Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After returning home, I took a shower and briefly tended to my wounds. Only then did I realize that Zhou Jinyan was also back.

He looked terrible.

I began to understand. “Did you and Lu Sisi have a fight?”

“Yu Ning!”

He barked a cold reprimand and strode over to me. Grabbing my wrist, he pinned me against the edge of the bed.

I struggled to push him away, but the difference in strength between Zhou Jinyan and me was like heaven and earth.

The lamp swayed, and the light stung my eyes, making me instinctively close them, yet tears leaked out uncontrollably.

His movements paused for a moment. He pinched my chin, forcing me to lift my face. “What are you crying for? Feeling wronged?”

“Yu Ning, didn’t you say you loved me? Didn’t you say that as long as you could stay by my side, any status would do?”

The kiss that landed on my lips carried a savage force.

Soon, I tasted the metallic tang of blood.

Zhou Jinyan commanded me, “Have you forgotten everything I taught you? Close your eyes.”

“Your eyes are the least like hers.”

In his far-from-gentle movements, the pain intensified.

The moment I opened my eyes in a daze, I happened to meet his strangely dark gaze, which seemed like an outlet for some pent-up emotion.

Suddenly, I understood.

I had made Lu Sisi unhappy, and Zhou Jinyan was punishing me.

A massive sense of shame swallowed me, and my mind drifted back to the past.

When we first met, I was a penniless student, while he was the high-and-mighty President Zhou.

In the bar where I worked part-time, he had gotten drunk. Looking at my face, he flew into a rage: “Don’t do such lowly things here with a face so similar to hers!”

Later, my grandmother-the only family I had left-fell ill. I borrowed from every platform possible, but I was still short three hundred thousand yuan.

For those three hundred thousand yuan, I sold myself to Zhou Jinyan.

I threw myself into his arms.

The price was that he forbade me from continuing my studies for my master’s degree.

“A substitute should act like a substitute.”

His tone had been flat, deciding my life in just a few words. “Didn’t you say you liked me? Stay by my side for at least these three years. Don’t go anywhere.”

Back then, Lu Sisi had left him to go abroad for further studies.

Zhou Jinyan would not allow the same situation to happen a second time.

From that day on, my dream of pursuing scientific research truly became an unreachable fantasy.

My grandmother didn’t make it through the post-surgery complications. She held on for half a year before passing away.

I was in a trance, sitting in the cemetery all night.

In the middle of the night, a drizzle began to fall.

Suddenly, an umbrella appeared over my head.

It was Zhou Jinyan.

He looked down at me from above, his tone rarely gentle. “How much longer are you going to stay here? I’ll stay with you.”

We were together for three years.

I took care of his every need. In certain moments of our time together, there had even been brief flashes of warmth.

But I knew that Zhou Jinyan actually looked down on me.

There was one time when he was out with a few childhood friends. I went to pick him up and was stopped by several of them who were acting up.

They sized me up and said with a laugh, “She really does look a bit like Sisi-I heard she was a top student at the University of Technology and even worked on patent projects?”

“Really? Hey, why don’t you show us how you do those projects, ‘top student’? Perform for us right here.”

I clenched my palms and looked at them. “Scientific research is a serious matter. It’s not meant for amusement or performance.”

The man leading the mockery looked at me with contempt. “What are you pretending for? You talk about research, but isn’t it just to sell yourself for a better price?”

A wine bottle was pushed in front of me. “Not willing? Then drink. Once this bottle is finished, we’ll let Ah Yan go with you.”

Throughout it all, Zhou Jinyan just leaned back on the sofa, playing with the lighter between his fingers as he watched me.

Perhaps because of the alcohol, when that habitually cold man looked over, the corners of his lips were slightly curved and his eyes were lazy.

“Drink. Let everyone see your tolerance.”

I went silent for two seconds before asking him, “If Lu Sisi were the one standing here today, would you also make her drink?”

That day, Zhou Jinyan flew into a massive rage.

He snatched the glass away and smashed it directly against me. “What kind of thing are you to even think of comparing yourself to her?”

“She isn’t as cheap as you. She wouldn’t sell herself for three hundred thousand yuan.”

I blinked hard against my stinging eyes and picked up the wine glass that had rolled across the floor. “Fine. I’ll drink.”

The lives of the poor aren’t worth much, let alone their dignity.

I did, indeed, take three hundred thousand yuan from him.

This was what I deserved to endure.