“Well, this wedding certainly turned into a spectacle. The groom answered a phone call and ran off, while the bride grabbed some random man and decided to marry him. What a farce.”
As the guests whispered among themselves, Shen Nianyi felt a bitter ache rise in her heart.
Five minutes earlier, Qin Jiming’s phone had rung.
The moment she heard that familiar ringtone, Shen Nianyi panicked. As he took out his phone, she reached out and grabbed his hand.
“Don’t answer it!”
But Qin Jiming had set Lin Jiujiu’s calls to answer automatically after five seconds.
“Brother, I got into a car accident at the overpass interchange. I’m so scared. Can you come over right now?”
Lin Jiujiu’s frightened, tearful voice came through the phone. Qin Jiming’s brows drew tightly together, and he agreed almost instantly.
“Qin Jiming, if you leave, I won’t marry you.” Disappointment showed through Shen Nianyi’s resolute tone.
Ever since Qin Jiming’s younger brother had died two years ago, Lin Jiujiu—his late younger brother’s widow—had become a constant presence between them.
Whenever she was tired from shopping, she would call him to pick her up. Whenever she caught a cold, she would call him to bring her medicine. Even when she had a nightmare in the middle of the night, she would call him over to keep her company.
For two years, she had lingered between them like an unwelcome shadow.
On the day they had taken their wedding photos, Qin Jiming had abandoned Shen Nianyi for Lin Jiujiu yet again. He had promised her then that it would be the last time.
She had believed him. That was why today’s wedding had come to pass.
She had been willing to share the responsibility of caring for Lin Jiujiu with Qin Jiming.
Even for the rest of her life.
But today was different.
Today was her wedding to Qin Jiming. She would not be the one to compromise.
When he met her disappointed and grief-stricken gaze, Qin Jiming’s heart clenched as though something had seized it, and his footsteps came to a halt.
No one knew better than he did how deeply Shen Nianyi loved him or how desperately she wanted to marry him.
No matter how serious the matter was before, she would always soothe herself and obediently come back to him.
This was the first time she had ever said she would not marry him.
After two silent seconds, the man bent slightly and gently stroked Shen Nianyi’s neck with his warm palm. There was a hint of hesitation in his expression, as though he had weighed the matter carefully.
“Yiyi, be good. I’ll definitely marry you.”
With that, Qin Jiming did not linger. He strode away.
Shen Nianyi stood alone beneath the lights. Her heart, already numb with pain, felt as though it were being sliced open inch by inch, bleeding again and again.
She let out a foolish laugh.
Five years of sincere love had been thrown to the dogs.
And now she was still being made into a laughingstock for everyone to condemn!
She raised a hand and carelessly wiped away her tears, then drew a deep breath and took the microphone from the emcee.
But when she turned toward the guests, she unexpectedly met a pair of eyes as dark as the sea.
The man sat in an inconspicuous seat below the stage. His black suit made him look composed and striking, while his handsome, refined features and his noble, cold aura seemed completely out of place amid the whispers around him.
It was her best friend’s third brother, Huo Yuqing!
Her best friend was the youngest child in her family, born to her parents late in life. Even Huo Yuqing, the youngest of her three older brothers, was ten years older than her. But why was he here?
Their eyes met. There was no sympathy or mockery in the man’s eyes, only the stillness of a frigid pool whose waters would never ripple.
Shen Nianyi’s muddled mind suddenly recalled how her best friend Youran had once complained that her third brother was aloof, ruthless, and heartless. No one among the younger generation of the Huo family, including the nephews, was unafraid of him.
Huo’s father was constantly urging his third son to marry. He had arranged several blind dates for him, but the women had all been scared away.
An aging bachelor. A bride abandoned at her own wedding.
A bold, absurd idea suddenly emerged in Shen Nianyi’s mind.
It was the only ray of light visible beneath the dark clouds pressing down overhead.
Gathering up her skirt, she walked over. Under everyone’s astonished and bewildered gazes, she stopped in front of Huo Yuqing.
“Do you want a wife?”
The hubbub came to an abrupt stop.
The lighting technician seemed to have witnessed something terrifying and immediately cast a spotlight over them.
It was as though Shen Nianyi had once again been pushed to the edge of a cliff. She nearly crushed the bouquet in her hand.
The man’s suspicious, assessing gaze only made the atmosphere more tense.
Shen Nianyi was just about to bend toward him and reveal that she was Youran’s best friend, asking him to help her out, when the man slowly stood up.
He was nearly six feet three, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and long legs.
The aura of intimidation that suddenly swept over her startled Shen Nianyi into instinctively stepping back. She accidentally stepped on her train and fell backward, unable to control herself.
The next moment, the man caught her by the waist and steadied her.
“I do.”
His voice was deeply magnetic, carrying an alluring sensuality that made her ears tingle.
Shen Nianyi immediately breathed a sigh of relief. She pulled him back onto the stage and shoved the microphone into the emcee’s hands.
“The wedding… continues!”
The wedding ring was successfully placed on her finger. Shen Nianyi had chosen it only after a long search, and it was indeed beautiful.
“Aren’t you going to put mine on?”
The man’s reminder made Shen Nianyi come to her senses. She realized that he had already raised his hand into the air. His fingers were long and jade-like, their clean lines clearly visible.
She did not hesitate again. Taking the wedding ring prepared for Qin Jiming, she slipped it directly onto the man’s ring finger. It fit perfectly, to her surprise.
After all the formalities were completed, she returned to the dressing room, changed out of her wedding dress, and took her handbag. She was preparing to return to Jiangyu Blue Bay to collect the belongings she had left there.
Just then, Qin Jiming called.
The phone buzzed on the table for a long while before Shen Nianyi finally answered.
The man’s voice was low, his anger tightly restrained, with a slight hoarseness to it.
“What kind of nonsense are you pulling? Everyone who came today is a friend or relative. You just grabbed some random man to marry in my place—what do you think you’re doing?”
“Take care of the public-relations fallout as soon as possible. Don’t cause the stock market to become unstable.”
Only after finishing his official business did his tone soften slightly.
“Once we get through this busy period, we’ll go register our marriage first!”
Was that supposed to comfort her?
Shen Nianyi found it deeply ironic. She was just about to say that she was quitting as head of the secretarial department when a series of delicate moans suddenly came through the phone.
“Brother, a little farther to the left. Be gentler when you rub it. It hurts.”
“Mm, all right.”
The man’s low reply was patient and gentle.
Then the call disconnected. The beeps of the dead line mingled with those ambiguous words, stabbing viciously into Shen Nianyi’s ears.
The instant the call screen switched, breaking news notifications popped up.
“Three-vehicle rear-end collision at the overpass interchange. No casualties reported.”
“Qin Group’s president takes control of the scene with commanding presence; believed to be wearing wedding clothes.”
Someone had uploaded a video from the scene. Qin Jiming was carrying Lin Jiujiu, whose arm had only been scraped and whose white dress had not even been dirtied, and carefully helping her into his black Cayenne.
The woman looked at him aggrievedly, her eyes full of dependence and unquestioning reliance.
As though she were facing her husband, rather than the elder brother of her deceased husband.
Red hearts flooded the comment feed. Everyone was obsessively swooning over the wealthy tycoon’s heartache for the woman he loved.
Yet no one noticed the groom’s boutonniere, knocked loose and left to be trampled carelessly by passing pedestrians. Mixed with dust, it was filthy beyond recognition.
Shen Nianyi turned off her phone.
She felt as though the past five years had been nothing but a long dream.
She had devoted her entire heart to being with Qin Jiming, even giving up the inheritance her father had left her so that she could refuse the marriage her mother had tried to force upon her.
Two years ago, Qin Jiming’s younger brother had died in a car accident. The most important patent had been destroyed in the crash, and Qin Group had been forced to pay a huge penalty. Its cash flow had nearly collapsed.
She had sold the precious luxury goods her father had left her and used the money to fill the hole for Qin Jiming.
From the time she was born until she turned fifteen, her father had hired specialists to create a birthday gift for her every year. Each one had been one of a kind in the world.
On the day Qin Group survived the crisis, Qin Jiming had drunk red wine with her. Standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows on the top floor of Qin Group, he had taken the initiative to embrace her for the first time.
“Yiyi, I promise you that your father’s love will continue through me. Every year, it will never be absent.”
It was the first time Qin Jiming had told her he loved her, and he had said it with utmost solemnity.
Nor had he broken his word. On her birthdays over the next two years, she received an expensive luxury piece of jewelry each time.
But he had never once spent an entire birthday with her.
All it took was one call from Lin Jiujiu, and he would leave without hesitation. Even the reason he gave was always the same.
“I promised my younger brother I would take good care of her. Wait for me to come back.”
When there were two choices, she was always the backup option.
The gifts he had promised continued to arrive.
But the love he had promised did not.
Just like the gifts that had been sold, it could never be recovered.
She had given everything she possibly could, yet she still could not melt the heart of someone who did not love her.
This time, she would not wait for him to come back.