Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The trigger was halfway down.

“Tch.”

A soft click.

Pain shot through my wrist, sudden and sharp, as if it had been caught in an iron vise.

My grip went slack, and the gun fell to the carpet with a muffled thud.

I whipped my head around.

Shen Jiuyuan was still sitting there. His posture hadn’t changed at all.

Only at some point, he had reached out and caught my wrist with perfect precision.

There was no expression on his face. If anything, he looked faintly, carelessly bored.

“I was messing with you.” He let go, withdrew his hand, and picked up the white handkerchief on the desk, wiping his fingers unhurriedly, as though he had just touched something filthy.

“It’d be such a waste to kill a dog I’ve raised for ten years.”

I stood frozen in place, the force of his grip still lingering on my wrist, cold to the bone.

It was as if all the blood in my body had rushed back to my brain in an instant, then drained away just as quickly, leaving only a ringing in my ears and a weakness close to collapse.

“Master Shen.” My voice was painfully hoarse.

He lifted his eyes. Those absurdly beautiful eyes swept over my pale face, and the corner of his mouth curved in the faintest smile.

“Go back,” he said calmly, as if giving the most ordinary order in the world.

“Heal up before you come again. Don’t stand here being an eyesore.”

He paused, his gaze settling on my face with the cool appraisal of someone inspecting merchandise.

“As for what you said tonight,” he said softly, the words dropping like a discarded cigarette butt, “I’ll pretend I never heard it.”

My throat tightened, as if something had lodged there and blocked it completely.

My heart beat slowly inside my chest. Once. Then again. Heavy and numb.

When he finished wiping his hand, he tossed the handkerchief, now stained with a little of the blood from my wrist, into the wastebasket beside him.

Then he rose, came around the desk, and walked toward me.

His leather shoes made almost no sound on the carpet.

He stopped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the familiar scent of cigars on him, mixed with the faintest trace of blood.

He raised a hand. Not the one that had gripped my wrist, but the other.

The knuckles were distinct, the fingers long and elegant, too beautiful to belong to a hand that held a gun.

Those fingers brushed lightly over my cheek, wiping away a damp streak I couldn’t tell was sweat or something else.

The gesture could almost have been called gentle.

But his eyes were cold.

“Remember that?” he asked.

His voice was low, almost against my ear.

I lowered my eyes, avoiding his gaze.

My throat worked, and I forced out a single word.

“Yes.”

He withdrew his hand, turned around, and settled back into the broad chair. Picking up the document he had yet to finish reading, he didn’t look at me again.

“Get out.”