chapter 6

“Enough!” Chu Heng shouted.

Silence fell all around.

Liu Ruo trembled all over, raising her head timidly, her bright eyes glancing at me with hope.

The meaning was obvious.

She had ruined my marriage, made me the laughingstock of the capital, and felt deeply guilty.

If I did not speak, she would never stop.

Very well.

Then let her continue.

I raised my brows slightly, lowered my eyes, and sipped my tea.

Liu Ruo gritted her teeth, bent down, and was about to kowtow again.

Suddenly, Chu Heng strode forward, and with a slap, knocked the teacup from my hand.

“Xie Shuyin, don’t go too far!”

“Xie Shuyin, is this the bearing of the Xie Clan Eldest Daughter?”

Chu Heng glared at me coldly, startling the servants around us into kneeling on the ground.

He turned and pulled Liu Ruo up, gently touching her forehead with concern. “Xie Shuyin, apologize.”

“If you apologize now, I will act as if nothing ever happened.”

I almost laughed out loud.

I blamed myself for being too naive back then.

After catching Liu Ruo in the act, I wrote to Chu Heng that very night, telling him what I had seen and heard.

I asked him to keep an eye on Liu Ruo.

The next day, Liu Ruo was dead.

She really was dead.

Rumor had it that she refused to become a concubine and took her own life out of shame and anger.

Chu Heng wrote back: “Thanks to Shuyin’s warning. Those who deceive me shall be executed.”

After that, the matter was dropped.

For so many years, I thought he had turned the tables and killed Liu Ruo.

After all, he had always hated being deceived most of all.

Until just before he died.

It turned out that the ‘one who deceived me’ he spoke of was me.