bookrandom Chapter 113 What if I were his daughter?
Chapter 113 What if I were his daughter?
"Hello Mr. Jiang, do you have an appointment?"
"I want to see Shen Pei'an," Lin Qingran said.
The receptionist looked a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Jiang, you can't see Mr. Shen without an appointment."
Lin Qingran looked up at her, "What if I were his daughter?"
In an instant, the lobby on the first floor fell silent.
Lin Qingran entered Shen Pei'an's office after being greeted by Shen Pei'an's assistant.
"President Shen is in a meeting right now and will be back soon. Please wait a moment."
The assistant said nervously, his eyes quickly scanning the file folder on the coffee table.
"Mr. Shen said that if you come, he will give you this file bag."
The assistant quickly withdrew, and Lin Qingran frowned as she slowly reached for the file folder.
Lin Qingran's breathing became erratic, and her hands trembled.
I accidentally tore the file folder, and the contents spilled out with a clatter.
They were all photos, and in every single one of them was Lin Qingran's face.
These are photos of her giving guidance backstage at various art exhibitions over the past few years, and of her representing Sheng Hai Group while discussing projects in secret.
The last photo is very small and old, with yellowed edges and corners. The person in the photo is a baby in swaddling clothes.
Lin Qingran felt as if she had been shot in the heart. She couldn't quite describe the feeling, but her head was getting increasingly dizzy, and she felt weak as she leaned back on the sofa.
She was in a daze and didn't even hear the door open.
Lin Qingran only slowly raised her head when a tall figure walked up and cast a shadow over her.
"Who exactly are you?" Lin Qingran asked.
Who I am doesn't really matter.
The man sat opposite Lin Qingran, his hands clasped together.
He appeared calm, but his unintentional little gestures revealed his current nervousness.
“Before I was adopted by the Jiang family, I don’t remember ever having a happy time in my life,” Lin Qingran said.
"From as far back as I can remember, I knew I was a child abandoned by my parents. I was even sold time and time again in a remote mountain village. Later, I desperately ran away and wandered the streets until I was taken to an orphanage. But I guess I was just naturally bad-natured and didn't get along with the other children in the orphanage. Nobody liked me. I didn't even like going to school. I received government aid but skipped classes every day. I preferred to stay in internet cafes or do odd jobs rather than study. If my current father hadn't adopted me later, I probably would have lived my life in a daze. I wouldn't even have had the chance to be recognized as part of the Lin family."
Lin Qingran looked up at the man opposite her, whose face looked somewhat weathered.
“After I returned to the Lin family, I had my own parents, and nobody liked me. To the entire Lin family, I could even be considered their enemy. I always thought that maybe I shouldn’t exist at all. If I had died long ago, everyone could have followed their own predetermined path in life.”
As Lin Qingran spoke, her vision gradually became blurry.
She lowered her head, trying to suppress her sobs.
“But over the years, I’ve had a recurring dream. In my dream, a man appears, and sometimes he comes to see me. It actually happened; I can feel him watching me from the shadows, and when I turn around, he disappears. This makes me feel like I can’t distinguish between reality and dreams, but when I’m quiet and lost in thought, I’m absolutely convinced that it all really happened.”
At this point, Lin Qingran finally couldn't hold back her tears.
She looked at the man in front of her. "Was it really just a coincidence that I was adopted by the Jiang family? Who exactly are you...?"
"Right now, I can only be Shen Pei'an," the man said.
“I am very relieved that you have a foster father like Jiang Yuanbai.”
Lin Qingran covered her face. "Why?"
The man slowly smiled, "Let me tell you a story. One night twenty-eight years ago, I met my newborn daughter in the hands of a human trafficker."
Lin Qingran looked up at the man in shock.
“That human trafficker received a lot of money. The person who hired him ordered him to strangle the child after taking her away, and never contact the employer again afterward. Luckily, I realized what was happening in time. They had just succeeded and hadn't had a chance to do anything to my daughter. I was seriously injured in the fight and fell into a coma. They thought I was dead, so they hurriedly dumped me in the suburbs. When I woke up again, the trafficker was gone, and all his men were gone. Even the friends I had contacted in advance when I anticipated something bad would happen were forced to flee abroad.”
He lived under an assumed name and searched for his daughter for many years.
Over the years, I've been trying to find a way to go back and avenge my enemies.
He finally found out about his daughter and learned that the traffickers thought he was dead and were worried that if they targeted another child, they would be caught if they committed too many crimes.
Anyway, their employer had said that they would never contact them again after the matter was settled, so they boldly sold the infant to the mountains.
Although the friend he had entrusted gave his daughter's adoptive parents a large sum of money as he instructed, the two were out of touch at the time, and his friend also suffered misfortune and was forced to go abroad, making it impossible for him to take care of his daughter. As a result, his daughter was resold several times and even ended up homeless on the streets.
At that time, he had no power or influence, so he could only try his best to deliberately lure the people from the orphanage to his daughter, so that his daughter could have a place to stay.
A few years later, his daughter grew up and he began to show signs of making a comeback. However, before he could truly take revenge, he needed to make sufficient preparations and not act rashly.
So he sought refuge with a merchant overseas and prepared to leave the country.
Prior to this, he stole his daughter's paintings from the orphanage and anonymously placed them at the doorstep of the renowned painter Jiang Yuanbai.
Only after he saw with his own eyes that Jiang Yuanbai had adopted his daughter and made her his last disciple did the man finally leave with peace of mind.
But when he returned, he was told that his daughter had died.
“I don’t believe my child is dead,” the man said.
“Although I never spent a single day with her, my daughter is very much like me. She was never an ant to be slaughtered; she clearly had her own cunning and schemes. How could she be trapped by a mere marriage, or even lose her life because of it?”
He frantically inquired everywhere and finally learned that Jiang Yuanbai's youngest disciple had returned.