Two Jilted Tycoons Married at the Scene novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Room 2208
Fang Yue follows his fiance's phone to a hotel room and finds Lu Zhenyu at the door with the key card; both fiances are inside, and before dawn the two jilted men sign a marriage agreement in the corridor.
Room 2208 had a door Fang Yue could kick in, and he had already decided to.
His fiancé was on the other side of it, laughing, and he was not laughing with Fang.
Fang had followed the little blue dot on his phone for forty minutes through Shanghai traffic.
He had told himself the dot was wrong, the whole ride up in the lift.
He drew back his boot.
"I wouldn't," said a dry voice behind him.
Fang turned with his fist up.
A tall man in a black coat stood in the corridor with a key card between two fingers.
He was lean and neat, with a plain steel watch and a face that gave nothing away.
Fang knew it from the business pages and from a hundred silent supplier dinners.
"Lu Zhenyu," said the man. "The lock is electronic. A boot will not open it. This will."
"Why do you have a key to a guest room?" Fang demanded.
"I own the hotel."
"Then why are you here at nine at night?" Fang said.
"The night manager told me whose names were on the booking," said Lu.
He straightened his left cuff.
"One of them is my fiancé."
Fang stared at him.
"An event designer," said Lu. "Two years."
"Tang Shuo," said Fang, and his voice cracked in the middle. "Three. He's my finance director. He's my everything."
"Then we will go in together."
Lu touched the card to the lock, and the light went green.
Fang shoved the door so hard it hit the wall.
The room was warm and gold and smelled of champagne.
Two men stood at the window in white hotel robes.
The designer, Lu's fiancé, was slim and lovely, with silk-smooth hair and a glass in his hand.
Tang Shuo wore his glasses with the robe, and he looked more tired than ashamed.
"Yue," Tang said. "Don't shout."
"Don't shout?" Fang shouted. "Three years! I paid for your mother's knee!"
"This is why," said Tang. "Everything with you is an announcement."
The designer turned the glass in his fingers and smiled at his own fiancé.
"You were never home, Zhenyu. You were always in a meeting with a spreadsheet."
"Your things will be at the front desk by noon," said Lu.
"The staff rate on my suite stands thirty days after notice. It's in the engagement deed."
"Noted," said Lu.
"And I still sign for the company card, Yue," said Tang, almost kindly. "Until you take me off it. In writing."
"I'm taking you off it right now!"
"In writing."
Fang looked around for something to throw.
The nearest thing was a tall blue vase on the sideboard.
He had it in both hands before he knew he had moved.
A hand closed round his wrist.
It was cool and dry and exact, and the thumb pressed into the hollow where the pulse was beating.
"Not the vase," said Lu, close to his ear. "It's Qing."
"Qing what?"
"Dynasty."
Fang's arm shook.
Lu's thumb did not move.
It slid once across his knuckles, slow, and then Lu lifted the vase out of his hands with one arm.
Fang's whole arm felt it afterward, up to the shoulder.
"I'll burn the building," Fang said hoarsely.
"You'll lose," said Lu. "Come outside."
In the corridor the door shut on Tang Shuo's voice, calling after them, bored and loud.
"Where will you go, Yue? Fangshun is me. Every number in it is in my head."
Fang put his back against the wall and slid until he was sitting on the carpet.
He was twenty-nine years old.
He had started at nineteen in the cab of a long-haul truck, and he had never cried in a corridor.
He was not going to start.
"Say it," he told the ceiling. "Whatever you came out here to say."
Lu Zhenyu crouched in front of him in the black coat and held out a tablet.
"Fangshun is three weeks from a cash gap," he said. "Your finance director has known it for months."
"How do you know my cash?" Fang asked.
"I read everything that moves in my city," said Lu. "I have forty-one hotels that buy from nine suppliers."
"So?" Fang said.
"I want one supplier. I would like yours."
"Is this a joke?"
"I don't joke. Read the second page," said Lu.
Fang read it.
It was a merger agreement.
On the last page was a new clause, in bold.
The two principals would marry, for a minimum of one year.
"A 联姻," said Fang. "A family alliance. I'm not a family."
"You are a company, and so am I. Tomorrow every phone in this city will print one sentence about room 2208."
Lu's eyes were steady and dark.
"Either it says that two tycoons were cheated on. Or it says that two tycoons walked out of it married."
Fang looked at the closed door.
He looked at the neat man holding the tablet.
"Give me the pen," he said.
He signed in large, ugly characters that ran over the line.
Lu signed under it, small and straight.
The night manager came down the corridor with a seal in her hand and stamped it without a word.
For a moment their hands lay on the same page, and Lu's thumb rested against Fang's knuckles again.
Neither of them moved it.
Then Fang saw the footer at the bottom of the screen, in grey type.
The grey type said: Yunhe merger, draft 1, March.
"This is dated March," he said.
"Templates age," said Lu, and straightened his cuff.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend