Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Black-Gold Business Card

Madam Ji’s voice cut cleanly through the murmur of the banquet hall. “Luo Yu. Come over here and apologize to Miss Qiao.”

No one moved. No one breathed too loudly.

Su Luo Yu’s aunt wasn’t just any elder. Su Zi Chan had once taken the entertainment world by storm, a Best Actress born into the Si family who’d still carved her own path without hiding behind her surname. At the peak of her career, she’d met Ji Chang An—and then, to everyone’s surprise, stepped away from the screen to return home, to stand beside her husband and raise their children.

People who didn’t know better might mistake her quiet life for softness.

They would be wrong.

Su Luo Yu bit down on her lower lip and lifted a wronged, pleading look toward Madam Ji, trying to coax out a hint of indulgence.

Madam Ji didn’t even blink.

“Luo Yu,” she said again, the same calm, the same pressure, “it doesn’t matter if your eyes are bad. But you must not forget what your last name is.”

Su Luo Yu’s stomach turned cold. She lowered her gaze, gathered her skirt in her hands, and stepped forward like someone walking to the gallows.

“I’m sorry, Senior Qiao,” she said, voice tight. “My eyesight was poor. I saw wrong.”

She forced the next words out, each one scraping. “I hope Senior Qiao won’t hold it against me.”

A sharp sound cracked through the air.

Snap.

The Black-Gold Business Card split cleanly in two.

For a heartbeat, the entire room froze—stunned faces, open mouths, eyes locked on the two broken pieces that landed on the floor like fallen authority. Even Madam Ji’s expression shifted, the smallest flicker of surprise crossing her gaze before it smoothed away.

Su Luo Yu stared at the fragments and felt something feral clawing at her chest.

She had known from the beginning that the Black-Gold Business Card was real. It was custom-made. Nobody could truly forge it.

She’d called it fake because she couldn’t stand the thought of Qiao Qing Yan feeling smug. Afterward, she’d planned to find a way to get the card into her own hands.

But now—

Now it lay in pieces.

The confusion around them thickened. Madam Ji had already confirmed the card was real, so why would Qiao Qing Yan break it in front of everyone? Did she not understand its value?

Behind Madam Ji, an assistant stepped forward, his voice strained. “Miss Qiao, this is—”

He was the same assistant who’d been at Ji Chang An’s side earlier, the same one who’d personally taken the card out and placed it into Ji Chang An’s hand, the same one who had watched Ji Chang An pass it to Qiao Qing Yan.

No one in the room knew better than he did whether it was real.

Qiao Qing Yan answered lightly, almost lazily, as if he’d asked about the weather. “Oh. My hand slipped.”

She looked down at the broken card without a change in expression. “I forgot it was real.”

Her gaze lifted, hollow and distant, as if the entire scene were beneath her attention. “Everyone said it was fake, so I believed it.”

For a moment, even Madam Ji didn’t know what to say.

That silence was all Su Luo Yu needed.

The rage she’d been swallowing burst up like a firestorm. “Senior Qiao,” she said, voice sharp with accusation, “even if you don’t like me, you didn’t have to destroy something from the Ji family!”

Her hands clenched at her sides. “Do you know what it costs to make a card like that? The manufacturing and materials alone cost more than you’ll earn in your whole life!”

Qiao Qing Yan lifted a hand and adjusted the white jade bangle at her wrist, the motion unhurried. Then she raised her eyes to Madam Ji.

“Madam Ji,” she asked calmly, “may I ask—after the Ji family gives something away, does it still belong to the Ji family?”

Madam Ji’s expression tightened, just slightly. She understood immediately what Qiao Qing Yan was doing.

“If the Ji family gives something away,” Madam Ji said, choosing her words with care, “then naturally it no longer belongs to the Ji family.”

Qiao Qing Yan’s lips curved, faint and unreadable. “Oh.”

She tilted her head, as if genuinely surprised. “I thought that even after the Ji family gave something away, it still belonged to the Ji family.”

The room went dead silent.

Everyone heard it. Everyone understood it.

With a few soft sentences, Qiao Qing Yan had slapped Su Luo Yu across the face—and Madam Ji had been the one holding her wrist.

After that, anyone with half a brain stopped looking at Qiao Qing Yan as some insignificant little celebrity. Someone who could receive a Black-Gold Business Card personally gifted by Mr. Ji had never been ordinary.

And anyone who’d been led astray, even for a moment, suddenly felt the sting of their own foolishness.