Chapter 74
Chapter 74
At that point, as if something had suddenly occurred to her, she picked up the appraisal report she had tossed aside and flung it at Su Jin. “You had him do this, didn’t you?”
Su Jin reached for it but failed to catch it. The report fell to the floor, and she made no move to pick it up. “No.”
Bai Xue gave her a look that said, Like hell I believe you. A meaningful smile spread across her face, but in the end, she merely glanced lightly at Su Jin and said nothing. Instead, she turned her fire back on Pei Yuming, who was clutching his head, lost in who knew what thoughts.
“Lao Pei, I’m not saying all this to excuse myself. You’ve always thought you were so clearheaded, that you saw through life better than anyone, but that was just wishful thinking on your part. If you ask me, people reap what they sow. You’re shallow yourself, but you expected me to be devoted. All these years, I never once claimed I was some good person. Back when I dumped Lu Dong, you should have understood. If I could betray him for you, why couldn’t I betray you for his money? We’re all made the same, one nose and two eyes. You’re not that special. Before you married me, you should have had that much awareness. And now you’re blaming me for not being faithful, asking me whether I have a heart? Haven’t I always been this way? We were just living our lives. I did my best for you and for this family. What, did I have to submit to you body and soul, kneel at your feet, for me to count as a good wife and a good woman?”
If arguments had rankings, Bai Xue would at least be a king-tier player. Over all these years, whenever the two of them fought, whether she was in the right or not, she almost always managed to win in the end. That was a kind of talent, too.
“So according to you, I brought all of this on myself?” Pei Yuming still had his head lowered, his voice muffled. “But Bai Xue, when I married you, I truly wanted to build a proper life with you.”
“Proper life, my ass!” For some reason, Bai Xue suddenly became agitated. “Your so-called proper life was nothing more than finding someone to serve you and your entire family. Stop flattering yourself! I fell for your act twenty years ago. Did you think that twenty years later, you could still fool me with the exact same lines? You repeated a lie for twenty years until even you believed it. A proper life? You need a home before you can call it that. You treated this place like a restaurant, like a hotel. You never treated it like a home. Yet you made it sound better than anyone!”
By this point in the argument, Pei Yuming had completely forgotten that he was the one who had come back to demand answers. His thoughts were being dragged around entirely by Bai Xue. He looked up at her in disbelief, and for a moment, he could not even understand how he had lived with someone like this for twenty years.
Twenty years. Nearly a third of his life. Had he really been living inside an enormous lie all this time? And the wife and daughter he had believed were closest to him were, in reality, even worse than strangers.
A crushing sense of defeat surged over him like a tidal wave. Pei Yuming was sitting on the sofa in his own living room, yet he felt as if his entire body were plummeting at terrifying speed. In that instant, the despair of being abandoned by the whole world made him understand, with painful clarity, what it meant to have every hope turn to ash.
If only I didn’t know any of this, he thought.
Then I could have gone on living in ignorance. There would still be occasional conflicts with his family, but it would not be like this, having the people who had once been closest to him strip a layer of flesh from him, bloody and raw.
But in the next moment, he shook his head with a bitter smile. It was too late to say any of that now. In truth, he did not even have the chance to stay ignorant anymore. The woman before him, all claws and teeth and seething resentment, was actually lying in the police station morgue at this very moment. She could no longer hear even one insincere apology from him.
So what am I doing? Whether Bai Xue had an affair, whether Xiaobei is really my biological daughter… what does any of it matter?
What did it matter if he couldn’t find the killer? What would it change if he did?
Would he really be able to live out the next few decades with a clear conscience?
The truth was, his life had been ruined long ago. If that had been the killer’s goal, then the killer had already achieved it.
One second, Pei Yuming looked so crushed he might fly into a frenzy at any moment. The next, the other three people in the living room saw him start laughing as if no one else were there. The smile itself could not have looked more normal, but whether it was Bai Xue, who had just been arguing so eloquently and self-righteously, Su Jin, who had been watching coldly from the side, or Pei Yucheng, whose jaw had practically dropped to the floor, all three felt ice crawling out from between their bones. It was genuinely chilling.
Pei Yuming calmly rose from the sofa. As if he could no longer see anyone else in the living room, he walked on his own toward the bedroom inside.
Pei Yucheng was his younger brother, after all. He could not feel at ease letting his older brother be alone at a time like this, so he could only force his weak legs to follow. But the moment he reached the bedroom door, he was so frightened he dropped to his knees. At the critical moment, a shrill scream tore from his throat. “Big Brother, don’t!”
When Su Jin and Bai Xue heard the cry, they ran toward the bedroom at the same time. What they saw was Pei Yuming already climbing over the bedroom balcony. He turned back and glanced at them faintly, his eyes unfocused and empty. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he flipped himself over the edge.
The violent headache made Pei Yuming suddenly let out an uncontrollable roar. Across from him, Cao Lei had been thinking through the focus of the next stage of questioning, and the sound scared him badly.
“Lao Pei! What’s wrong?” He hurriedly got up and went over to check on him.
Pei Yuming clutched his head, his brows twisted tight. He looked like he was in unbearable pain.
Cao Lei pried away the hands that were yanking at his hair and slapped his face hard. “Lao Pei, calm down! Can you hear me?”
Pei Yuming endured the phantom pain of his skull shattering into pieces. At last, he slowly lowered his hands. He stared straight at Cao Lei in front of him, and tears suddenly poured down without warning. Choking on his sobs, he said to Cao Lei, “Officer Cao, I’m sorry. I killed them. It was me!”
“What?!” For the first time since entering the interrogation room, Cao Lei showed obvious shock.
“What did you say?” Cao Lei fixed his gaze on him. “Lao Pei, repeat what you just said.”
Pei Yuming looked at him in despair. His agitation gradually settled, and he said calmly, “I’m the killer who poisoned them. I killed everyone.”
Now even the area outside the interrogation room erupted.
The two Deputy Directors exchanged a look in perfect tacit understanding, each seeing the same strange absurdity in the other’s eyes. Then they both turned toward the grave-faced expert. Wei Zheng was the first to ask, “Professor Lin, is… is what he’s saying true?”
Lin Zhiwei looked somewhat calmer than everyone else in the conference room. She understood what Wei Zheng meant. What he really wanted to ask was whether the suspect had just lied. But she could only shake her head and answer honestly, “There’s no way to determine that for now. We’ll have to see what he confesses to next.”
“Ah… right. Of course!” Wei Zheng realized he had been too impatient just now. But it would be a lie to say he was not anxious. Ever since the case began, everyone up and down the City Bureau had been strung tight. After all, there was a deadline for solving the case. Once time was up, if they still had not cracked it, the relevant personnel would inevitably be in serious trouble.
Besides, even if the higher-ups had not said a word, seven lives lost in a single night was a major case anywhere. If they did not solve it and find the killer as soon as possible, once every kind of media outlet started stirring it up, the impact on the entire city would be impossible to measure.