Chapter 1543 - 1545

Gong Ruzhi looked at An An, who was already snoring away in his arms.

Then he turned his head and looked at Pingping, who was still sucking his fingers in Gong Jiaxin’s arms, and whose little face would immediately droop the moment he saw Gong Ruzhi looking at him. He was completely dumbfounded.

"How did it end up like this?" Weren’t they just taking pictures just fine? How did it suddenly turn into this.

Gong Jiaxin lowered her head. She had always thought Gong Ruini was pretty smart. Had it really never occurred to her that she would do something this stupid.

This wasn’t something that couldn’t be talked about. Since someone asked, Gong Jiaxin just told the whole story.

"No way." Gong Ruzhi was stunned. He knew that if something could make Zhao Xuran angry, normally it meant his own sister had gone and courted death again, but he truly hadn’t expected she could court death this badly.

"My sister, she..." Sigh. Gong Ruzhi felt that this time his sister had really brought it all on herself.

Gong Jiaxin felt that Zhao Xuran was overthinking a bit, but when she remembered the look he had given her before, she immediately became honest and quiet.

There was nothing she could do. Even though she was used to Zhao Xuran most of the time, suddenly seeing that expression on his face had still scared her badly.

"My sister’s really gotten too full of herself. If she doesn’t get a proper, harsh lesson this time, won’t she be flying up to the heavens later." Gong Ruzhi absolutely supported Zhao Xuran on this.

Uh, even Gong Ruzhi saw it that way, so Gong Jiaxin went completely silent.

"It’s not safe in the country either. There are already people breaking into homes to steal money, and they’re not even afraid when they run into the owners."

"Think about it: if people know what Pingping and the others look like, what do you think they’ll have in mind?" When it’s adults, they at least know some self?defense.

Worst case, when adults go out there are bodyguards following them. But Pingping and An An are just little kids. What if someone snatches them away.

No way, right? Gong Jiaxin felt that Gong Ruzhi was definitely overthinking it, but when it came to refuting him, she didn’t know what to say.

"What’s wrong with you?" Gong Ruini had actually only just, belatedly, realized that she’d gone a bit overboard this time.

But did he really need to hit that hard? Gong Ruini rubbed her hand. She had truly never seen Zhao Xuran this fierce before.

No, this was domestic violence. Gong Ruini was genuinely very angry.

"What’s wrong with me? Maybe you should ask yourself what you were thinking."

"You took so many pictures of the kids. Was it really just for the family to see, or did you actually want to turn them into models?"

Previously, Zhao Xuran had really thought it was just to leave some memories for the kids, that dressing them up so nicely was to keep a memento.

Especially so they could show the photos to people back home, let them see how the two kids were doing now—particularly their grandma, who had never even seen them.

But if it was to show outsiders, Zhao Xuran was a million times against it.

"They won’t get spread around." Gong Ruini argued.

"Won’t get spread around?" The fire in Zhao Xuran’s chest flared. "People nowadays are god knows how much smarter than you."

"Do you know that things have already started to get unsafe back home recently."

"A boss that Dad knows just had a grandson, a treasure of the family. He kept taking him out to show off, and at some point someone must have taken photos of the kid."

"Later, one time the family took the nanny and the child out, and the kid got snatched."

No way—Gong Ruini was dumbfounded. Hadn’t the social climate just been cleaned up not long ago? How was this happening again.

"Then the other side demanded ransom. They paid exactly what was asked, and in the end the child was returned—but as a corpse." Just thinking about it made Zhao Xuran’s whole body shake.

It wasn’t his own child, but the moment he imagined something like that happening to his own kids, he truly didn’t dare think any further.

If something really happened, he would absolutely lose his mind.

"No way..." Gong Ruini was stunned as well. "Th?then that had to be someone they knew who saw the photos, right."

"Hmph, if it was just for people you know, why did you put in all that preparation?" Did she really take everyone else for fools.

Zhao Xuran had wanted to give Gong Ruini a brutal dressing?down, but when he saw her staring blankly, he didn’t say much more.

"You need to remember you can know a person’s face but not their heart. Among the ones who act close to us, who knows how many are secretly hoping to trip us up."

"The whole mess with the medicinal herbs last time was also done by someone we knew. Otherwise how could it have happened so suddenly."

In the past, Zhao Xuran had never mentioned any of this because he felt that even if he did, it would only make Gong Ruini worry. Especially with her being in the United States, she wouldn’t be able to help solve anything.

Not to mention she’d been pregnant at the time, and in that condition, telling her these things would only add to her anxiety.

"Ah." This was the first time Gong Ruini learned they’d been screwed over on the medicinal herb supply, but she didn’t know the details, had no idea what exactly had happened.

She hadn’t expected there to be that kind of inside story. Gong Ruini was truly shocked.

Those people, they... In the end, Gong Ruini could only sigh. No matter how good the relationship usually looked, once it involved利益, people weren’t that close anymore.

"But so what if they made money this time? Do they really think everyone else is stupid?"

"Soon all the agency rights for the medicinal plaster are going to be taken back." Back then, on the one hand they didn’t have the energy to develop the market themselves; on the other, it wasn’t bad to have someone help with promotion.

Over the years, the plaster had brought big profits not only to the Zhao Family but also to those agents. You could say it had been a win?win.

"They got too greedy and actually tried to choke us at the upstream supply." Zhao Xuran really couldn’t understand what they were thinking. They’d already made plenty from the agency; was it really necessary to be this ruthless?

No way. "Are they planning to swallow the factory outright as their next step?" Going through so much trouble—weren’t they just trying to lock down both upstream and downstream on them?

"They did bring up taking a stake. You know about that. Even though the two families are close, when the factory first opened, we still didn’t let your family buy in." It wasn’t about whether the relationship was good or not; it was about Zhan Jing’s obsession.

Otherwise, Gong Zhuang wouldn’t have gotten the sales rights. That was actually a kind of indirect compensation.

My god, all Gong Ruini could think was that these people were vicious. Were they planning to completely kick Zhan Jing out?

Their courage was really something else—or maybe the lure of money just made it impossible for them not to make a move. "Won’t they kick up a huge fuss then?"

Taking away their agency rights and then building their own herbal production base—wasn’t that basically pushing them to a dead end?

Gong Ruini didn’t believe those people wouldn’t jump out and make a scene. There was no way this would end quietly.

"Let them make a fuss. The contracts are expiring. Besides, if they can play dirty, you think we can’t?"

"Those hospital channels—without them, you think we can’t get them ourselves?"

"If they really kick up a storm, the only ones who’ll suffer are them." Let them make trouble; the more noise they made, the clearer they’d see themselves.

"The more they stir things up, the more money they’ll burn. Sometimes getting knocked straight back to square one isn’t a bad thing." Otherwise, who knows what other stupid things they’d end up doing.

Looked like this was really going to blow up; otherwise, Zhao Xuran wouldn’t be talking like this.

If it did blow up, it would be no joke.