Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When Su Yuan couldn’t find me in the living room after coming home, he headed upstairs as expected.

I had only turned on the warm light by the bed, and I huddled into the flickering shadows, waiting for him with my arms crossed.

I was afraid he would notice I had just been crying.

That would ruin my momentum.

He wrapped his arms around me from behind and kissed my neck.

He smelled like lemon candy, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he had been out fooling around the day before our wedding. Where else would that sweet scent have come from?

I jerked away from him.

The dim light reflected in his eyes, mottled and unclear. He simply raised an eyebrow.

“Wife?”

His thumb brushed the corner of my eye, searing my skin like a flame.

“Have you been crying?”

I hated how observant he was. It was that very skill he used to play me like a fiddle.

“Su Yuan, let’s not get married after all.”

After I spoke, he stared at me, stunned for several seconds.

Then, before I could react, he covered my mouth and pinned me down onto the sofa, turning off the light in one fluid motion.

We both plunged into the sudden darkness. His hair brushed against the crook of my neck, sending a wave of itchiness through me.

I started to muffle my protests and kick at him, but he clamped his legs over my knees.

“Shh, don’t say it, wife.”

In the dark, I realized his voice had long since grown hoarse, low and trembling.

“You saw that chat log.”

He was clever, as always, guessing the reason instantly.

A stranger had sent me a record of a conversation he once had with his friends. The content was as sickening as a hunter describing how he stalks his prey.

He said he stayed with me for so long because I was easy to fool.

He said I was much easier to coax than other girls-that he could give me discounted roses after Valentine’s Day and I’d still cherish them.

He said he never once wore the hand-knitted scarf I gave him because it was too tacky.

He even said he was just playing around, and that the way I took it all seriously was truly hilarious to him.

…

“Those were photoshopped.”

His breath brushed against my collarbone, winding through my hair. He suddenly bit me-not hard, but enough to jerk my thoughts away.

There were so many screenshots, and the timestamps on the phone screen matched up with many things that happened back then. Only a fool would believe they were faked.

I grabbed the back of his neck, trying to pull his nuzzling head away.

“Do you really think I’m that easy to trick, Su Yuan?”

“Does playing me give you that much of a sense of achievement?”

In the darkness, he held me with a stubborn silence.

…

Actually, thinking back to when we first started dating, I was the only person who ever liked his social media posts.

We had mutual friends, yet no one else ever liked them.

I was stupid enough to think it was because of how important I was to him.

How ridiculous. It was just a tactic he used to deal with his girlfriend. It wasn’t even sophisticated, but it was enough to deceive me.