Huo Zhenyang laughed angrily: "What are you worried about? Afraid that someone else’s poor job will ruin your reputation? If it ruins, then it ruins, we can just shut down the business. I have never intended to make you a powerful career woman. If you continue to be stubborn with me, I can’t guarantee I won’t take back your shop."

The business in the shop is just for occasional fun, to satisfy her interest and kill some time.

Does this little lady really want to fight so hard?

Seeing his eyebrows tightly furrowed, fearing he might really take back the shop if she continued, she chose to shut her mouth. It’s better not to confront him head-on, and wait for an opportunity to steal back the computer.

Seeing that she remained silent, he picked her up and walked towards the dining table, then turned his head to Little Baozi and said: "It’s dinner time."

The servants all avoided eye contact, as the young master’s daily task during the young madam’s recovery was to embrace her, again and again.

He placed her in the chair next to him.

Jiayi, seeing that Qiao Yongyong hadn’t come downstairs yet, couldn’t help asking: "Oh, isn’t Miss Qiao called for dinner?"

Qiao Yongyong is still a guest after all, you can’t just leave the guest out while the hosts eat.

Reluctantly dining with her, Huo Zhenyang was quite unwilling to have an additional third wheel, initially pretending to forget about it.

Hearing Jiayi’s words, he frowned and reluctantly commanded: "Ask Miss Qiao to come downstairs."

A few minutes later, Qiao Yongyong, dragging Nie Yixiao with her, came downstairs, and she seemed unscathed by the misunderstanding and scolding she encountered from Nie Yixiao earlier in the day.

In love, she has always been a rose that blooms more vibrantly in adversity.

Nie Yixiao seemed reluctant, his face as cold as if a cold front had descended.

But Qiao Yongyong held onto his arm tightly, coaxing him: "Brother Yixiao, come eat with me."

"Miss Qiao, I am your bodyguard, and according to the bodyguard code, it is inappropriate for me to dine with you, please proceed as you wish."

"Now it’s your off-time, is it still not okay to think of it as me inviting a friend to dine?"

Qiao Yongyong then glanced at Huo Zhenyang, "Inviting my own friend to dinner, Huo Shao, being such a generous man, wouldn’t mind, right?"

A cold smile appeared on Huo Zhenyang’s lips, so this was a threat that not letting Nie Yixiao join dinner indicated stinginess?

He had intentionally hired Nie Yixiao as a bodyguard before returning to the country just to keep a close watch on Jiayi and Nie Yixiao.

Now, allowing him into his inner circle, he really wanted to terminate the contract with his bodyguard agency.

But doing so might lead Qiao Yongyong to fall out with him, this Qiao Yongyong, always so unfair when it comes to romance over humanity.

Eventually, he raised his voice: "Since Miss Qiao has invited, Mr Nie, please join us for dinner."

Seeing that he had spoken, Jiayi also followed, saying: "Brother Yixiao, come join us."

Nie Yixiao hadn’t managed to respond before Qiao Yongyong had already grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the dining table: "Come on, both Huo Shao and Miss Chu have agreed, why are you still hesitating..."

In the midst of talking, she had already dragged Nie Yixiao to sit down.

*

Nie Yixiao didn’t eat much at dinner.

Seeing Nie Yixiao’s hand was inconvenient, Qiao Yongyong kept attentively picking food for him and constantly had someone serve him soup and refill his rice.

Huo Zhenyang occasionally served some dishes to the little lady next to him, instructed the servants to take the pig’s feet soup cooked specifically for Jiayi from the kitchen, and throughout, remained expressionless, treating Qiao Yongyong and Nie Yixiao as if they were thin air.

Auntie Li and several maids stood not far away, attending to them and couldn’t help shaking their heads: "This meal really has complicated relationships."

The maids understood what Auntie Li meant.

At one dining table, there were a pair of ex-husband and ex-wife, a pair of ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend, and an aggressive pursuer, certainly making the relationships complicated.

I never thought that one day, the young master, Miss Chu, and Mr. Nie could sit down quietly and have a meal together, and the young master didn’t even flip the table!

*

After dinner, Nie Yixiao was the first to get up and went upstairs.

Once he left, Qiao Yongyong naturally followed him immediately.

After taking Jiayi back to her room, Huo Zhenyang went to the study.

Each of the four had their own tasks to attend to.

Having confiscated her laptop, she couldn’t work on the design drafts, Jiayi got bored after watching TV for a while.

She then realized that managing the shop had apparently become the norm over the months.

It was like a continuously spinning top that suddenly stopped, somewhat hard to adapt to.

She picked up another laptop, which she used for work at the shop. Thinking she wouldn’t be going to the shop during this time, she had called the store manager to bring it over this morning.

She opened it to check the financial statements of the shop.

Although she couldn’t work on costume drafts, she still had to do something else.

The shop had its own finance personnel who prepared the financial statements. They were veterans from F.WANG, and after working together for a while, Jiayi trusted them completely. Moreover, since she wasn’t sensitive to numbers and was only interested in design, she usually didn’t scrutinize the statements, only checking the total losses at the end of the month or quarter.

She knew that this wasn’t really acceptable for a boss.

A boss might not need to understand everything, but must know how to read financial statements.

Because you can’t afford not to know how much you’re earning or losing, and where exactly those profits and losses are coming from.

But she admitted that she was truly finding this financial report confusing and hard to understand in many places.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she used Baidu to search for various terms, perhaps so focused that she didn’t hear when the room door was pushed open and footsteps approached from behind.

Only when the shadow of a man fell into her line of sight did she realize.

Looking up, her eyes met Huo Zhenyang’s eagle-like gaze.

She inhaled sharply, about to slam the laptop shut, but he swiftly reached out and caught her hand, stopping her.

"Can’t understand it?" He had been watching her from behind for a while and of course saw the distressed look on her face.

Somewhat surprised, she nodded honestly: "Yeah."

Huo Zhenyang turned over and sat on the bed behind her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, placing the laptop in front of both of them.

"Which part don’t you understand?" He leaned down close to her ear.

She swallowed, wondering if this man was going to give her a live tutorial.

She had thought that seeing her looking at the statement, he would confiscate her laptop too.

"Here," she pointed at the screen, "here, and this," she bit her lip, eventually admitting honestly, "Actually, I don’t quite understand any of it."

As she spoke, her face heated up tremendously.

She couldn’t even understand the ledger; this business tycoon must be laughing inside...

Yet, he didn’t laugh at her. His eyes flickered, glancing at the places she pointed out:

"This is the balance sheet, part of the financial statement, showing the end-of-period situation of F.WANG’s assets, liabilities, and equity. That one is the income statement, also known as the profit and loss statement, recording the amounts of income, expenses, profits, and losses of the shop during this period..."

He explained in detail, word by word, adding a lot of examples to make it easier for her to understand.