Transmigration; Married to My Ex-Fiancé's Uncle-Chapter 155; Lu Yuze & Lin Shuyin (e)

The faint scent of expensive cologne mixed with her own jasmine.

The soreness in her muscles from struggling against.....

Her eyes snapped open. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

6:20 AM, according to the digital clock on the nightstand.

She shifted slightly, testing her body’s responsiveness, and immediately froze.

There was someone next to her.

Lu Yuze lay on his side, one arm draped possessively across her waist even in sleep, his breathing deep and even.

His face was relaxed in a way she’d never seen while he was awake, the sharp edges of control softened, making him look younger, almost peaceful.

Almost human instead of the calculating predator she knew had seen last night.

Her gaze dropped immediately to her left hand.

The ring was still there.

Of course, it was still there.

She’d spent twenty minutes last night trying to remove it before exhaustion and alcohol had finally dragged her under.

The metal gleamed mockingly in the morning light, a perfect circle of gold that refused to acknowledge her attempts at freedom.

A yawn escaped her before she could stop it, jaw cracking slightly.

She tried to move carefully, not wanting to wake him, but the moment she shifted, his arm tightened reflexively.

Still asleep, but holding on.

The weight of it, the literal physical weight of his arm and the metaphorical weight of what it represented, pressed down on her chest.

"Why did I even ask for a marriage?" she whispered to herself, voice rough with sleep and regret.

If she had known she could scam someone for so much cash, she wouldn’t have dared to ask for Marriage; he had been reluctant. What could have changed?

"Was I crazy?"

At the time, it had seemed so logical.

She’d needed financial stability, legal protection, a powerful backup to fall back on once the plans failed.

The contract marriage could have been perfect, all the benefits, none of the emotional entanglement should have existed.

But that was before she’d discovered how easily she could manipulate human systems, how effortlessly money could flow into her accounts with the right application of her abilities.

She hadn’t needed his money after all.

And she definitely hadn’t anticipated... this.

Whatever this was.

She looked at the ring again, her free hand moving to it automatically.

Maybe this time it would come off.

Maybe last night had been the alcohol, the exhaustion, her weakened state.

She gripped the band and pulled.

Nothing.

Gritting her teeth and pulling harder, twisting.

Still nothing.

The ring sat there calmly, unmoved, as if mocking her attempts.

Frustration ignited into fury.

Before she could think better of it, she drew her fist back and aimed a punch directly at the chest of the man sleeping beside her.

The man who’d put this unremovable chain on her finger.

The man who’d kissed her as he owned her.

The man who....

Her fist never connected.

In one fluid motion, Lu Yuze moved, his body rolling smoothly to the side.

Her punch sailed through empty air, throwing her off balance.

Before she could recover, his hand caught her wrist, not hard, but firm enough to stop her momentum.

His eyes opened slowly, revealing that sharp, calculating gaze she was far more familiar with.

He propped himself up on one elbow, looking entirely too composed for someone who’d just woken up.

"Don’t tell me you want to murder your husband?" His voice was rough with sleep but laced with amusement.

"What do you think will happen? That you’ll become a widow?"

The word hung between them, loaded with implication.

Widow.

Like his first wife.

Shuyin snatched her hand back, sitting up fully and turning to glare at him.

"You! Remove this thing!" She thrust her hand toward him, the ring catching the light.

"Take it off right now!"

Lu Yuze reached for her hand, but instead of touching the ring, he simply moved her arm to the side, deflecting it gently.

"You are a married woman," he said calmly, as if explaining something to a child. "Legally married. So that has to stay."

His gaze traveled over her face with deliberate slowness, noting the fury blazing in her jade eyes, the sleep-mussed hair falling in disarray around her shoulders, the slight puffiness that suggested tears or exhaustion or both.

"We need to get divorced now! Today! Like now... now!" Shuyin’s voice rose with each word, panic and anger bleeding together. She no longer wanted this marriage, didn’t want this man who could trap her with a ring she couldn’t remove, who kissed her like he owned her, who made her feel things she had no intention of feeling.

Lu Yuze’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes, amusement, perhaps, or grim satisfaction.

"Are you certain about that?" He eyed her for a long second, his head tilting slightly. "You probably need to check your account first and tell me... if you truly want a divorce after that."

His smirk was sardonic, knowing, edged with something that made her stomach drop.

"What are you talking about?" But even as she asked, Shuyin felt her heartbeat accelerate, pounding against her ribs with sudden dread.

She reached for her phone on the bedside drawer with shaking hands, fingers fumbling slightly as she unlocked it and opened her banking app.

The screen loaded.

Her account balance appeared.

-500,000,000 yuan

Negative five hundred million.

The number stared back at her in accusatory red, impossible and damning.

"How can this happen?" Her voice came out strangled, breathless. "How is this possible?"

She refreshed the page frantically, certain it was a mistake, a glitch, some error in the system.

The number didn’t change.

Still negative. Still impossible.

"How could I....." She couldn’t even finish the sentence, her mind struggling to process how she could have not only emptied her account but also gone half a billion yuan into debt overnight.

Lu Yuze shifted, propping himself up on one elbow to look at her properly, his expression maddeningly calm.

"You bought drinks for everyone in the club," he said, his tone conversational, educational even. "The entire club, if I recall correctly. And they were all served the premium reserved bottles, the ones that cost fifty thousand yuan each. Do you remember that announcement you made?"

Shuyin’s face went pale as fragmented memories surfaced.

Give everyone a drink! My bill!

Oh no.

"Then there were the models," Lu Yuze continued, ticking items off like a shopping list. "You tripled their booking fee, remember? Plus purchased them out of their existing contract. That was roughly several million yuan right there."

Her hands were shaking now, the phone trembling in her grip.

"And that waitress you were so generous with, paying off her father’s gambling debts, clearing her contract labor obligations, setting up her brother’s medical fund. Another several million yuan." He paused, watching her face cycle through different shades of color, pale white to flushed red to sickly green. "Don’t you remember any of that?"

He smirked, clearly enjoying her distress more than he should.

"The club exodus incident, as they’re calling it online, cost you approximately four hundred and thirty million yuan. Add in the damage to the club from the chaos you had created..." He waved a hand dismissively. "Various other expenses. It adds up."

Shuyin stared at him, then back at her phone, then back at him again.

Her mind was reeling, trying to reconcile her memories of last night, which were admittedly hazy in places, with this financial catastrophe.

"But I had... I had over a billion yuan in that account," she whispered.

"Had," Lu Yuze agreed. "Past tense. You also signed several authorization forms last night that you probably don’t remember. The club manager was very thorough about getting proper documentation before letting you leave."

"I wouldn’t..."

"You were drunk," he said simply. "And very enthusiastically generous. Apparently, you kept saying you were a princess and that money meant nothing to you."

She had said that. Multiple times. The memories were coming back now in horrifying detail.

Her hand clenched around the phone, knuckles white. Rage and humiliation warred in her chest.

In anger and frustration, she drew her arm back, fully intending to hurl the expensive device against the wall, to shatter it into a thousand pieces that matched how she felt inside.

"If you break that phone," Lu Yuze’s voice cut through her fury, suddenly very close to her ear, intimate and warning, "do you think you have money to buy a new one?"