Chapter 29

Duan Jiawen suddenly turned toward Suhang and dropped to her knees. “If he goes public with it, my grandpa won’t be able to take it, my parents will be furious to death, and I’ll die too! Please, I’m begging you!”

Suhang said nothing.

“Didn’t you say you don’t love her?” Duan Jiawen lifted her tear-streaked face and questioned him.

“I…”

“You don’t love her, and she doesn’t love you. What are you still clinging to? Even if we both owe her, can’t we make it up to her double in the future? Besides, she doesn’t ever have to know about this. But for us, this is life and death!”

Suhang said he needed to think about it, then left like a lost soul.

As he was leaving, he told Duan Jiawen not to contact him again. But he kept getting threatening texts from Xu Zhi. He blocked him, only to receive anonymous emails pushing him for an answer, asking how his “consideration” was going-was he going to hand his wife over, or was he ready to be exposed?

He was eaten up with regret. He felt that despite all his caution, despite trying so hard to avoid repeating his father’s tragedy, he had still made a terrible mistake. Was he really that “little bastard,” with it all written into his blood?

The shadow of his father terrified him. Crumbling under the pressure, he finally gave in and agreed.

That night, he drank with me and slipped something into my drink, forcing himself to smile as he coaxed me to finish it. Afterward he knocked on my door to make sure I was fully asleep before leaving, and when he left, he deliberately left a crack in the door.

But the whole process was countless times more painful than he’d imagined.

He fled to the underground parking garage and curled up in the driver’s seat all night. That night was as long as a century for him; every minute felt like being slowly sliced apart with a dull knife.

When he first married me, he thought his life could do without love and rely only on rationality. He was good at using reason to manage all his roles, and among them, “good husband” seemed the easiest.

To be a good employee, he had to read his boss’s mind and still rely on true ability to get real results.

To be a good colleague, he had to keep smoothing things over, getting along with people eight, ten hours a day or even more.

Being a husband seemed like the easiest of all. Come home, show his face, eat a meal, then go back to their respective rooms. Being a husband didn’t require any performance or assessment. A wife’s thoughts weren’t hard to guess; there was a national, uniform standard. Be romantic, buy flowers and gifts once in a while, say sweet things, know how to take care of her, pay the marital dues on schedule… Wasn’t that the easiest role out of everything he had to play? For him, it was effortless and had nothing to do with whether he loved her or not.

But slowly, he realized that I was changing, and those positive changes of mine truly made him happy from the bottom of his heart. Without noticing when it started, he wanted me to be a bit happier, wanted to make me smile a bit more.

Until the moment he was forced to leave the door of his own home ajar for a strange man, the pain and torment he suffered were beyond anything he’d ever endured. Only then did he realize he had already fallen in love with me. He had countless impulses to rush back upstairs, but it felt like he’d already taken one wrong step and then another and another, with no way to turn back. In the end he lost to his own cowardice, lost to his fear.

He didn’t sleep all night. At first light he came home and found my bedroom door open. He knew the man had already been there-and had already left.

His hand was shaking as he gently pushed the bedroom door shut. He didn’t even have the courage to glance at the bed.

Back in his own room, he slammed his head against the wall and slapped himself across the face like a madman. He slid down to the floor, screaming silently like a fish dying on land. He realized then that the most painful punishment wasn’t being ruined and disgraced, but hurting the person you love with your own hands.

He swore to himself that he would use the rest of his life, everything he had, to protect me and atone for this one night.

The next day, he forced himself to act calm and normal, as if nothing had happened. He carefully avoided any mention of the previous night and wrapped himself up tight, like a sugar-coated pill with nothing but bitterness inside that no one could swallow.

I fought with him, saying he was like a robot, that only last night had he felt like a living person.

He was deeply shocked, repressed, self-loathing, and in pain.

Then I hurried to apologize and cried as I told him I’d fallen in love with him.

He felt like he’d shattered.

He hated himself. Even the reflection in the mirror made him sick.

But now he could only keep acting; there was no way out. He desperately wanted to resolve the crisis in front of him, to cover everything up, to force the derailed train back onto the tracks. Even if every turning gear shredded his flesh, he was still going to fight with everything he had.

He thought the nightmare was over-until his birthday night, when his phone suddenly buzzed.

“Tonight, your wife… leave her to me.”

The email slithered into his vision like a venomous snake.

He was beyond furious.

He called directly and cursed the man out. He spat out a vicious threat: “If you want to go public, then go public. I’m not afraid of anything. Even if I go to hell, I’ll kill you first, you bastard!”

But how could he not be afraid?

The moment he turned his head and saw me, fear flooded back in, and cold sweat soaked his back.