After the two finished their meal, Yang Feng was ready to take her back home. But he had to get ready first so Zhao Lifei waited for him in his living room. Sitting on the plush couch with her legs crossed, she was browsing her phone when she suddenly remembered she left her purse in his room.

  She decided to look for his room and get her purse back.

  After walking for a while, she realized she was lost. Huffing in annoyance, she tried to retrace her steps only to find herself getting more and more lost.

  She looked around and noticed that there wasn’t a single person in sight. She remembered how she didn’t see any of them while she was walking to the kitchen earlier, and they didn’t appear until he called for them.

  After a few seconds of thinking over her options, she reluctantly decided to text Yang Feng as she descended the stairs back to the living room.

  Although she said she was going to delete his number, she actually didn’t. Regardless of how angry she felt at the time, she knew it was foolish to lose contact with this man. As much as she hated to admit it, he was very useful.

  Pulling out her phone, she began to walk without paying attention to anything else but her phone, thus, she didn’t see a person walking in the opposite direction as her.

  Before she realized it, she had roughly collided with a servant.

  In a matter of seconds, plates flew to the air and the sound of shattering can be heard. The leftover food from the plates spilled all over the servant, staining Pei Qing’s dress. The loud sound of broken plates was enough to garner the attention of a few servants down the halls.

  When Zhao Lifei saw it was Pei Qing, she quickly deduced that it was a scheme. Why else would an experienced maid carry out dirty plates from their recently concluded breakfast to the living room instead of the kitchen area that was adjoining the dining room?

  Nonetheless, she decided to be civilized. She knew she was also at fault for not watching where she was going.

  "Here, let me help-"

  "No, thanks." Pei Qing gritted out, her voice filled with annoyance. She miscalculated and got out of balance during the impact. Fortunately, she did not fall on any of the broken plates.

  Her original plan was to spill everything onto Zhao Lifei, not the other way around. But who knew she would manage to walk out of this mess spotless?

  Upon seeing her dirtied uniform, Pei Qing’s blood was boiling with anger. This uniform was fresh from the dry cleaners! Since she wanted to impress Yang Feng, instead of having her uniform washed along with the other servant uniforms in the estate, she goes out of her way to have it dry cleaned. The cleaning wasn’t cheap, and now it’s completely ruined!

  Since she was one of the higher-ranked maids here, her outfit was different from the normal servant so none of the other maid’s uniform could replace it.

  But she decided to push her anger away. She wanted to play the victim here and even sacrificed her precious heirloom for the scheme.

  "My bracelet!" Pei Qing screamed, her eyes zooming onto the broken bracelet on the floor, pieces of it were mixed with the leftover food.

  A few servants paused what they were doing to look at the commotion. Whey they saw the mess, they began to pity Pei Qing. She looked like the obvious victim with her broken bracelet, and messy appearance. Pei Qing successfully pulled the other servants to her side by being so loud and acting as if she was shoved to the floor.

  Zhao Lifei was initially apologetic. Now she felt her lips twitch in anger at how Pei Qing was deliberately drawing attention to herself. Was this karma for all of the things she did to Xia Mengxi?

  "How much is the cleaning? I’ll pay for it. In regards to your broken bracelet, if you can gather the remaining pieces, I’ll get someone to fix it for you." Zhao Lifei thought she was already being kind since this woman was clearly trying to make her snap.

  "Do you think money can fix this? You destroyed the family heirloom passed down from my dead grandmother." Pei Qing’s voice purposefully cracked at the end when she talked about her grandmother. Using her deceased grandmother’s jewelry for this plan had made it easier for her to cry and fake the pain.

  Zhao Lifei pressed her lips together, creased lines slightly forming on her forehead. Somehow, she felt like a hypocrite for using the same method as Yang Feng.

  When she noticed the crowd of servants was beginning to get bigger, she decided it was better to talk somewhere else. "I don’t want to cause such a big scene, let’s talk about this in private. How about you change out of these clothes and-"

  "In private? So that you can secretly pay me money to shut up? Money can’t bring back the dead and fix something passed on from generations!" Pei Qing was persistent in making Zhao Lifei look bad by making her look like the stereotypical rich woman.

  The servants originally disliked Pei Qing because of the way she always flaunted that her position was slightly better than most of them. But right now, they were really falling into her trap.

  A lot of them were people from normal backgrounds who also disliked the idea of people who thought money was the key solution to everything.

  Majority of them was also raised to treat their grandparents with respect, so to have heard something as precious as a family heirloom was broken by Zhao Lifei’s carelessness, it made them point fingers at her.

  Zhao Lifei felt her eyes narrow at Pei Qing’s words. It was unfathomable to her how a foolish maid like her was trying to test her patience.

  She felt her fingers dig into her skin when the devil on her shoulder whispered for her to lash out at Pei Qing for trying to embarrass her.

  The servants whispered about Zhao Lifei. "Tch, she’s just another rich woman who thinks she can seduce her way into Master Feng’s bed……"

  "Look at how unapologetic she is. I feel bad for Pei Qing. I heard that bracelet was really precious to her."

  "Shame on this woman for thinking money can fix the issue. Who does she think she is? Pei Qing comes from a middle-class family. Money isn’t an issue for her."

  "How rude! I hope she doesn’t become our future Madam."

  "Hah! I doubt Master Feng would fall for someone with such a bad temper."

  The whispers were low, but Zhao Lifei’s ears were keen and sharp from her days of listening to gossip. As a woman who once ruled over other socialites, her skill in eavesdropping had been honed to perfection. That was how she used to control them — by knowing their darkest secrets.