The day Meng Huaijin went to Nancheng to bring Shu Wan back, the entire city was being battered by torrential rain.
“How long has she been like this?” the guard beside Meng Huaijin asked.
By the windowsill, the girl sat curled up with her knees drawn to her chest, instinctively assuming a selfprotective posture as she quietly watched the raindrops outside. A gentle breeze stirred the ends of her hair, revealing a delicate, exquisite face devoid of any trace of vitality. Even when the hem of her pristine white dress became soaked by the rain, she seemed completely unaware of it.
The only butler who had remained behind with the Shu family let out a long sigh.
“Miss has been like this for a week. She witnessed her parents take their own lives with her own eyes. Since then, she hasn’t spoken a single word.”
“Can a girl her age still be sent to an orphanage?”
The low, commanding male voice clearly did not belong to the guard.
Upon hearing those words, the pupils that had been fixed on the sky finally shifted ever so slightly. Almost mechanically, Shu Wan turned toward the source of the voice.
The man was very tall. His long black trench coat hung open in the pouring rain, his entire presence sharp and intimidating. His slender, pale hand held a black umbrella, while the face beneath it was even more severe. There was a coldness between his brows and eyes that seemed colder than the rain itself.
Shu Wan had seen him before.
When she was much younger, she had accompanied her mother to the Meng family home in Beicheng. By accident, she had wandered into his room.
Back then, innocent and knowing nothing of the world, she had seen a man in a military uniform sleeping soundly on the bed, one arm covering his face. Mistaking him for her father, she had climbed onto the bed, rested her head on his other arm, and fallen asleep.
When she woke that day, this was the face she saw.
The man was exceptionally handsome, much younger than her father, yet somehow far more intimidating.
Especially those eyes. They were bonechillingly cold, like the bitter cold of deep winter, gleaming like razorsharp blades. With such an imposing appearance, he looked less like a soldier and more like a ruthless bandit blessed with an outrageously handsome face.
Little Shu Wan had immediately burst into tears.
The fiercelooking man frowned in irritation. His voice was even more heartless than his gaze.
“Cry again and I’ll let the dogs loose.”
Crystalclear tears filled the girl’s beautiful, belllike eyes. They trembled on the verge of falling, but she was so frightened that she didn’t dare make another sound.
That was when Shu Wan learned that before reaching adulthood, her mother had been an adopted daughter of the Meng family.
And that terrifying man was her mother’s younger brother in name—the undisputed Second Young Master of the Meng family, Meng Huaijin.
After her mother married her father, she had legally severed the adoption relationship with the Meng family and cut off contact with them. That visit to her maternal relatives had been their first contact in years.
Now, entrusting Shu Wan to their care was the second.
Shu Wan figured she probably wasn’t someone Meng Huaijin particularly liked. Otherwise, on the very day she had become an orphan, why would he suggest sending her to an orphanage?
He had frightened her when she was little, and now he was frightening her again.
What kind of place was an orphanage? If she went there, would she even have a future?
For days, one devastating event after another had weighed down on Shu Wan until she could barely breathe. Meng Huaijin’s words were undoubtedly the final blow.
Unlike the loud sobs of her childhood, this time she cried silently.
Tears overflowed from her reddened eyes, tracing winding paths down her soft, pale cheeks before falling onto the pristine folds of her dress. Her whole figure looked utterly broken.
The old butler dropped to his knees with a thud and pleaded, “Sir, for the sake of her mother, please don’t send her to an orphanage. She’ll be entering her final year of high school after the summer vacation. All you need to do is show some mercy, give her food and a roof over her head, and put her through college. Once she’s capable of supporting herself, you won’t have to worry about her anymore. But right now…”
Meng Huaijin acted as though he hadn’t heard a word.
He handed the umbrella to the guard and walked inside. Looking down at the girl from his imposing height, he studied her for a moment before speaking in an indifferent tone.
“Don’t know how to greet people?”
Shu Wan raised her tearreddened eyes and met his intimidating gaze. After a moment, she softly called out,
“Uncle.”
Meng Huaijin didn’t respond.
Instead, he looked around the Shu family mansion, once magnificent and glorious, now covered with official seals.
It was the classic story of watching a family rise to greatness, entertain guests in splendor, and then crumble overnight.
The political world was no different from a battlefield. One day, a person could be riding high; the next, they could become despised and disgraced.
Shu Wan’s gaze also fell upon the seals. Just as sorrow welled up inside her, that cold male voice came crashing down from above her head again.
“Are you waiting for me to pick you up and hold you in the air, or should I go get some candy to coax you?”
“…”
She had heard adults speak of some of her uncle’s impressive achievements.
—Meng Huaijin had joined the military at sixteen. At eighteen, he was admitted to the National University of Defense Technology. After graduating, he spent five years at a highly classified special operations base, earning countless merits. He had recently been transferred back to Beicheng and assigned to a position at the central government.
He was notoriously demanding, decisive, and ruthlessly efficient. Anyone who worked with him—or found themselves under his scrutiny—was afraid of him.
Shu Wan was still reeling from one blow after another when the old butler understood the unspoken meaning behind his words. He took her hand and led her upstairs.
“Miss, sir means he’s taking you away with him. Hurry and come with me to pack your things.”
Although she hated to admit it, Meng Huaijin really was the only relative Shu Wan could rely on now.
And he was also the person her mother had entrusted her to with her dying breath.
No one in the Meng family can be trusted. Only your uncle can.
“What about you, Grandpa Chen? Where will you go after I leave?”
Shu Wan looked at the elderly man rushing around to pack her belongings, her nose stinging with emotion.
The old butler closed her suitcase and smiled.
“I can go back to my hometown in the countryside. I’ve been working hard all these years, and it’s about time I took things easy. I’ll spend the rest of my days there.”
He continued earnestly advising Shu Wan that once she went to the Meng family, she absolutely had to put away her spoiled youngmiss temper.
“Whenever you can step back, step back. Whenever you can give in, give in. And whenever you can endure something, endure it…”
As he spoke, tears streamed down the old butler’s weathered face.
He had watched this girl come into the world, take her first unsteady steps, babble her first words, and eventually grow into a graceful young woman.
Once upon a time, she had been the treasured jewel of the entire Shu family.
Who could have imagined that this young begonia, just beginning to blossom, would suddenly be struck by frost overnight?
And now she was leaving to live under someone else’s roof, forced to watch every expression and live by another person’s rules…
Before they parted, the old man’s weathered face and tearful, reluctant eyes pierced straight through Shu Wan’s heart.
Sitting inside the black sedan, the girl stared helplessly at the old man’s hunched figure. Tears soaked through the front of her clothes.
Finally, she turned toward the man beside her and pleaded,
“Can you take Grandpa Chen with us? He can do everything. He can…”
“I don’t need a servant.”
Meng Huaijin lounged lazily against the back of his seat.
His gaze fell upon the pink backpack on the girl’s back, the absurdly fluffy white rabbit plush hanging from its zipper, and the live cat nestled in her arms.
His brows furrowed tighter and tighter.
“Please…”
“Do I need to remind you that you can barely take care of yourself right now?”
Meng Huaijin’s gaze lingered for a brief moment on her swollen, reddened eyes. His expression remained emotionless.
“Either you come with me, or you get out and fend for yourself. I’ll give you three seconds to decide.”
The guardturneddriver glanced at his boss through the rearview mirror.
The man was as hard as steel and as merciless as the King of Hell.
Then he looked at the poor little thing sitting beside him with tears in her eyes.
He covered his mouth and coughed lightly.
Before the three seconds were even up, he stepped on the accelerator and drove away.
Shu Wan decided she would stop pleading with this coldblooded man.
She would simply wait until she earned enough money herself, then come back for Grandpa Chen as soon as possible.
She had been through far too much these past few days.
The tragic end her parents had chosen by taking their own lives.
Their property being confiscated and their home sealed off.
The endless rounds of questioning and interrogation she had endured in the interview room…
All of it was a crushing torrent far beyond what someone her age should have had to bear.
Perhaps because she was overwhelmed by grief, the exhausted girl soon fell asleep.
At first, she still kept herself somewhat alert, reminding herself not to get too close to the coldfaced devil sitting beside her.
But as her sleep grew deeper, her body unconsciously tilted to one side…
Her head landed lightly against his thigh.
Her warm, sweet breath seeped through the fabric of his trousers, gradually spreading beneath the cloth and reaching an especially sensitive area.
An inexplicable heat rose through Meng Huaijin’s body.
His brows knitted heavily as he glanced down with a dark expression at the head resting between his legs. He was just about to lift a hand and move her away when he heard a long, soft sob.
It came from the girl in her sleep.
He had no idea what she was dreaming about, but her little face was scrunched up with sorrow.
Not only did she have an unusually stubborn little head, she was still a crybaby, too.
Girls her age were sensitive and complicated—caught awkwardly between childhood and adulthood.
What a troublesome age.
“Captain, should we go straight to the airport and fly back to Beicheng?” the guard in the front asked.
Meng Huaijin glanced at the live cat in the girl’s arms.
“If you can get the airline to change its rules so animals are allowed on board, I’ll call you Captain.”
“…”
The guard had followed him out of the military and had long since become accustomed to his shorttempered militaryofficer ways.
An idea suddenly struck him.
“How about we secretly give the cat away?”
“If you make her cry, are you going to comfort her?”
Meng Huaijin took a cushion and placed it beneath the girl’s head, separating her warm breath from his thigh.
Then he pulled out a cigarette and held it between his fingers, leaning back against the seat.
“Enough nonsense. Drive.”