He was the one who suddenly showed up in front of her for no reason—what did that have to do with her?

Realizing the man’s hand was still gripping her arm, Song Qiao frowned, then spoke with obvious displeasure in her tone. "Let go of me."

The man didn’t make things hard for her after hearing that. On the contrary, he obediently released her right away, a faint smile surfacing in his eyes as he said, "Does this count as biting the hand that feeds you? If I hadn’t caught you, you would’ve fallen flat on the floor. How ugly would that be?"

Song Qiao immediately put some distance between them. Her face was expressionless as she said in a cold, hard tone, "You kidnapped me and my mother-in-law and brought us here. Am I supposed to say thank you to you?"

At that, she suddenly felt wronged for no reason, but she still didn’t cry. Instead, she raised her eyes to the man in front of her and said directly, "We have no feud with you, and we don’t even know who you people are. If you want money, I can give it to you. Can you let me and my mother-in-law go, please?"

There was already a note of pleading in her voice. She really wanted to leave this place and go back to Lu Jingchen’s side. She still had two kids, and she had no idea how they were doing right now.

The man stared fixedly at Song Qiao, a faint smile on his lips as he said, "Letting you go now is impossible. We’re running a business here. If we let you go, how are we supposed to explain it to our client? Would your husband also walk away halfway when he’s working with someone?"

Song Qiao looked straight at him, her voice tinged with anger. "Kidnapping counts as running a business now? What you’re doing is against the law."

However, the man just tossed back a line, "So what?"

Song Qiao, "..." Fine, pretend everything she said was a waste of breath. With him talking like that, what else could she say?

She dropped her head with a muffled hum and stopped looking at the man. Lifting her foot, she was about to head toward the basement; she wasn’t comfortable leaving Xu Qian down there alone.

But just as she was about to brush past him, the man who’d been standing still suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm again, stopping her from going forward.

Song Qiao instantly felt fire flare in her chest. She lifted her eyes to stare at the man in front of her and ground out between clenched teeth, "What else do you want? I’ve already finished cooking, and I didn’t put poison in anything—you can eat without worry. I know we’re the ones being kidnapped, we don’t have any freedom at all, and I’m very clear that I’m just a weak woman who couldn’t fight off a chicken. There’s no way I could escape, so I don’t even have that idea. You can relax..."

When she finished, the man let out a lazy little "yo" and said, "Your temper’s pretty big, huh."

Song Qiao snapped back, not in the mood to be nice, "If you were the one kidnapped and not allowed to go home, would you still be this calm?"

"No one in this world is capable of kidnapping me." The man’s expression didn’t even twitch.

Song Qiao, "..." Okay, can they pretend she never said anything?

Seeing her go mute again, the man felt a bit weird inside. He thought she was actually cuter when she was talking. Plus, maybe because he’d never had a woman around him before, and they’d finally kidnapped such a...let’s say "spirited" woman, he couldn’t help wanting to tease her a little.

He still didn’t let go of her. Instead, he said, "Since the food’s ready, you’re going to eat with us. I’ll have someone bring your mother-in-law up later to eat together too."

Song Qiao hadn’t expected him to arrange it like this. After all, right now they were basically his "prisoners." She couldn’t hold back the doubt in her heart and asked outright, "Why?"

He shot her a sideways glance and said flatly, "I’m afraid you poisoned the food. If you killed us all later, wouldn’t you two get to escape? So you’re eating with us."

One of the underlings standing behind him stared at his boss in shock. His mouth moved like he wanted to say something, but the man seemed to sense it and turned his head to look at him, ordering, "Go bring the woman downstairs up."

The underling immediately responded, "Got it, boss."

Then he bolted toward the basement.

Inside, though, he was full of confusion. Boss was the one who’d just said this woman didn’t have anything on her and definitely didn’t have any poison. So why was he suddenly acting like she was going to poison them now?

Hearing the man’s answer, Song Qiao almost couldn’t stop herself from slapping him. She practically gnashed her teeth as she said, "If I could poison you, I’d dump at least ten or twenty jin of arsenic in there and kill you all."

It was just that she didn’t have the chance.

The man’s face didn’t change. Still holding her by the arm, he dragged her back to the dining room with him without another word.

Song Qiao looked at his profile, so angry she could hardly stand it.

Ping-ge was already telling the underlings to bring all the dishes out. When Song Qiao saw everyone gathered in the living room, she realized this man actually had quite a few people under him.

Maybe because this villa’s kitchen had literally never been used, when those guys saw a big table full of dishes, their eyes all lit up like light bulbs. They looked like they wanted to grab their chopsticks and start wolfing food down right away.

When Ping-ge saw the man dragging Song Qiao over, he walked up to them and glanced at her in confusion. "Boss, why are you holding on to her?"

The man seemed to realize only then. He looked down at the hand holding Song Qiao, then let go. Glancing at Ping-ge, he clearly had no intention of explaining and instead ordered Song Qiao, "You sit here."

Song Qiao shot him a look. Her little face obviously showed how unhappy she was, but she didn’t say anything and sat down obediently.

Everyone finished bringing the food out. Two whole tables in total—nine dishes and one soup on one table, plus a cold appetizer. It looked as lavish as if they were hosting a banquet.

Xu Qian was quickly helped up by an underling. The moment she saw Song Qiao, she hurried over to her, asking nervously and anxiously, "Qiaoqiao, are you okay? Did they do anything to you?"

When she woke up and didn’t see Song Qiao by her side, her heart leapt into her throat. She’d knocked on the door to ask the guard something, but the man didn’t say a word. Xu Qian even suspected he was mute.

——I really can’t write anymore, and I still have work tomorrow. I’ll make up the extra Chapter tomorrow. Also, Chapters 530 and 531 are duplicated; I’ll ask my editor to fix it tomorrow and will post an extra free Chapter for you then.