"Umm, whatever gets the job done. Good show, my friend. It seems that you are finally learning how to climb the mountains and part the sea for your love!!!" he wrote back to Hui.

Shanghai

Wei landed at the Shanghai airport and made way to his parents' home straight away. Throughout the flight, his heart had oscillated between worrying about his father and remembering the pain inflicted by Jia Li. But when he had closed his eyes in exhaustion, he had dreamed of a lithe body and deep dark eyes making his heart race. He had woken up with an uncomfortable hard-on.

"How the h.e.l.l can I be miserable and h.o.r.n.y at the same time? I can't believe that I am behaving like a hormonal teenager at this age," he was disgusted with himself.

Sitting at home, he waited impatiently while his father took his own sweet time to get around the 'urgent issue' for which he had summoned him back. At least he looked healthy enough for Wei to not stress about that particular matter. Nothing else was so important. It couldn't be any worse than what he had faced in the recent times. At least that's what he thought.

"The Xie family wants to withdraw their financial investment and stake in our company," he father finally announced grimly.

"What???" the porcelain tea cup clattered from his hands and crashed onto the marble floor.

"Why? I mean when did they tell you this? They can't do this suddenly. Are they even legally allowed to do this without incurring heavy penalties? Let me speak with Tang right away," his mind scrambled to make sense of his father's words.

"There is no use. Tang hasn't been reachable for the past couple of weeks now. As for them doing this, well, when we had first entered into the partners.h.i.+p, your mother had been sceptical about new unknown money coming into the family business. So she had insisted inserting a clause which stated that either party has the authority to dissolve the partners.h.i.+p with a three month notice. She had done it to safeguard our interests, incase we felt that the Xie's weren't efficient or trustworthy. Over the years, no one really remembered the d.a.m.n clause since everything worked out fabulously, both in terms of matching skill sets and temperaments of the two parties involved. To be fair, they have been really supportive and honest in all dealings, despite you not being an active partic.i.p.ant in the company over the years. So the clause was irrelevant and mostly forgotten.," he explained in a tired voice.

"But Uncle Xie would have given you a reason for this. What is the conversation which you had with him?" Wei asked urgently.

Mr. w.a.n.g looked at his son and handed him a sheaf of doc.u.ments.

"These were delivered to me yesterday through his solicitors' office. When I tried reaching the Xie family, I was informed that no one is at the residence. The entire family is travelling, apparently. Within an hour of me receiving the papers, I got a call from their personal attorney who told me that Mr. Xie wished to exit this business permanently and wanted to invest a huge sum in another project ASAP. As a result, they wanted the partners.h.i.+p to be revoked. I repeatedly told him that I won't agree till Mr. Xie personally spoke with me but he informed me that they had been instructed to go to the court in case we didn't comply. Not only this, the attorney sent me list of potential investors who could be interested in our business," he finished.

Wei felt as if he had fallen down the rabbit hole. What happened to the family suddenly? Although no one could know another person completely, but he couldn't have been so wrong about Tang. And what about Jia Li? Did she know about this? Is that why she rejected him so firmly the previous day? were she and Tang back together?

His blood started to boil at the thought of being deceived by the people whom he had trusted around him. But right now he didn't have time to ponder over these personal matters.

"Give me the list, dad," he told his father.

At Mr. w.a.n.g's enquiring look, he said, "if we take this to court, our shares would be affected, not to mention that once people get to know about our precarious situation, there could be chances of a hostile takeover. As we have been left with no choice, let's try and salvage it for now. Once things have stabilised, I promise to unearth their whereabouts and make them pay for this."