Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was one thing if I couldn’t see him. But not seeing the money? That would never do.

Young as I was, I spent the whole night scheming. In the end, because I missed my parents so much, I began having nightmares.

Every night, I would wake in terror and cry until I lost my voice. I refused to settle down unless Dad held me in his arms.

No matter how cold a man was, he could never be completely heartless toward his own flesh and blood.

Even when he was annoyed, exhausted, or when some woman outside was trying to hook him and his heart had started to drift.

As long as I clung tightly to his chest, crying as I said, “Mom is gone, but I still have Dad. Dad, don’t abandon Jiaojiao.”

Then he wouldn’t be able to leave this room.

Dad went to that woman’s place less and less often.

So little, in fact, that she never even got the chance to get pregnant.

And that was exactly what I wanted: for Dad to grow cold toward her.

Did she think I didn’t know? That idiot son of her brother’s was going around the high school section telling everyone that Mr. Xu’s daughter, Xu Jiaojiao, was his child bride.

Wei Yao had even suggested to my dad several times that since my school was close to her brother’s house, I should live there once I started middle school.

That foolish nephew of hers had dared to pull down girls’ pants when he was still in elementary school. If I really moved in, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to protect myself at all.

The pain of losing my mother wasn’t something I could recover from in a month or two. Right now, I had no interest in dealing with her, but I also had no desire to spend this lifetime entangled with a fool.

And so another month passed. I got sick, recovered, then fell sick again. Dad was busy with work, and that woman could barely see him, so she came around our home more and more often, constantly appearing downstairs in our residential complex.

With my maternal grandparents there, she didn’t dare come upstairs. But with the lawful wife only just dead, for the mistress to chase after the man all over the neighborhood was truly an ugly sight.

My maternal grandmother personally went to Dad’s family to complain about him. Grandpa was so furious he made Dad kneel in the living room, then broke two plastic stools beating him.

My paternal grandmother had always been biased toward Dad, her handsome eldest son.

Although she had never liked my mother much, she found that woman’s brazen behavior even more intolerable.

Now that the whole thing had become such an embarrassment and had even gotten her son beaten, the old lady immediately came to her senses. She called Dad over and instructed him:

“You were just promoted from deputy to full position, and your future is wide open. What kind of woman can’t you find? Why insist on settling for a hen that can’t even lay eggs?”

Dad opened his mouth, wanting to say a few words in Wei Yao’s defense, but Grandma stroked his head and said, “Zhenjiang, you are your mother’s finest, most handsome child. No woman is worthy of you. Back then, for the sake of your future, we made you marry an ugly woman. You were wronged. So when you liked that woman surnamed Wei, or fooled around with those unpresentable women, I never stopped you. But think about it. Now our family has everything. You deserve a phoenix. If you settle for her, when you reach a critical moment in the future and she can’t help you at all, can you guarantee you won’t regret it?”

Dad’s throat bobbed once. In the end, he said nothing at all.