It was just that, in this situation, Samuel Grant was driving a Mercedes while she was sitting in a taxi—painfully, almost comically, real.

Seeing Susan Clark remain silent, Nancy Cole stuck her head out a little, glanced forward, and happened to spot Samuel Grant as well.

He walked around to the trunk, took something out, and then left.

Nancy Cole blinked. “Isn’t that your boyfriend?”

“……”

“Let me carefully verify and boldly guess—you two broke up?”

“……”

“And you were the one dumped.”

“……”

“If I’m not mistaken, not only were you dumped, but you were also cheated on.”

“……”

“Well, looks like his new girlfriend is rich. See, he’s even got a new car.”

Susan Clark sighed, watching Samuel Grant walk farther and farther away before finally relaxing, her whole posture slumping as she looked at Nancy Cole in utter defeat.

“You really didn’t have to be so accurate.”

Nancy Cole wasn’t surprised at all by her own correct analysis, even a little proud: “Given the current context, gathering information and understanding the full picture—if I didn’t have at least this much sensitivity, I’d be unqualified as a journalist, right?”

Susan Clark: “……”

It wasn’t until Samuel Grant entered a café that Susan Clark finally opened the car door and got out, with Nancy Cole following close behind.

“Oh, it’s really not that big a deal.” Seeing Susan Clark walking so fast, Nancy Cole jogged a couple of steps to catch up, not forgetting to glance back at the Mercedes parked by the roadside. “It’s just a Mercedes C, about three hundred thousand or so—not really a great car. Truly rich people wouldn’t even look at it. Besides, if we work hard, it’s not like we couldn’t afford one.”

Hearing this, Susan Clark also looked back at the car, but in her mind appeared the figure of Ian Shaw.

She herself switched between Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, yet bought her niece a Mercedes worth just over three hundred thousand.

This man wasn’t just stingy—he was tacky.

Thinking of Ian Shaw, Susan Clark touched her empty earlobe, lost in thought.

——

At dusk, the first wave of rush hour hit the Jiangcheng CBD. Pedestrians hurried by, and traffic flowed in an orderly fashion.

A black Rolls-Royce slowly merged into the stream of cars.

Ian Shaw sat in the back seat, took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and rubbed his brow, with a meeting summary placed beside him.

The moment he opened his eyes, he seemed to catch a glimpse of something small and shiny on the seat next to him.

He put his glasses back on and looked carefully—it was a pearl earring.

Ian Shaw picked it up, just wondering whose it could be, when Stephen Brooks’s phone rang in the front seat.

He answered, responded with a couple of “mm”s, hesitated for a moment, then turned and handed the phone back.

“Mr. Shi, reporter Susan Clark from Financial Weekly is calling for you.”

Ian Shaw lowered his eyes, clasped the earring in his palm, and took Stephen Brooks’s phone with his other hand.

He answered calmly, and the other side immediately spoke.

She called him “Mr. Shi,” her tone dropping at the end, sounding a bit flustered.

“I think I left my earring in your car. Did you see it? It’s a pearl earring.”

Ian Shaw loosened his palm again.

Night was falling, the sky shifting from dusky yellow to a deep blue. Only the driver’s reading light was on in the car, its glow spilling into the back seat, making the pearl in his palm gleam with a soft luster.

“No, I haven’t seen it.”

“……” Susan Clark paused, then continued, “Could you please check again? This earring is really important to me.”

“How important?”

“……” Susan Clark paused again.

Is that really the point?

Forget it.

“It’s… my grandmother gave it to my mother, and my mother gave it to me.”

Silence on the other end.

Susan Clark choked up a little. “It’s a family heirloom.”

Still no response.

Susan Clark took a deep breath, her voice already tinged with tears. “It’s… my dowry. I’m supposed to wear it at my wedding. Every time I see it, I think of my grandmother. I haven’t seen her in such a long, long time.”

This performance was full of emotion, pitiful and moving.

There was a moment of silence on the line, then Ian Shaw’s usually cool voice sounded a bit hoarse.

“Mm, I see it now.”

Susan Clark squinted and smiled, her whole body relaxing as she spun half a circle on her toes.

Using the earring as an excuse to get a meeting—mission accomplished.

“So…”

Susan Clark didn’t finish her sentence, waiting to see Ian Shaw’s reaction.

A calm voice came from the other end.

“Your dowry is made of plastic.”

Susan Clark: “……”

Chapter 8

Marquez once said that as we journey through this eternal road of life, we must run through hardships and be reborn from setbacks.

So Susan Clark decided to rise from the ashes of this awkward moment.

What’s wrong with plastic?

It changed human daily life, became the greatest invention, and at one point, due to environmental pollution, the worst invention—a true hero of our times. You look down on it?

“My ancestors were poor, life was hard back then, we were farmers, never seen much of the world.”