Fatty Goodwin, strictly speaking, also belongs to the second type of person, but he made his fortune early. He owns an antique shop called Xiyan Zhai in the Caocangmen Antique Market, dealing in calligraphy, paintings, and bronzes, and has already accumulated a fortune of tens of millions.

Fatty Goodwin was also an employee of the Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau in his early years. After making his fortune by reselling antiques, he took early retirement, but he never severed ties with the bureau. Whenever he had some old item he wasn’t sure about, he would always ask his old colleagues at the bureau to help with authentication.

Over time, Henry Brooks also became quite close to him.

Fatty Goodwin is notorious in the circle for being lecherous. He has long kept two mistresses and still fools around outside.

When Grace Sutton got together with Fatty Goodwin, it was a big blow to Henry Brooks, but he didn’t distance himself from Fatty Goodwin because of it. On the contrary, he followed him into the antique market, using his professional knowledge and his persuasive manner and demeanor to resell antiques—real or fake—or to use his deep expertise in calligraphy and painting to make subtle alterations to fake antiques. In the past two years, he too has accumulated a considerable fortune.

As for Grace Sutton being with Fatty Goodwin, besides being attracted to his money, the main reason was his resources in the antique circle. After all, Fatty Goodwin’s tens of millions aren’t considered a huge fortune in Nanjing, and with Grace Sutton’s qualifications, she could easily have married into a billionaire family.

But Grace Sutton wasn’t content to just take the twenty or thirty thousand yuan “household allowance” from Fatty Goodwin each month. She quickly started dealing antiques herself. With Fatty Goodwin backing her up, Grace Sutton became even bolder and more unpredictable in her dealings. The fortune she’s accumulated in the past two years is definitely several times that of Henry Brooks, and in a few years, she might even leave Fatty Goodwin far behind.

Grace Sutton brushed aside the hair at her temple and leaned over to look into the alley.

The entrance to the alley was on Henry Brooks’s side. Grace Sutton was sitting in the passenger seat and, being a bit nearsighted, naturally leaned over, almost pressing up against Henry Brooks.

This posture stretched Grace Sutton’s slender waist, forming an extremely alluring curve with her full, rounded hips.

A sliver of her waist was exposed, and under the black lace undershirt, it spilled out slightly—white and tender as if sculpted from jade, seemingly delicate enough to break at a touch.

Henry Brooks withdrew his gaze from Grace Sutton’s waist and hips. Seeing the ear revealed beneath her waterfall of hair, clean and crystal-like jade, with fine blue veins clearly visible, he took a deep breath, suppressing his inner restlessness, and joked, “Are you trying to seduce me like this?”

“……” Grace Sutton turned her head and glanced at Henry Brooks, provoking him, “Well, why don’t you make a move then!”

Henry Brooks laughed, masking his embarrassment.

He hadn’t lacked for women these past two years and was no longer as innocent as before. Grace Sutton had also, overtly and covertly, given him plenty of chances, but he never made a move on her.

It wasn’t that Henry Brooks feared Fatty Goodwin, nor did he value the so-called “bullshit friendship” between them. He just felt that sneaking around with Grace Sutton behind Fatty Goodwin’s back might be the ultimate physical pleasure, but what else could it bring?

Could that erase the hidden pain he’d carried all these years?

He also didn’t see Grace Sutton as a simple, vain woman. He suspected that her attempts to seduce him, whether intentional or not, might be her way of trying to use him to get rid of Fatty Goodwin.

Even though the pain from back then hadn’t faded, and even though Henry Brooks couldn’t deny the fatal attraction Grace Sutton held for him, he still didn’t want to become a stepping stone to be heartlessly used by a woman.

“You want to do this deal yourself, don’t you?” Henry Brooks asked.

Grace Sutton was taken aback, looking at Henry Brooks with a hint of confusion, as if she didn’t know why he was asking.

Henry Brooks continued to smile nonchalantly, “What, you came here ahead of Fatty Goodwin—are you worried he’ll screw you over? I mean, you two have already seen each other naked in bed, isn’t it exhausting to be so guarded?”

A flash of panic crossed Grace Sutton’s eyes at having her secret exposed, but she quickly regained her composure. Her beautiful face broke into a charming smile for Henry Brooks, and she didn’t deliberately pull away from him. Her red lips seemed to brush against Henry Brooks’s ear as she breathed softly, “Who knows which vixen’s bed Fatty Goodwin is dead on right now? I can’t reach him by phone, so I just came over out of boredom to see if I could catch him cheating somewhere.”

“If you keep this up, I really will eat you up!”

Henry Brooks couldn’t care less about the scheming between Grace Sutton and Fatty Goodwin, but he didn’t dwell on it either. He didn’t pursue the topic further, just gave Grace Sutton’s waist a playful pinch, doing his best to resist the urge to wrap his arm around her slender waist. He leaned back against the seat, not noticing the fleeting look of melancholy in Grace Sutton’s eyes.

At that moment, his phone rang. Henry Brooks picked it up and saw it was Fatty Goodwin calling.

“I’m in the alley behind you. You and Grace Sutton park the car and come over,” Fatty Goodwin said on the phone.

Henry Brooks and Grace Sutton got out of the car and walked back more than a hundred meters, where they saw Fatty GoodwinJames Goodwin poking his bulky body out of a courtyard deep in the alley. His fat, greasy round face and triangular eyes showed a hint of wariness and unease as he waved them in.

Henry Brooks and Grace Sutton being together didn’t bother Fatty Goodwin, or rather, his mind was elsewhere at the moment.

Deep in the alley was a very inconspicuous courtyard. The old wooden door had almost all its paint peeled off, leaving marks of rain and time. The slippery stone threshold had been worn down by countless footsteps.