Chapter 1

Sitting on Xie Zhengyu’s lap, I let my arms fall from around his neck and lowered my eyes.

He leaned back against the sofa, holding my chin, still kissing me with the same casual indifference.

As though he hadn’t realized how much his words could hurt me.

Or perhaps he simply didn’t care if they did.

Xie Zhengyu had always looked down on me.

Once, he had told me with lofty contempt,

“With your personality, sooner or later those wolves out there will tear you apart and swallow you whole.”

I pressed my lips together and asked, “What sort of person would they leave alone?”

Xie Zhengyu paused, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Yan Ningxue.”

Yan Ningxue was his childhood friend.

Like him, she was ruthless, cold, and decisive.

They had similar pasts and the same almost nonexistent morals.

Yan Ningxue was his confidante, his companion.

She was the one who could walk beside him.

Noticing my distraction,

Xie Zhengyu clicked his tongue and bit the corner of my mouth in displeasure.

“Pay attention.”

I suddenly said, “You’re always telling me I’m naive and useless, that I’ll never amount to anything and people will bully me. Then can you protect me?”

Could he keep me sheltered under his wing forever, like a flower in a greenhouse?

He laughed. “Of course.”

Xie Zhengyu played with my fingertips. “You’re my girlfriend. One day you’ll be my wife.”

He paused.

“I’m just worried our children will take after you,” he said, lazy and offhand. “I wouldn’t like a child like that. I’d leave them to fend for themselves.”

After a long silence, I said, “You wouldn’t have to worry about children with Yan Ningxue. Either of you would do.”

He gave a mocking laugh. “What little terrors they’d grow up to be.”

I said nothing.

Stroking my hair, he spoke in his usual tone. “Jealous? Ruoruo, I don’t like her that way. She has someone she likes too.”

That much I knew.

But the man Yan Ningxue liked seemed rather unfortunate too.

He died around the same time I did.

The truth was, Xie Zhengyu couldn’t protect me either.

Xie Zhengyu was cruel and merciless.

In business, friend or foe, he would strike without hesitation whenever he saw a chance to profit.

He had made far too many enemies.

Before long, while he was driving me to a date,

an out-of-control heavy truck would come hurtling from a blind spot at an intersection.

In that instant between life and death, my mind went blank. Yet instinctively, I wanted to protect Xie Zhengyu. I lunged forward, grabbed the steering wheel, and wrenched it hard to the left.

The crash erupted with a deafening roar.

That slight change of angle just managed to shield the driver’s seat from being crushed head-on by the truck.

But the full force of the impact struck the passenger side.

Warm blood slid down my forehead, blurring my sight.

Even then, I still had a chance of surviving.

But during the emergency treatment at the hospital, Xie Zhengyu’s enemies bribed the medical staff.

They failed to save me.

In a sense,

he was right.

Kind people never came to a good end.

He and I were proof enough of that.

Later, Xie Zhengyu gained complete control, becoming a powerful figure no one in Haicheng dared cross.

He gathered everything I had left behind and kept it all in his bedroom. Every photograph of me covered the walls. And every night, he slept holding the cold, hard urn of my ashes.

He even founded a charity in my name.

Every year, he donated sums of eight or nine figures.

Yan Ningxue would often smoke beside him, her eyes red as she comforted him.

“We really are in the same boat. The people we love are dead. What’s the point of having all this money?”

But…

all those things Xie Zhengyu did—

what good would they be to me then?