Chapter 3
Xie Zhengyu shoved me into the back seat of the car. I braced myself on my elbows against the leather seat.
Expressionless, he got in after me and shut the door.
He bent over and gripped my chin so hard I gasped.
“Xu Ruo, I never knew you had the nerve to meet another man in secret.” His smile was icy, his words soft and trailing, with a trace of puzzlement. “And Yan Ningxue’s first love, of all people.”
My lips moved. “…We were just looking around the cemetery.”
He seemed deeply displeased.
I didn’t know whether he was angry that I had gotten too close to another man.
Or whether it was because that man was Wen Yan, Yan Ningxue’s first love. I shouldn’t get too close to the man his childhood friend liked, or I would upset her.
Xie Zhengyu’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. His voice was level. “Two living people, wandering around a place for the dead?”
When I lowered my eyes without answering, he said coldly,
“You know Yan Ningxue likes him. Why would you meet him alone?”
Oh. Apparently it was the second reason.
I didn’t answer. After a long silence, I looked up at him.
“Xie Zhengyu, let’s break up.”
Better to make a clean break.
Before I became aware of the plot,
I had loved Xie Zhengyu very much.
There were many reasons, but, absurdly, the biggest was that I pitied him.
I first met him at the abandoned basketball court of his high school.
Several people had beaten him until he was barely breathing.
Though his face was covered in bruises and his temple was bleeding, none of it could conceal his breathtaking looks.
I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen him. I chose to help.
His long, thick black lashes veiled his dark eyes. Blood wound down the side of his face from his temple, twisting all the way to his jaw, giving him a strange, pitiful beauty.
My hand trembled as I applied medicine. Just as I was about to let him do it himself,
he smiled at me, so beautiful it made my heart falter.
Yet his voice held a faint sadness and pain.
“This is the first time anyone’s helped me.”
Later, I learned that he was an illegitimate son of the Xie family. He had been mistreated since childhood and often hadn’t even had enough to eat.
I pitied him all the more.
That first impression colored everything. However irrational, vicious, or merciless his later actions seemed to me, I only thought his nightmarish past had affected him too deeply, leading him a little astray.
I never imagined I would be the one to pay in the end.
“Break up?”
Xie Zhengyu grew calm, his thin lips parting. “Don’t tell me you and Wen Yan really have pledged yourselves to each other?”
I drew a deep breath. “Could you stop talking like that? I just don’t think we’re right for each other anymore. As for Wen Yan, I barely know him.”
A deathly silence filled the car.
Even the air seemed to have stopped moving.
After a while,
Xie Zhengyu’s palm settled on the back of my neck, rubbing it as though soothing a disobedient pet.
Then he applied pressure, forcing me closer.
“Xu Ruo.” He chuckled, but there was no laughter in the eyes fixed on mine. “We’ve been together so long. You know quite a few things about me, don’t you?”
I blinked.
Of course. Meticulous as ever, that was the first thing Xie Zhengyu had thought of.
And he was right.
The expansion of his power over the past few years owed much to his dirty dealings behind the scenes. I knew something about many of them.
“Do you think I could let you go without worrying?” he asked softly.
My throat went dry.
“You’re afraid I’ll tell someone? I won’t. If you really have to, you could treat me like…those men, and cut out my tongue too—”
Xie Zhengyu raised his index finger.
Pressed it to my lips.
Stopped the words I hadn’t finished.
“You want to break up that badly?” He laughed coldly, then sighed. “Has Wen Yan turned your head, or are you really jealous of Yan Ningxue?”
I hadn’t expected him to go on asking why.
I was about to explain.
Xie Zhengyu took my hand, his long fingers pushing between mine with intimate insistence.
He laced our fingers together, tender and suggestive.
“But Ruoruo, even if you can’t speak, you’ll still have hands to type and write with. What should we do about that?”
He turned his head and bent down.
Pressed a light kiss to the back of my hand.
I fell silent.
Xie Zhengyu had reached a whole new level of madness.
Meeting his eyes, I said each word distinctly.
“Then take my hands too.”
His face abruptly turned cold. Gripping the back of my neck, he kissed me hard. The taste of blood spread at once, and the pain made my vision swim.
I couldn’t push him away. All I could do was bite him as hard as I could.
As though he felt no pain, he even laughed and deepened the kiss.
I didn’t know how much time passed.
His expression eased, and he kissed the corner of my mouth, looking satisfied.
“Our Ruoruo’s actually gotten brave. Unbelievable.”
As soon as he let me go, I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, trying to erase his scent.
He watched quietly. Seeing me wipe them over and over, he sighed.
“You’ll rub them raw, Ruoruo.”
I wouldn’t look at him. Tears fell, one after another.
After a while, he spoke, his voice flat, touched with lazy weariness.
“You can leave. I won’t hurt you.”
I looked at him in astonishment.
“But your mother, who’s being treated by the Xie Medical Group, won’t be able to leave. And her treatment won’t continue either.”
He meant to leave her there to die.
“What do you mean?” I asked in disbelief.
His smile deepened. “What do you think?”
His fingertips wiped the tears from my face.
But I was crying too hard, engulfed by disappointment, fear, and loathing for him.
I even hated myself for helping him back then.
If I hadn’t been so overflowing with sympathy, I wouldn’t be in this situation now.
Finally, Xie Zhengyu rested his forehead lightly against mine.
His cool lips touched my tears.
“Tell me what you choose.”