Chapter 1678: Den of Vipers

Lightning struck while heavy rain thundered across the capital. The night sky looked like a menacing dark abyss.

Inside a hotel suite in the Philippines, Iris Long woke up with a start as loud thunder boomed. Sweat dotted her forehead and neck while her whole back was drenched. She clutched her chest, trying to ensure that she was still breathing.

"What’s wrong, love?" Jin Liwei also woke up, disturbed by his wife’s movements and the storm outside.

She didn’t answer him but continued catching her breath.

When he saw her pallid complexion and sweaty appearance, all the sleepiness flew away from him. He sat up and pulled his wife in his embrace, comforting her.

"You’re okay, love. You’re fine. I’m here."

Iris felt like she had found her lifeline, holding onto her husband’s clothes for dear life while continuing to catch her breath.

After she calmed down enough, Jin Liwei kissed her forehead and climbed off the bed to get bottled water from the refrigerator. Then he started wiping her sweat with a clean towel while she drank.

She drank as if her life depended on it. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was.

"Nightmare?" he asked.

Jin Liwei was worried about her but forced himself to calm down. It had been a long time since his wife had woken up so rattled like this in the middle of the night. She usually slept deeply, and more often than not, without moving a single time until the morning. Seeing her like this, he couldn’t help but become distressed for her sake.

She hesitated to nod, her brows furrowing. "I don’t remember what I dreamed. I just remember the feeling of desolation...of being trapped...and I couldn’t breathe."

Jin Liwei pulled her in his embrace as they both settled back on the bed. He started patting her back, trying to lull her to sleep. "It’s okay if you don’t remember. Whatever it is, it’s just a bad dream. I’m here beside you. Always."

"I know," she said with a contented sigh before burrowing herself deeper in his arms.

Exhaustion filled her, but because of whatever nightmare she just had, she couldn’t fall asleep again. She pressed her ear against her husband’s chest and focused on his strong, steady heartbeat. The rhythm calmed her down, but she couldn’t help but try to remember what she had just dreamed.

In the end, she gave up. She really couldn’t remember.

The feeling it left her, however, remained.

Helplessness.

Suffocation.

Fear.

It was something that she didn’t want to experience ever again.

Jin Liwei could sense her restlessness, so he chatted with her. He wanted her to rest. She had been working almost nonstop since landing in the Philippines.

Originally, she had another series of work appointments tomorrow, but if the sudden storm didn’t abate by then, she would have a day off.

Their hotel suite had good soundproofing, so they couldn’t hear the rain or the traffic outside. Thunder, however, was something that they could feel even if the sound was muffled.

Jin Liwei could hear loud thunder booming every few minutes or so. Despite the blackout curtains, he could still see flickers of lightning through the tiny gaps in the curtains in their dim room.

Their team hadn’t anticipated such a heavy storm. Dom, however, wasn’t too bothered about it. He told them that the weather forecasts in the Philippines were notoriously inaccurate. The country was also known as one of the most typhoon-prone countries in the world. Its citizens had long learned how to live with the temperamental weather.

Looking at his rattled wife, Jin Liwei wished that the storm would continue until tomorrow, so that she could get some well-deserved rest. He considered himself a workaholic, but his wife was even more so. If nobody reminded her, she would gladly work for days on end without eating or sleeping.

She continued squirming in his embrace, a testament to her agitation.

So he could only do his best to distract her. Normally, he would just seduce her for the ultimate distraction, but he felt sorry for her. She really needed quality rest. He wasn’t a monster who couldn’t control his libido.

Instead, he started talking about what happened earlier during the day.

As soon as he opened the topic, Iris snorted.

"I knew from the dossier that Ketchup prepared that Girl Abante is not someone easy to deal with, but I still agreed to accept her show’s invitation to interview me. It’s because I trusted her reputation as one of the most famous interviewers in this country. I didn’t care about her character as long as she interviews me properly. Who knew that she would have such a big appetite and target me?"

Jin Liwei’s expression was also black. It took almost everything he had not to lose his temper while he watched Girl Abante targeting his wife earlier. His trust in his wife was the only thing that stopped him.

"Greedy people only care about getting what they want," he said. "People like her are already drunk with their own sense of wealth and power. They think that they can do anything without facing any consequences."

She sighed. "That’s true. She’s not the first one in the world and certainly won’t be the last."

Earlier that day, Girl Abante had tried several times to trap Iris Long into saying things that would spark controversy.

But would Iris Long allow her to freely do whatever she wanted?

Of course not!

Iris refused to back down. Whatever Girl threw at her, she countered. Girl was slippery, but Iris wasn’t an easy target either.

Girl Abante thought that she could be a snake waiting for her prey to step on her before righteously attacking back.

If her plan had succeeded, then she could have justified her actions by saying that Iris Long was the one who started it. After all, Girl had the final say in how the interview would be edited because it was her own show. She could manipulate the sequence of events through malicious editing. She had done this so many times before. Nobody had the guts to successfully call her out yet. Those who attempted it had already been long suppressed, their careers fading into oblivion.

What she hadn’t realized was that she had chosen the wrong person to target this time. If Girl Abante wanted to be a snake, then Iris Long would gladly be like a hawk that could see through everything.

Planning to prey on her?

Then Iris would prey on Girl instead!

When Girl Abante began to realize that things were spiralling out of her control, she attempted to backtrack, but Iris Long refused to let her go. It seemed that at one point, Girl wanted to terminate the interview altogether, but upon seeing Dominic Chua and the glam team recording everything that happened, she stopped herself.

In the end, she could only tuck her tail between her legs and resume a regular, vanilla interview.

No controversy, but nothing interesting either.

Even Iris Long thought that the last part of the interview was the most boring that she had to endure in her entire career so far.

It turned out that without Girl Abante’s thirst for controversy, her interview skills were only subpar. She was leagues behind someone like Jericho Maya, a legitimate award-winning journalist.

By the end of the tasteless interview, Iris Long beamed at the older woman, but her eyes remained cold.

She had said, "I had been very excited to visit the Philippines for the first time, not because of your beautiful nature but because of your people. My best friend, Dominic Chua, and his family are some of the kindest, warmest, loving, and most sincere people that I’ve ever met in my entire life. The Filipino Black Stars have also proven their loyalty and support for me despite my different nationality. The people who’ve welcomed me since I arrived in this country also did their best to make me feel at home.

"You, however, Madam, have claimed that you want me to feel welcome into your home. And I did at the beginning. I genuinely did. But I was soon proven wrong. This place is not a home, it’s a den of vipers."

She stood up and literally looked down at the still sitting Girl Abante.

"This is the first time that I felt so disappointed with Filipino hospitality. If not for my excellent experience at the set of ’Ready, Set, Lunch Party’ and their amazing hosts and staff, I would never want to step foot in this network ever again."

She glanced at the two network executives watching anxiously behind the cameras. "I’m beginning to wonder why someone like you, Madam, is so treasured by the management of this network. I don’t know the whole story about your relationship with this network’s management, and frankly, I don’t care. But I can confidently say that this is the worst interview experience that I have had in this country."

Then she looked Girl Abante straight in the eyes. "It’s up to you whether you broadcast this interview in your show or not. You can also edit it to make me look bad. I don’t care. You’re not the first to attempt to make me look bad. Thank you for inviting me to guest on your show, but I won’t be back. Let’s go, darling. Let’s go, everyone."

With that, Iris left with her husband and the rest of her entourage without looking back.

Nobody stopped them.

What she didn’t know (at first) was that as soon as she left, the two network executives started scolding Girl Abante.

All the network executives treated Iris Long and especially her husband, Liam Jin, as VVIPs.

Who knew if they could receive a substantial investment from the billionaire couple? Even a simple collaboration was more than welcome.

Now, however, Girl Abante had destroyed the first impression the network had worked so hard to build for the couple.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.