forearm, it would have been hard to detect anything unusual from his expression.
Qu Bixin knew he was suppressing his anger—most likely he hadn’t found anything wrong.
With that confidence, she deliberately said, “You don’t seriously think I forged that certificate to show you, do you? Shen Fu, you really dare to imagine.”
Oh, he dared to imagine. For the past month, he had been secretly calculating the possibility of her getting pregnant.
Since it had once been difficult for her to conceive due to blocked fallopian tubes, she had turned a blind eye to his little tricks. She had long guessed what he was thinking. A curve of contempt appeared on her pale lips. “Your family has criminal genes. Why would I give you a child?”
Shen Fu’s gaze turned deeply cold, unprecedentedly unfamiliar. Just as Qu Bixin thought he was about to explode, even the motion of putting down the laptop was slow and deliberate. He said nothing the entire time, turned, and walked out without looking back.
The master bedroom door was flung open, then gently closed.
Qu Bixin immediately threw off the covers. The sickly frailty vanished. Barefoot, she ran to the floor-to-ceiling window and hid behind the heavy curtains. Soon, she saw Shen Fu’s dark figure leaving the villa. He didn’t even drive away—just disappeared into the night.
This was completely different from what she had expected.
He hadn’t even given her a chance for a huge argument—he had simply been driven away by anger?
She stood there for a long time. The floor was freezing beneath her feet, and no one would rush over to put shoes on her anymore. When she realized that, she hurried back to the bed to find her slippers.
After putting them on, she went to the bathroom to remove her makeup. The pale face and lips quickly returned to normal color. Wiping away the water with tissues, she went downstairs. The living room lights were brightly lit, and on the dining table sat the lavish dinner and delicate desserts he had prepared.
Qu Bixin picked up her chopsticks and tasted a bite of fish. It had already gone cold. A fine bone caught in her throat as she swallowed.
Covering her mouth, she coughed lightly and poured herself a glass of cold water. Her throat felt inexplicably uncomfortable.
But she quickly ignored the feeling. Somehow, she found two cardboard boxes and packed up all of Shen Fu’s belongings in the villa, then dumped them beside the trash bin outside.
After cleaning everything out, she clapped her hands.
It was over—
The night grew darker. In a run-down residential building, a light was smashed by a beer bottle, shards of glass scattered across the floor.
When Chen Gui arrived with some late-night snacks, he almost thought he had come to the wrong place. Adjusting the glasses on his nose, it took him a while to notice the black figure sitting at the end of the corridor—so still he looked less like a person and more like an abandoned statue.
“Shen Fu?”
Chen Gui wasn’t even sure it was him and walked closer slowly.
The corridor lightbulb had been smashed, so Chen Gui used his phone as a flashlight, carefully avoiding broken bottles. He saw Shen Fu sitting there without any ripple in his gaze. His shirt and suit pants were smeared with dust from the wall. His long fingers, streaked with blood, were still gripping a beer bottle.
Emotion surged in Chen Gui’s heart. He stepped forward and said softly, “I heard you went bankrupt again. Came to check on you.”
He said he came to visit, but in truth, he was probing the situation.
Ever since he had backed the wrong side and Wen Yue fell from power, he himself had kept a low profile for quite a while. Now hearing that Shen Fu had fallen on hard times, he made discreet inquiries about his address and hurried over to rekindle old ties.
But seeing Shen Fu’s desolate state now, Chen Gui couldn’t quite grasp what had defeated him.
Had he failed at Wen Corporation?
Shen Fu was utterly indifferent and ignored him.
He took a gulp of beer. The alcohol content was low—nowhere near enough to make him drunk.
Chen Gui’s greatest strengths were his thick skin and lack of shame. Even though Shen Fu had once concealed his role as a commercial spy and caused him to stand on the wrong side with Wen Yue, he could still act as if nothing had happened. He took off his suit jacket first to avoid getting it dirty, then sat down beside him in the corridor. “Tell your brother—what trouble did you run into?”
Deep lines creased Shen Fu’s brow. Finally, he looked over.
Chen Gui drank with him and began playing the nostalgia card. “We’ve been brothers for over ten years. What can’t you say to me?”
Over ten years.
Those words reminded Shen Fu that he and Chen Gui had known each other since high school. Chen Gui had witnessed him climb from the bottom rung of society to the upper class.
“Shen Fu, do you remember when we first met?”
Chen Gui’s family ran a chain of supermarkets. He had met Shen Fu when Shen Fu worked as a temporary helper for delivery trucks, often appearing in the warehouse. What left the deepest impression was that Shen Fu was known at school as a poor student. Every noon he would buy a bottle of mineral water and expired bread from the supermarket to fill his stomach.
Chen Gui had watched how Shen Fu endured these ten-plus years—transforming from a taciturn but diligent boy into someone eloquent and adept at navigating social circles, using schemes to achieve his goals.
In Shen Fu’s eyes, everything boiled down to one word: utility.
Chen Gui used to think Shen Fu still had some principles, that life and society had merely hardened him. He believed Shen Fu would rise someday—until Shen Fu traded his looks to climb onto the branch of the Qu family’s eldest daughter. Only then did Chen Gui realize he might have underestimated Shen Fu’s ambition.
A boy from a criminal family background didn’t want ordinary wealth—he wanted a place within the elite.
Bringing up the past wasn’t meant to humiliate him.
“You’re still young. You can start over… Even if things are bad now, it’s better than back then, right?”
Shen Fu’s thin lips curved into a dark smile. “Start over?”
Qu Bixin had said she wouldn’t give a child to someone with criminal genes. Even if she got pregnant, she could abort it without telling him.
With that attitude, could he start over?
He suddenly laughed uncontrollably, leaving even Chen Gui confused.
After taking a large gulp of beer, releasing some of the heaviness in his chest, Shen Fu leaned against the whitewashed wall. A certain desolation shaped the contours of his face. His voice was hoarse beyond recognition. “I was born with the fate of an orphan…”
He had no family. Not even two years after he was born, his parents—researchers at a physics institute—jumped to their deaths.
Later, his brother killed his mentor—the man who had raised him.
Shen Fu was numb to the word “loneliness.” When he returned home in his youth, Shen Tingji couldn’t speak and often stared at him with hatred. Even so, he carefully raised her. In his eyes, besides atoning for his brother’s sins, Shen Tingji was like a stray kitten he had picked up—fragile, easily killed if mishandled.
He didn’t want Shen Tingji to die. If she died…
He would be even more alone, wandering the night like a lost ghost, with not a single light left on for him.
Shen Fu laughed to himself for a long time, a bleak loneliness surging in his chest. Aside from the beer bottle, he had nothing to hold onto.
Chen Gui said, “How could you have the fate of an orphan? Brother, are you at that age where you want to get married and start a family? I’m telling you, men shouldn’t marry too early—especially someone like you. Young, beautiful women always come last.”
Shen Fu remained cold. “Do I look like someone who wants to get married?”
The sudden question silenced Chen Gui for a moment before he laughed awkwardly. “Your views on marriage used to be more pessimistic than mine. Come to think of it, how could you possibly want to get married, hahaha.”
He stopped short of saying: You once even used marriage as a tool—how could you ever take it seriously?
He didn’t say it outright, but the implication was there.
Shen Fu stared at the dark wall, his voice so low only he could hear it. “I did want to. She doesn’t anymore.”
From now on, he would have no marriage, no family, no lover.
It had all been destined more than a decade ago. Fate could not be changed.
That night, Shen Fu drank himself into a stupor and collapsed outside his apartment door, not even going inside.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t walk—it was that, instinctively, he didn’t want to return to an empty, dark home.
Though Chen Gui didn’t know why Shen Fu looked so downcast, he guessed from the talk of orphans and marriage that it was probably about a woman. Seeing it wasn’t a career setback, he felt considerably relieved.
The next day, while Shen Fu was still drunk in the master bedroom, Chen Gui took it upon himself to contact Wen Shuchen. After introducing himself at length, he even asked for leave on Shen Fu’s behalf.
Wen Shuchen didn’t ask a single question and generously granted a month’s vacation.
Chen Gui felt that President Wen didn’t really understand Shen Fu.
For someone as cold-blooded as Shen Fu, even if he had lost in love, why would he need a whole month off? He’d be back to normal tomorrow.
Sure enough, early the next morning, while Chen Gui shamelessly continued sleeping on the living room sofa, the master bedroom door—closed for a full day and night—finally opened.
Half-awake, Chen Gui saw Shen Fu emerge in a black shirt and trousers, neat and composed. His refined face had regained its vitality, even the stubble on his jaw shaved clean. There was no trace of the previous night’s desolation.
“Y-you’re going out?”
Chen Gui shot upright, fully awake.
Shen Fu gave a low acknowledgment. Before leaving, he said: “Going to take care of her during her postpartum confinement.”
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