Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Half a month ago, I gave He Xiaolu a sports car.

She had always loved wild sports like drag racing. Her eyes lit up with excitement as she pulled me into the car, flooring the accelerator toward the mountain roads on the outskirts of the city.

On a deserted mountain path, the car came to a stop in a secluded corner.

He Xiaolu leaned against the hood and reached out to tug at my tie.

Under the moonlight, her seductive expression made her look like a mountain sprite.

I gripped her neck and kissed her fiercely.

In the heat of the moment, my phone suddenly rang.

It was Xie Run.

After I pressed decline, it rang again, incessantly.

He Xiaolu pushed me away, sat up, and lit a cigarette. “Just answer it.”

I picked up impatiently. “I’m with a client discussing a project. Why do you keep calling?”

Xie Run, usually so composed, sounded panicked. “Our daughter suddenly has a high fever. I’m taking her to the hospital now. Where are you?”

I grew tense immediately. “How is Yueyue? Don’t panic yet…”

He Xiaolu peeled off her silk stockings, her snow-white feet pressing against my lap.

She tilted her head back, applying pressure with her foot as she slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke into my face.

My blood surged and roared. My breathing grew heavy. “Go to the hospital with Yueyue first. I’ll head over as soon as I’m done here…”

Without waiting for Xie Run to finish, I hung up and pinned He Xiaolu against the car, unable to wait a second longer.

She knew my daughter was sick, yet she refused to play the bigger person and let me go back.

That was exactly why I liked He Xiaolu.

I had been a rule-follower since childhood. My youth was nothing but an endless cycle of test prep and lab experiments.

On my entrepreneurial journey, I had been cautious and meticulous, never allowing myself a moment’s relaxation.

Later, I met and married a “good girl” like Xie Run through a blind date. Life was as bland as water.

But He Xiaolu was different. She was like an untamed wildcat.

She drank with me, took me racing, and was willing to go along with all my craziest ideas.

She expressed her desires openly and fought for what she wanted by any means necessary, never pretending to be anything she wasn’t.

He Xiaolu made me feel like I was living for the first time.

After a night of madness…

When I rushed to the hospital the next morning, my daughter had already been admitted to the isolation ward with acute pneumonia.

Xie Run was keeping watch outside the ward. She looked up at me.

I pulled her into a light embrace. “I’m sorry… there was an emergency with the client last night.”

Her body went stiff. She looked up and asked, “Is that true?”

I froze, momentarily speechless.

A nurse called her to handle some paperwork. Without waiting for my answer, she stood up in silence.

I went to the restroom to wash my face and clear my head, only to discover several red marks on my neck inside my open collar.

Xie Run had seen them, but she never brought it up again.

After that, she went back to work as usual and kept the house in perfect order. However, she became much quieter. Aside from when she was with our daughter, she hardly spoke.

I understood that she was slowly processing this on her own.

Xie Run was an optimistic, contented person with a mild and gentle temperament.

As a civil lawyer, she encountered all sorts of bizarre clients, yet she never complained when she got home. Instead, she would tell me about them as if they were jokes.

No matter what happened, Xie Run could always find the silver lining.

When she accidentally broke her leg, she joked that it was great because now she could finally lie down and get some proper rest.

When she lost her purse, she didn’t get anxious or angry, saying she finally had a reason to buy a new one.

When the power went out at home and our daughter cried from fear of the dark, she lit scented candles and played shadow puppets on the wall with her until Yueyue was so excited she completely forgot to be afraid.

Now that I’ve cheated, how will she rationalize this to herself?

It has been ten years since we first fell in love, got married, and had our daughter.

Now that my career is successful, everyone envies her luck for marrying a man with such potential.

Among men with my net worth, how many actually keep themselves clean?

But on second thought, I really had fallen too hard for He Xiaolu.

Ever since she came along, I was like a young boy who had just tasted meat; I couldn’t go a day without her. I no longer had the slightest interest in the bland intimacy of marriage.

Thinking back, it seemed I hadn’t touched Xie Run in nearly six months.

She always assumed it was mid-life stress and never really said anything about it.

Because of our daughter’s illness, I felt guilty, so I gave He Xiaolu the cold shoulder for a few days and went home straight after work to be with Xie Run and Yueyue.

As compensation, I wanted to get intimate with Xie Run, but she said she needed to take care of our daughter during the night and sent me to sleep in the study.

I was speechless with annoyance.

Fine. If you won’t appreciate my good intentions, then take your time to figure it out.

Anyway, with Xie Run’s mild temperament, she would eventually come to terms with everything in the end.