Miss CEO: Lost In Love And Trickery

"Is Evan here?" Della Jiang asked the attendant standing at the club entrance as soon as she stepped out of the car.

She was dressed in a simple white dress, every inch of her elegant and beautiful. She looked nervous, but beneath her anxious expression there was a healthy, rosy glow to her flawless complexion. Her large, doe-like eyes, misty with tears, sparkled with mesmerizing intensity. She looked as though she had walked right out of a painting, but the effect was somewhat ruined by her messy bangs, which had clumped together from the sweat on her forehead.

The club attendant was so taken by her natural beauty he gaped at her for a few moments. He had seen many gorgeous women working at the club, but all of them had achieved the effect with layers of thick makeup. Della Jiang's beauty, on the other hand, was the real deal.

"Mr. Evan is in the private room at the end of the hall." The attendant clapped his hands over his mouth when he realized what he had done. It was club policy to protect the privacy of their guests, but he had forgotten all about it in the face of the angelic beauty before him.

As soon as Della Jiang heard that Evan Xiao was inside, she stepped past the attendant and hurried into the club without a second thought.

"I think that's Mr. Xiao's wife!" another attendant blurted out as he watched Della Jiang disappear behind the door.

The two attendants broke into a cold sweat. Was Evan Xiao's wife here to catch him in the act of cheating on her?

Inside the club, Della Jiang entered the private room and began to weave her way through the guests milling about inside. Everyone stopped to stare at her, but she didn't care. "Evan! Evan, where are you?"

Evan Xiao was seated in a corner. He saw Della Jiang stumble among the crowd, shouting desperately for him like a drowning woman. His expression hardened into a chilly frown as he took in her disheveled hair and frantic shouting. Her undignified behavior was embarrassing him.

Della Jiang spotted him. She squeezed past the other guests to reach him, and held out her hand.

"Evan, why didn't you pick up the phone? I've been trying to call you all day. Grandpa's sick again. We have to go to the hospital, right away." Evan Xiao slapped her hand away.

"Della, you're unbelievable. How shameless can you get? I only married you because you said that Grandpa was seriously ill. You forced me into the marriage. And now you're back to cry wolf again? I won't fall for the same sob story twice. What is it this time? What do you want from me?" Evan sneered Xiao. "Are you trying to trick me into sleeping with you? You want to have babies with me, is that it? Well, you can forget it. You'll never have my children. Never."

Della Jiang stared at him, stunned. It took her a minute to finally spot the attractive red-haired woman sitting on his lap.

"Ooh, I'd like to have your children. Can I?" Lana Luo purred seductively as she wrapped her arms around him.

Evan Xiao smirked. He lifted her chin and said, "You're more than welcome to try."

His icy expression seemed to soften as an uncharacteristic glimmer of warmth crept into his cold eyes. Della Jiang realized with a bitter pang that she had never seen her husband look at her that way.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she pleaded to her husband, "Evan, please..."

"Don't call me Evan. It makes me sick," Evan cut her off impatiently as he fixed her with an icy glare.

Della Jiang shrank back. The warmth had fled from his expression. His dark, contemptuous eyes seemed to pierce her as his sharp, angular features settled into his usual disdainful frown. For a brief moment, she was struck by a strange, terrifying thought: perhaps the man before her was made of ice and stone. That would explain why she had never succeeded in any of her attempts to warm his icy heart.

"Evan... Evan, please..." Evan Xiao merely glared at her. His frown deepened, and Della Jiang suddenly realized that she had used his name again, despite his warning. She dropped her gaze and continued meekly, "Let's go to the hospital to see Grandpa. That's all I ask. Grandpa is seriously ill this time. The doctor said that Grandpa may not be able to make it through the night."

The memory of Evan's grandpa lying on the hospital bed with tubes of every kind attached to his frail body sprang unbidden into her mind. She began to cry again.

Evan Xiao's suspicions faded at the sight of her tears. He had nothing but contempt for his wife, but she looked and sounded so sincere he found it difficult to believe that she was lying. He got up to leave, but Lana Luo stopped him with a gentle tug on his shirt.

He narrowed his eyes at her, but Lana Luo merely winked at him, undaunted. She turned to Della Jiang and said, "I know that I don't have the right to stop Mr. Xiao from leaving to attend to family matters. Still, I can't help but feel that this is unfair to the rest of us. He just arrived, and now he's going to leave without having had a single drink. People will say that he is so bored with our company he jumps at the first opportunity to get away."

"That's right. How do we know his grandpa is actually sick? Maybe you're lying," someone chimed in.

"Maybe Mr. Xiao's hen-pecked, and he's just looking for an excuse to leave," another young man said with a snicker.

"That's hilarious!" The whole room erupted into laughter.

Evan Xiao's face darkened. He knew that Lana Luo was trying to embarrass Della Jiang, but he couldn't intervene without making it look like he was afraid of his wife.

His friends were rowdy and rude, but they were also excessively thin-skinned. Evan Xiao wasn't afraid of any of them, but he knew that it wasn't a good idea to offend all of them at the same time. He decided he would say nothing, and take this as an opportunity to see whether Della Jiang was telling the truth.

He was certain that his grandfather had faked his last bout of "serious illness" to force him to marry Della Jiang. After the marriage, his grandfather had continued the charade by complaining of migraines every day to guilt-trip him into coming home and spending "quality time" with her. His grandfather had cried wolf too many times for him to take him seriously.

Della Jiang bit her lips. She looked steadily at Lana Luo and said, with as much pride as she could muster, "What do you want?"

"Mrs. Xiao, relax. Don't get your panties in a twist. We're Mr. Xiao's friends. We're just having some fun here, we wouldn't dream of making things difficult for him or his wife." "Well, Mr. Xiao can't drink because he has to drive. I propose that his wife, Mrs. Xiao," Lana paused here for emphasis, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "drink three shots of whiskey in his place, as compensation for making him leave when we are just getting started."

"That's right. Drink three shots of whiskey, and we'll let Mr. Xiao go," another voice chimed in with a snicker.

Della Jiang looked at Evan Xiao. Her heart sank when she saw him watching her expectantly with his arms crossed and a smirk on his lips. He was enjoying watching her squirm, and he seemed content to let his "friends" tease her.

Della Jiang steeled herself. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but she lifted her chin and refused to let the tears fall.

She chided herself for expecting Evan to step in to save her. He had never believed her, not even once, and it would be a cold day in hell before he lifted a finger to help her.

She wanted very much to leave with her head held high, but she remembered Evan's grandpa's pale, haggard face, and knew she had to put her dignity aside. She gritted her teeth. "Fine, I'll do it."

"Excellent. I wouldn't have expected anything less from Mrs. Xiao." Smiling, Lana Luo picked up the bottle on the table and poured out three shots of whiskey for Della Jiang.

She allowed her long, trailing sleeve to linger above the shot glasses as she discreetly dispensed the powdered aphrodisiac hidden inside her sleeve into the whiskey. Then she raised one of the shot glasses and handed it to Della Jiang with a mocking glint in her eyes.

Della Jiang bristled at the look of open disdain on the other woman's face. Determined to show that she wasn't afraid of her, she accepted the shot glass and downed the whiskey.

She gasped and sputtered. Her eyes began to water, but she blinked back the tears and controlled herself. She took the second shot glass from Lana Luo and downed it.

Three shots of whiskey were too much for Della Jiang, who had never actually tried alcohol before this. As soon as she finished the third glass, her vision began to swim. She tried to walk towards Evan Xiao, but her knees buckled and she fell onto the startled attendant beside her.

"Look at you. You're a disgrace to me." With that, Evan Xiao turned and walked out the door without a second glance.

He couldn't care less about his wife, and had zero concerns about leaving her behind in her drunken state. He was confident that no one in the room would dare take advantage of her, not when they knew she was his wife. Perhaps there would be a few photos and scathing remarks about her drunken, disgraceful behavior in the next day's papers, but he didn't mind. He would be able to show them to his grandfather as proof that his precious Della Jiang was an embarrassment to the family.

A sly smile spread across Lana Luo's face as she watched Evan Xiao leave. Once she was sure he had gone, she turned to look at the attendant beside Della Jiang.

"Why are you still standing there like an idiot? Take Mrs. Xiao to a room so she can lie down and rest," Lana Luo snapped with a haughty toss of her head.

The attendant nearly jumped out his skin. He took Della Jiang's arm and tried to guide her to the elevator that would take her to the guest rooms on the top floor.

"Evan... Evan... Don't leave me, please..." Della Jiang sobbed pitifully. She was so distraught the attendant had to drag her towards the elevator.

Lana Luo's smile widened as she watched Della Jiang dissolve into a sobbing, drunken mess. She was certain that Evan Xiao would divorce Della Jiang if he found out that she had cheated on him.

The aphrodisiac in her sleeve had been meant for Evan Xiao. Colorless and tasteless, it was virtually undetectable, yet extremely potent for men and women. A tiny pinch of it was enough to light the flames of lust and desire all night long.

She had lost her chance to drug Evan Xiao and have him at her mercy, but she wasn't upset. Drugging Della Jiang and sabotaging her would work just as well.

Once she was sure that the attendant had escorted Della Jiang into an empty guest room, Lana Luo found a secluded corner in the hallway, whipped out her phone, and dialed the number for a male escort service.

"Yes, I want someone large and strong, with a lot of stamina. Send him to Room 1001 in Glamour Club."

Della Jiang stood in the middle of the empty guest room, her mind sinking into hazy confusion as she struggled to remember where she was or what she was supposed to be doing. The attendant had left as soon as he had carried out his orders to see her to the room; it wasn't his job to deal with drunk, hysterical women.

"Evan... Evan..." Della Jiang cried out for her husband as she stumbled about the room, lost and confused.

The panic coursing through her veins intensified. She doubled over, seized with terror, and found herself reliving the nightmare that had been her wedding night. Her husband had not touched her after the wedding. He had walked out the door without so much as a second glance, ignoring her cries for him to stay with her.

She clutched her chest. 'No!' she thought desperately to herself. 'I can't let him walk away from me again. I can't!'