“Chen Ge, let’s break up.” Lin Qingqian spoke coldly.
Chen Ge’s face was dark. “Just because of that slap?”
Lin Qingqian did not answer.
She turned her face slightly, allowing the light to fall more clearly across her left cheek.
The mark from the slap she had received three hours earlier had not completely faded.
The red imprint of five fingers stood out painfully against her cold, pale skin, its edges already tinged with a faint bluish purple.
Her skin was thin and easily marked. Chen Ge knew that.
In the three years they had been together, this was the first time he had laid a hand on her.
For the sake of another woman.
“Lin Qingqian, can you stop making a fuss? Zhenzhen just came out of the operating room. She lost the baby and nearly cried herself unconscious, yet you still have to argue with her—” Chen Ge spoke coldly, his expression indifferent as he unjustly accused her of being petty.
“What am I arguing with her about?” Lin Qingqian avoided his hand and took a step back. “About whose child it really was? Or about what kind of man you, Chen Ge, actually are?”
That instinctive step backward, as though she were avoiding something disgusting, enraged Chen Ge.
His expression darkened. “What do you mean?”
“Chen Ge, do you need me to explain what you’ve done?” Lin Qingqian took her phone from her pocket, unlocked it, opened her photo album, and held it out in front of him.
Several photographs appeared on the screen.
The first showed a surveillance still from the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel at 9:17 p.m. last Tuesday.
Chen Ge had his arm around a woman’s waist as he led her toward the elevator. The woman wore a hat and a mask, but Lin Qingqian had seen the cream-colored coat she was wearing in Mu Zhenzhen’s dressing room.
The second was a record from the guest-room department that same night: Presidential Suite 1806, registered under Chen Ge’s name, for a one-night stay.
The third showed surveillance footage from the hotel’s underground parking garage. At 7:03 the next morning, Chen Ge and the same woman stepped out of the elevator. The woman had changed clothes, but the Hermès bag in her hand was the same.
The fourth was a comparison between Chen Ge’s itinerary for a business trip to a nearby city last month and his phone-location records. During the three days he was supposedly “away on business,” his phone had remained at an upscale apartment complex in downtown Haicheng—the residence of Mu Zhenzhen.
Chen Ge’s face changed from livid to deathly pale.
He opened and closed his mouth, wanting to say something, but every word caught in his throat.
The evidence was too clear, and the timeline too complete. There was not even room left for him to make excuses.
“And there’s this.” Lin Qingqian swiped across the screen and opened a screenshot of an electronic medical record. “Mu Zhenzhen was eight weeks pregnant. Her progesterone level was abnormally high, and the doctor’s instructions said, 【A repeat HCG test is recommended to rule out the possibility of multiple or abnormal pregnancy.】 But she began taking traditional Chinese medicine to promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis as early as the fourth week of pregnancy. Chen Ge, do you know what that means?”
“Enough!” Chen Ge suddenly snatched her phone away and smashed it hard against the floor.
The phone struck the marble floor. Its screen shattered instantly, spiderweb cracks spreading across it.
“Lin Qingqian, you investigated me?” His eyes were bloodshot, his chest heaving violently. “Who gave you the right? How dare you investigate Zhenzhen’s medical records?”
“If I didn’t investigate, was I supposed to wait until you and her had the child, only for it to call me ‘Little Aunt’?” A tremor finally entered Lin Qingqian’s voice, but she kept her back straight, refusing to retreat. “Chen Ge, you disgust me.”
“You—” Chen Ge raised his hand.
Lin Qingqian lifted her face and looked at him without blinking. “Go ahead. Let that slap fall, and I’ll make Mu Zhenzhen a whore in Haicheng—a shameless slut who climbed into her younger brother-in-law’s bed.”
Chen Ge’s hand froze in midair.
He looked at the woman before him.
She had once been gentle, considerate, and even somewhat humble. Now her gaze was cold as ice, and her back was ramrod straight, like a thorn-covered rose blooming in the snow.
She seemed to have changed…
Chen Ge completely lost his patience. His expression turned gloomy as he said coldly, “Lin Qingqian, I’ve already told you. Zhenzhen is my older brother’s fiancée. I’m only… only taking care of Zhenzhen on my brother’s behalf.”
“Taking care of her in bed?” Lin Qingqian laughed, her smile filled with mockery. “At your older brother Chen Ke’s funeral, you held Mu Zhenzhen in your arms while she cried herself unconscious against you. Even then, I wondered whether the relationship between a younger brother-in-law and his sister-in-law was a little too intimate.”
She paused, then said each word distinctly, “Now I understand. It wasn’t intimacy. You two had been sleeping together for a long time.”
“Shut up!” Chen Ge shouted in humiliation and anger. “Lin Qingqian, watch what you say! Zhenzhen is at her most vulnerable right now. I won’t allow you to insult her. She just had a miscarriage. I won’t stand by and let anyone bully her.”
“So you’re admitting it?” The last trace of light in Lin Qingqian’s eyes went out. “Admitting that the child Mu Zhenzhen was carrying was yours?”
Chen Ge opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
That silence was like a blunt knife, slowly and cruelly cutting through the final layer of protection around Lin Qingqian’s heart.
It hurt.
Yet she smiled instead.
“Wonderful.” She nodded. Her eyes began to redden, but no tears fell. “For three years, I endured everything in your family’s home. I endured your mother pointing at my nose and scolding me for ‘marrying above my station,’ saying I wasn’t good enough for you, Second Young Master Chen. I endured it all.”
She took a step forward and stared into Chen Ge’s eyes. “I thought that as long as I loved you and treated you well, one day they would accept me. Only now do I understand—”
“It wasn’t that they didn’t accept me. It was you, Chen Ge. You had never intended to marry me.”
“Lin Qingqian, keep making trouble and don’t blame me for forcing you out of Haicheng so you’ll never see me again.”
“I’m making trouble?” Lin Qingqian looked as though she had heard the most ridiculous joke in the world. “Chen Ge, which part of what I said wasn’t clear enough? I’m informing you that we’re breaking up, not asking for your permission.”
She turned and walked toward the sofa, picking up her bag.
It was an old bag she had used for two years, its corners already worn.
Chen Ge had said many times that he would buy her a new one, but she had always said that the old one could still be used.
Thinking about it now, perhaps deep down, she had always been afraid to ask for anything too expensive, afraid that people would say she was coveting the Chen family’s money.
How ridiculous.
“Where are you going?” Chen Ge blocked her path.
“Stop right there!” Chen Ge grabbed her by the wrist, gripping her so tightly that she frowned. “Lin Qingqian, if you dare walk out that door today, I guarantee you won’t be able to survive in Haicheng! Who do you think you are? Without me, you’re nothing!”
Lin Qingqian stopped and looked back at him.
That look caused an inexplicable flicker of panic in Chen Ge’s heart.
“Chen Ge,” she said softly, “do you know what I’m most grateful for right now?”
Chen Ge said nothing.
“I’m most grateful that we never got married.” Lin Qingqian smiled, the expression carrying both relief and bottomless sorrow. “So separating now isn’t too late.”
She forcefully shook off his hand and pulled open the door.
“Lin Qingqian! You’ll regret this!” Chen Ge roared behind her.
His answer was the heavy sound of the security door closing.
Bang—
It was as though three years of time had been shut away completely with that single sound.