chapter 4
The moment I entered the basement, I saw the director strapped to an operating table.
Director Chen had always cared above all about appearances. Now he looked as wretched as a beaten dog.
After three days and nights without food, none of his earlier arrogance remained. He had spent those days in endless darkness with nothing but fear and despair for company. His whole body trembled beyond his control, and his voice was painfully weak.
“Please let me go. I’ll give you the orphanage. Please, just give me some water…”
“Do you remember her?”
I cut him off and held a photograph before his eyes. His face went white in an instant.
“Shen… Shen Ting?” he whispered. “Shen Ting… Shen Man… Who the hell are you?”
I smiled, and he shuddered violently.
Still trying to bluster, he said, “You don’t dare kill me. You don’t. We live under the rule of law—ah!”
Without blinking, I drove a knife into him. Blood poured from the wound, and he screamed.
“You can’t bear it when we’ve only just begun?”
A slow smile opened across my face like a flower in the dark, beautiful and dangerous.
“When Zhao Ruo sliced my face apart, when Zhao Ming burned me with cigarettes, it hurt far more than this. You called me melodramatic and disgusting. You said I deserved the beatings. When I went to the police, you took ten thousand yuan to force me onto my knees and made me apologize to them.
“Director Chen, I truly hoped you would save me back then.
“But now, I want you dead far more.”
His eyes bulged as tremors seized him.
“I raised you, and this is how you repay me? You ungrateful little beast! I should have strangled you the day I found—”
Before he could finish, Xia Zhi kicked him hard in the chest.
He screamed and lost the strength to speak, left with nothing but ragged gasps like an old dog clinging to life.
I drew the knife out and stopped the bleeding with practiced efficiency.
He stared at me, bewildered, unable to understand what I meant to do.
“You’re right. I can’t kill you. I ought to repay you properly for raising me.
“Your stomach is delicate, so you won’t have to eat. Every day, I’ll have someone give you two bags of glucose and three bags of nutrients. I promise you won’t be neglected.”
Director Chen’s face turned as white as paper.
His blood sugar was dangerously high. Glucose could ruin him. The nutrients would keep him alive and lucid while the sugar slowly ate through his organs and even his bones, until he became a heap of rotting flesh.
Waiting to die was far more terrifying than death.
This woman was insane.
He shrieked hysterically, “You vicious little bitch! Why don’t you die? Why didn’t you die back then?”
My smile grew brighter.
“How could I die in peace while all you abusers went on living? You’re the ones who deserve death. You’re the ones who belong in hell.”
I gave the IV bag a gentle shake and turned away.
“Shen Ting! Get back here—”
The basement door closed, cutting off Director Chen’s roar.
No one cared.