A Pleasure Doing Business [Marriage Before Love]

This time last year, Xu Mingyi waited for Lu Ye to come to a Western restaurant and celebrate her birthday with her. Instead, she received the news that he had died in a car accident.

At this moment this year, she sits in Lu Zhou's office and hands him a contract. Her eyes glimmer and her red lips part. "Mr. Lu, the one-year trial period is over. I think we know each other well enough now."

Across from her, Lu Zhou wears an impeccably tailored suit. His long fingers lightly touch the corner of the contract on his desk, his gaze cool and detached. "Miss Xu, please remember that the basis of our arrangement is your sincere love for my younger brother."

Xu Mingyi says nothing, meeting his eyes.

A moment later, she puts on her usual alluring smile. "Of course. It's a pleasure doing business with you."

On this day the following year, Xu Mingyi "accidentally" reveals at a lavish birthday party that she has married into a wealthy family, setting the whole city abuzz with rumors.

Fans of the Ming-Ye couple take over the entire trending page, insisting that Xu Mingyi used Lu Ye to climb into Beijing's Lu family, then slept with his older brother less than two years after Lu Ye died. They say she deserves to die.

In no time, both the Lu and Song families become the laughingstock of Beijing's elite circles.

That night, Lu Zhou hurries home before midnight and casually leaves a cake outside Xu Mingyi's bedroom, only to bump into her as she heads out in a stunning outfit.

Xu Mingyi looks at the cake in his hand and smiles inscrutably. The warm yellow light is dim, and Lu Zhou's expression doesn't change. He says only, "You've worked hard. It's been a pleasure working with you."

On her birthday the year after that, Lu Zhou prepares a surprise in advance and secretly learns a little pastry-making. It takes him all day to bake a cake he likes.

He opens the front door, full of anticipation, but his wife isn't on the sofa.

In the bedroom, Xu Mingyi's eyes are red, and her face is alight with an excitement he has never seen before. "Azhou, Lu Ye... Lu Ye is back!"

The cake slips from Lu Zhou's hands and lands on the soft carpet, lopsided, with one corner caved in.

Overcome with panic, he kisses her at some point, as though desperately clinging to her before the end of the world.

On Xu Mingyi's twenty-sixth birthday, Lu Ye leaves the country, leaving a letter for his brother and sister-in-law: "Wishing you a lifetime of happiness together."

That day, Lu Zhou receives a postcard of his own, with a message written on it: "Treat her better."

That day, Xu Mingyi places a card on the bedside table. The familiar handwriting slowly disappears: "As long as you're happy, I can rest easy."

That same day, Lu Zhou gently carries a slightly tipsy Xu Mingyi to the garden swing, reverently kissing her lips as he murmurs dreamily, "Mingyi, I'm so lucky to get to spend the rest of my life working with you."

Alluring, glamorous actress who knows how to reel people in x cold, possessive CEO

"This partnership, planned for so long, will have us use our sincerity as bait and walk into danger. We must make sure those people lose everything."

"It was a pleasure working with you then, and it still is now."

[Blurb being revised, premise unchanged, screenshot dated 2023.08.24]

Theme: With love as your sail, you can weather any storm