A Fire in the Besieged City

Single mom and bank employee x scumbag playboy tycoon industrialist

Older man finally yields | Mature romance | Kept woman | Republican era

Song Wanci came to Jincheng for love and married a well-bred young man who had returned from studying abroad.

All she got in return was her husband's betrayal, along with the mountain of high-interest debt he racked up at the racetrack and through stock speculation.

Her husband was accused by a dance-hall singer of swindling her out of her money and affection. The scandal appeared as a tiny item at the edge of the Minbao newspaper, but the whole city of Jincheng heard about it.

She had already become a laughingstock.

But Song Wanci worked at a bank in Jincheng, and her husband's ruined credit was like a blade hanging over her head. In those days, when it was so hard for a woman to earn a living, this job was all she had to keep herself afloat, and all she had to raise her daughter.

She couldn't afford to lose her job. So she spent everything she had paying off his debts, squeezing with her daughter into a cramped room in a lane house, waiting for that man to come back so she could announce their divorce in the papers.

Song Wanci thought her life couldn't get any worse. Looking at the glittering dancers before her, she thought in despair that if all else failed, she could make a living as a dancer.

But at the dance hall, she met Zhou Yanbai.

A tycoon of industry, forty years old, self-made, and once divorced.

She knew he was a playboy, and he never hid his unrestrained lifestyle, with women coming and going at his side.

But that didn't matter. It was common for men from families like his to have several wives at home.

All she needed was for him to become her client. Not much, just for him to deposit a hundred thousand silver dollars with her, and she could keep her job.

A hundred thousand silver dollars was nothing to him, not even as much as the cash he had given his ex-wife in their divorce.

The first time they met, she followed the bank manager to his office. He looked her over from head to toe as if she were an object.

The second time, he brought a suitcase full of money to her door.

“I want to help you and your daughter.”

Zhou Yanbai smiled gently, but Song Wanci knew he wanted her to throw herself into his arms.

Zhou Yanbai dealt with that man for her, spent lavishly on her, took her to the social scene at the Huayi Hotel, and became her backer as she climbed the ranks at the bank.

He would even drive her daughter to school himself, picking her up from the church school in the foreign concession.

But he said he’d suffered through marriage once and would never marry again.

He said they were each getting what they wanted, that she could leave whenever she liked and he wouldn’t stop her.

That was fine.

All Song Wanci wanted was for her name, Song Wanci, to be written in the account manager field on his bank account.

[Content warning]

Everyone is awful.

Theme: Women should stand on their own feet