As she spoke, An Qiuyan suddenly extended a hand and slapped Shen Mingjue fiercely across his handsome face.
"Bitch, how dare you hit me?"
Shen Mingjue froze, then rage surged into his head. He raised his hand, poised to strike An Qiuyan.
An Qiuyan's eyebrows shot up, and she glared at him, saying, "Hit me, go ahead and hit me. With this slap, I guarantee your grandfather will know this secret within ten minutes!"
"You—"
Shen Mingjue was so furious he felt like exploding. His right hand was raised high, but he hesitated to bring it down.
An Qiuyan let out a scoffing laugh, "Others might not know you, but I, your wife, know you all too well. You actually knew long ago that you were born to your second uncle and a hostess, but you couldn't bear to part with the Shen family's wealth, with everything you possess now. Currently, the majority of the Shen family's wealth and power is still firmly in your grandfather's hands. Once he finds out you were born to a hostess, Shen Minghuang, whom you always looked down on, is the true eldest grandson of the Shen family. He will definitely kick you out of the company, and you will even lose all the inheritance you received from your late Grandmother Shen. After all, Grandmother Shen's will states the eldest grandson of the Shen family, not your name, Shen Mingjue. By then, you'll truly become a penniless nobody..."
"What is it you want? Just say it directly, stop beating around the bush?"
Shen Mingjue, impatient with her nonsense, interrupted her.
Despite hating this woman to the bone, despising her to the point of wanting her dead, Shen Mingjue's mind was not clouded by anger, nor had he lost his reason.
The paternity test was ironclad proof of his relationship with his second uncle. Once exposed, he would lose everything.
They say money isn't everything, but without money, nothing is.
Money and wealth were a man's foundation, and Shen Mingjue, as the eldest young master of the Shen family, understood this better than anyone.
His family background exposed, losing everything, becoming a bastard pointed at by others – he'd rather just die.
Shen Mingjue couldn't accept becoming a penniless nobody. He could only grit his teeth and let An Qiuyan have whatever she wanted.
An Qiuyan, however, let out a long sigh, "What is it I want? If you hadn't abandoned me first, would I have had to come to this?"
This statement had a double meaning, referring not only to their breakup but also to her resentment of Shen Mingjue in her past life for discarding her when she was no longer young and beautiful.
An Qiuyan's original intention was to say, "If you hadn't abandoned me in my past life, how could I be using this as leverage against you in this life?"
But to Shen Mingjue's ears, it carried a different meaning.
"I was blind to have fallen for a woman like you. If you hadn't courted disaster yourself and provoked Jiang Yushuang, the Shen family wouldn't have suffered such great losses, and Grandfather wouldn't have forced me to break up with you. This is all your own doing, and you have no one else to blame," Shen Mingjue said with disgust.
An Qiuyan sighed softly, "Whether it's my own doing or being forced by others, it doesn't matter anymore. My requirement now is very simple: everything returns to how it was, back to the state we were in before we broke up."
"What did you say, back to before we broke up?"
Shen Mingjue was stunned.
He had thought that by producing this leverage, An Qiuyan was trying to extort money from him to live on.
He had already prepared himself for a significant financial hit, only to find that An Qiuyan simply wanted to return to the time before their breakup.
"Yes, you heard correctly. Back to before we broke up," An Qiuyan stated word by word.