Chapter 4

Huo Zheng was spending more and more time at home.

And coming home earlier and earlier.

This was causing me considerable trouble.

But I didn’t dare say so.

I put on a delighted face.

While privately wondering.

Had the woman Huo Zheng was keeping on the side upset him lately?

Or had they broken up?

Honestly, couldn’t they talk it out? Why break up?

They were making my life miserable.

Fortunately, I was good at improvising.

By hiding things from one and dodging the other.

I managed to keep all three of us at peace.

Until two months later.

Huo Zheng went on a three-day business trip.

Fu Ciyan begged me to spend all three days at his place.

Ordinarily, no matter what I got up to outside.

I always went home at night.

The bare minimum expected of a married woman.

I agreed.

Fu Ciyan turned down all work for those three days.

We kept at it from morning until night.

It was as though we were husband and wife.

There was something I didn’t know.

Huo Zheng had come home early, on the second night.

So when I was kissing Fu Ciyan by the floor-to-ceiling window.

And saw Huo Zheng’s figure.

I naively assumed I was mistaken.

But you couldn’t really blame me.

Apart from that one terrifying glimpse.

When I looked more closely.

Huo Zheng was nowhere to be seen.

But ever since that trip.

Huo Zheng had been acting strangely.

He made love to me with desperate intensity every night.

He called me frequently during the day, too.

And kept insisting Uncle Wu accompany me.

Sometimes there was something in the way he looked at me, too.

Some emotion I couldn’t explain.

It left me with far fewer opportunities to commit my little crimes.

I had to tell Fu Ciyan we should meet less often for a while.

He wasn’t happy about it.

But there was nothing he could do except rage helplessly.

His position wasn’t exactly a respectable one, after all.

Less than half a month later.

I suddenly saw Fu Ciyan trending.

He’d slipped on the stairs and been knocked unconscious.

My heart instantly skipped a beat.

I was about to rush to the hospital.

Then Uncle Wu called.

“Madam, Mr. Huo has hit his head. He’s still unconscious in the hospital.”

My heart skipped two beats.

At this rate, I was going to die before either of them.

After much agonizing.

I went to see Huo Zheng first.

He lay pale in his hospital bed.

Even his usually stern face looked a little vulnerable now.

For some reason, it hurt.

I leaned down against his chest.

“Huo Zheng, please be all right. Wake up soon, okay?”

“I’m scared.”

Suddenly, someone caught my fingertips.

“Don’t be.”

I looked up in delight.

“Huo Zheng, you’re awake!”

The man’s face abruptly darkened. “Wen Yining, what did you just call me?!” he demanded through gritted teeth.

“You think I’m him?!”

I blinked.

“Should I call you Mr… Huo?”

Huo Zheng frowned.

He sat up and looked around.

His gaze swept over the doctors and nurses at his bedside.

Then stopped on Uncle Wu.

“I remember you. You work for… Huo Zheng…?”

Before any of us could work out what he meant.

He suddenly dropped my hand as though he’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Yining, I didn’t mean to!”

A moment later, his eyes fell on the window.

His pale face stared back from the glass.

He froze.

Then abruptly lay down again.

“Still asleep.”

“…”

Within a few minutes.

He had actually fallen asleep.

Leaving the rest of us looking at one another in utter confusion.

The doctor said the blow to his head might have left him disoriented.

He should recover with some rest.

I let out a relieved breath.

Taking advantage of the opportunity.

I hurried to the next ward.

What a coincidence.

They’d been brought to the hospital from the same place at the same time.

So their rooms were right next to each other.

Fu Ciyan seemed to be less seriously injured.

By the time I went to see him, he was slowly waking up.

He frowned, looking thoroughly bewildered.

When he saw me, something shifted in his eyes.

“…You came to see me?”

I hugged him. “Of course.”

“Fu Ciyan, do you have any idea how worried I was?”

“Huo Zheng is right next door, and I still risked sneaking over to see you.”

His eyes darkened.

“Then you like me more than Huo Zheng?”

I gave him a suspicious look.

“Did you really knock something loose in your head?”

“I don’t like Huo Zheng at all.”

“I’ve told you, ours is just a business marriage. His grandmother was ill and insisted he get married. They were in a hurry, so I got lucky and landed an alliance with the Huo family.”

“Besides, Huo Zheng doesn’t like me, either.”

As Fu Ciyan’s expression grew worse and worse.

I began to worry. “Are you really all right? You look awful.”

But he didn’t answer. He stared straight at me.

“How do you know he doesn’t like you?”

“Doesn’t he want to… with you… several times every day?”

His manager, listening beside us, completely lost it.

“Stop, stop, stop! Are you two okay?!”

“Actually, for your sake, I hope something is wrong with you.”

“Fu Ciyan, secretly dating is one thing, but someone else’s wife? Do you think that’s okay?!”

“Sometimes you feel so helpless you just want to call the police.”

With his manager on the verge of a breakdown.

I hurriedly got up to leave.

But Fu Ciyan caught my wrist.

His expression was gloomy.

With a trace of some struggle I couldn’t understand.

“No matter what happens, you’ll still love me?”

I assumed he meant brain damage or something.

I nodded. “Of course.”

His eyes darkened, and he released me.

“All right. I understand.”

But as I walked out, I thought I heard Fu Ciyan murmur.

“Then I’m Fu Ciyan.”