Cheshire Grin

After Feng Xuan's classes, she rushed home to find her father looking over Qing Chen's new office. She rushed up the stairs and squeezed herself on the doorframe beside her father.

She took in the sleek black desk and the bookshelves. New blinds were installed on the floor to ceiling windows and a recliner chair was placed near it. There was a couch and table set on the other side of the room. She smiled, proud of her choice of furniture. "I told you it will look great."

"On the next day they'll start with the closets. Then that's done," Feng Lizhao said.

While Qing Chen's office seemed to be in the darker hues, Feng Xuan's was touched with her favorite champagne color. Her walls were painted in soft lilac and her desk and carpet were white. The chair and the couch set and bookshelves were light pink-beige.

She took a look at her father and gave him a satisfied smile. "Thank you, father."

The old man smiled from under his graying moustache. "No worries, child."

"Are you staying for dinner?"

He shook his head. "Liu Lifen is waiting for me at home. Maybe some other time."

Feng Xuan nodded and went to a spare bedroom to change. She had her clothes taken there as renovations were to take place in her original one. She was just starting to cook when the workers said their good bye. Later on, her father followed.

Feng Xuan was in her office, typing away on her laptop about a new review she did for an action-romance novel she did not particularly liked. She was just getting to part where she would enumerate the things that she hated when she heard the main gate opened.

Qing Chen was home.

She immediately closed her work and went downstairs to greet him. "Hello, husband." Her eyebrows furrowed because his face was unreadable, like he was nervous but at the same time excited. "What's going on?"

"See," he began. "We need to talk."

Her eyes grew wide. "Oh, okay," she said and turned off the stove. She went near him as he sat on a chair near the counter. "What about?"

"I need you to understand something. It's horrible. But you have to understand." Qing Chen's face contorted and twisted like he was not really sure what he was saying.

"What do you mean?"

"The thing is," he said, looking in her eyes. "Wait. I need you to stay quiet and let me talk first. Alright?"

Feng Xuan felt her skin prickling. What is this?  She wanted to protest because she wanted to react at what he was going to say. But curiousity won and she nodded her head. "Alright. I'll keep quiet and listen."

"My secretary is brewing a little something about me. That I had gotten her pregnant. I don't think she would take action for now because she had not gotten the reaction she needed from me this morning when she took the pregnancy tests in front of me."

Feng Xuan's breath caught. A thousand things wanted to spur out of her mouth but Qing Chen's hand held on her wrists.

"Wait, listen to me first," he pleaded with his eyes. "She said she's going to prove that she's carrying my child. I have already sent people after her. I can't really file a case against her as there would be no real harm as of the moment. We need to be careful so that we would not let this get bigger."

Feng Xuan's lips were pursed and her eyes were clouded with no single emotion. "Can I speak now?"

Qing Chen thought about if he needed to say something else. He nodded. "Go on."

Feng Xuan took a deep breath as she released herself from Qing Chen's hands. "YOU SLEPT WITH YOUR SECRETARY?!"

Qing Chen cringed. Yeah, that was definitely one of the decisions he regretted the most. "I did."

"WHILE WE'RE MARRIED?!"

"N-no!" he quickly scambled out of the seat and took her shoulders. "It was before we got married. Way, way before. It happened once when I was drowning with a problem."

His answer seemed to calm her down a little but a glare was still in her eyes, like she was shooting daggers at his head. "Is this what you had been talking about last night?"

"Yes, but I knew then something was already up with her. I didn't tell you last night because I wanted to see first for myself how determined she was with this."

Feng Xuan crossed her arms at her chest. Her face was mad. Really mad. "Are you worried she's really pregnant?"

"I'm not," he answered with a sigh. "She's going crazy. She had helped us before in creating stories to get the hotel out of bad situations. She's acting up right now."

"You should fire her."

"We're already in the process of that."

Feng Xuan seemed to consider this, looking up at their ceiling. Was it possible that she did not know if she was that far along already? She was skeptical. But it could happen, right? She looked at Qing Chen who was looking at her like he was waiting for a judgement to fall upon his head--if he would die right now or if he would survive another night. There was a slight chance he really got her pregnant. But it was close to impossible.

She cleared her throat, "So you had slept with your secretary."

"It was a night of mistake." Qing Chen looked away.

She could not seem to get over that fact. "Why?"

He shook his head. They were handling a problem concerning a woman, he was not going to dig a deeper grave tonight. "We'll talk about that after this, if you still want to know."

Feng Xuan nodded and took an audible breath. Then the next moment, her voice and the rest of her face were back to normal. "Do you mind if I step out a bit?"

"What?"

"You wouldn't mind if I use one of the cars in the garage, right?" She was already making her way to the back door. Qing Chen closely followed her, totally lost about what was suddenly happening.

"Where are you going?" he asked as his wife pressed the button that opened the garage doors.

"I'm going for a drive," she said and took a key from the hooks. She stared at both cars and pressed. The red one beeped.

"You don't even have your license here yet."

"I won't get into an accident. I promise," she said as she walked towards it.

Qing Chen tried again, his mind making up scenarios, all non-favorable in the situation. "What are you going to do?"

Feng Xuan looked back at him, her lips quirked up to a cheshire cat grin. "Nothing crazy." She might as well winked at him.

Qing Chen felt like his feet were planted on the ground. There was… there was something with the way she smiled. Like she was not his wife. Like she was an entirely different person.

But mainly, it was her lips. They were painted red and it looked like blood in the moonlight.

It sent a thousand chills to his spine.