Song Hanzhou scooped the unconscious woman up into his arms, carried her to the car, and held her against his chest.
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Cheng Shimiao, I must have owed you in a past life.”
He floored the gas pedal and drove straight to the hillside villa.
Aunt Zhou hadn’t gone to bed yet. When she heard the car engine outside, she knew the Second Young Master was back and hurried out to the living room to greet him.
Then she saw the Second Young Master striding in with a woman in his arms. Her long hair covered half her face, revealing only a glimpse of a slender, fair neck and a beautifully shaped pair of lips tinged with red.
The Second Young Master had actually brought a woman home in the middle of the night?!
Aunt Zhou had worked here for five or six years and had never once seen Song Hanzhou bring a woman home to stay the night.
Though she couldn’t see the face clearly, Aunt Zhou knew it was definitely not Miss Bai.
Aunt Zhou’s eyes went wide with shock. She even forgot to greet him, standing frozen as she watched Song Hanzhou carry the woman up the spiral staircase, step by step, heading straight for the third floor.
Aunt Zhou was even more astonished. There were no guest rooms on the third floor—that was the Second Young Master’s private territory…
Just then, a door on the second floor opened.
A tiny figure stepped out. The little boy, dressed in cartoon pajamas, rubbed his good eye.
Aunt Zhou was startled. “Young Master, why are you awake?”
Song Shu looked at Aunt Zhou and asked in his babyish voice, “Is that Daddy coming home?”
“Yes, the Second Young Master just got back.”
Aunt Zhou didn’t mention that Song Hanzhou had brought a woman home. “Young Master, it’s late. Go back to sleep—you have school tomorrow.”
“My eye hurts. I can’t sleep.” Song Shu looked up toward the third floor. “I want to see Daddy.”
Aunt Zhou’s scalp tightened, and she quickly blocked him. “Young Master, the Second Young Master… the Second Young Master still has things to attend to. It might not be a good time right now. How about Auntie reads you a bedtime story?”
Song Shu’s clear eyes fixed steadily on Aunt Zhou, like a little adult, saying nothing.
Though young, he was unusually perceptive.
Aunt Zhou’s unnatural expression and her clumsy attempt to cover things up made him instinctively feel that she was hiding something, that she didn’t want him to disturb his daddy.
Aunt Zhou kept watching Song Shu, the smile on her face nearly freezing in place.
Song Shu was silent for a few seconds, but in the end he lowered his little head and nodded obediently, his voice low. “Okay.”
Hearing this, Aunt Zhou finally breathed a sigh of relief and took his little hand, coaxing him back to his room.
The private doctor arrived quickly.
It was also his first time treating a woman in this place, and he couldn’t help stealing a few extra glances.
The woman’s features were elegant—a comfortable kind of beauty, not the striking sort at first glance, but the kind that grew on you.
He hadn’t expected the Second Young Master Song to like this type.
The doctor didn’t dare look too long. With practiced movements, he took the woman’s temperature and blood pressure, and after a simple examination, reached his conclusion.
“Nothing serious—just exhaustion plus low blood sugar, and a slight fever. An IV of glucose to restore her strength, plus some fever medicine, and she’ll be fine.”
There were two live-in housekeepers at the villa, Aunt Zhou and Aunt Zhao.
The doctor was speaking with Aunt Zhao. Throughout, Song Hanzhou stayed out on the terrace smoking, never coming inside.
Even after a full bottle of glucose had been administered, Song Hanzhou was still outside.
Aunt Zhao saw the doctor out.
When she turned back into the house, Aunt Zhao’s feelings were complicated. She went to the kitchen and boiled a kettle of hot water, setting the fever medicine the doctor had given beside it.
Aunt Zhao seemed somewhat distracted.
She recognized the woman Song Hanzhou had brought back.
She used to work for the Xu Family in Jingcheng, and had seen Cheng Shimiao before.
Back then, Cheng Shimiao had appeared at the Xu Family as the eldest young master’s fiancée—the enviable future mistress of the house. By seniority, she would have been the second young master’s sister-in-law.
Aunt Zhao still remembered the time she went to the garden to prune dead branches and accidentally stumbled upon Miss Cheng and the second young master in a tangled embrace.
It was the second young master who was pestering her.
And Aunt Zhao had inadvertently overheard an explosive secret.
What happened afterward caused an uproar throughout the city. The Xu Family discovered that Cheng Shimiao was a fake—not some noble-born daughter at all—and in their fury, drove her out, canceling the engagement with the eldest young master as well.
After that, Aunt Zhao never saw Cheng Shimiao again. Nor did she see the second young master.
Later still… Aunt Zhao watched the Xu Family’s towering mansion rise in a single day, and watched it crumble just as fast. Failed investments, a broken capital chain, crushing debts—the once-glittering wealthy family collapsed overnight.
After the Xu Family went bankrupt, she too left the place where she had worked for thirty years and took a job as a supermarket cashier.
Until one day, the second young master, who had vanished for so long, suddenly appeared at her checkout counter.
He had changed so much. His handsome face was gaunt, his eye sockets sunken, his whole presence gloomy and frightening—nothing like the spirited young man of years past.
The first words out of his mouth were: “Aunt Zhao, do you know how to take care of a child?”
…
That child was the little young master, Song Shu.
—The child of the second young master and Miss Cheng.
In this villa, Aunt Zhao was the only person besides Song Hanzhou who knew the little young master’s true origins.
Aunt Zhao collected herself and carried hot water upstairs.
The door to the third-floor bedroom was ajar. When she entered, she found that Song Hanzhou had already come in at some point.
He wasn’t sitting by the bed. Instead, he had chosen the single armchair farthest away, leaning back casually, a half-burned cigarette still held between his fingers—though he wasn’t smoking it.
“Put it down. That’s all for now.” The man’s voice was a little hoarse.
Aunt Zhao quickly lowered her head. “Yes, sir.”
Quietly, she set the kettle and the fever medicine on the small bedside table, carefully arranged the water glass and cotton swabs, then silently turned and withdrew.
The door closed.
Only the wall lamp by the headboard was on, its warm, soft glow seeming to split the room into two separate worlds.
Shi Miao slept deeply on the bed, long lashes resting quietly, a faint weariness on her features—while Song Hanzhou sat almost entirely submerged in shadow.
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, so long the very air was about to freeze, until a suppressed cough broke it.
Song Hanzhou crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray beside him, strode to the bed, and helped the coughing woman sit up, his palm pressed against her thin back.
Patting gently, again and again.
Shi Miao’s coughing gradually subsided, and she lay back down, eyes closed.
Song Hanzhou turned to pour a glass of water, dropped the fever medicine in and stirred it, tested the temperature, then brought it to her lips.
“Drink your medicine, Cheng Shimiao.” His tone was cold and hard, as if he had no patience.
Shi Miao seemed only then to belatedly realize someone was beside her. She lifted her heavy eyelids, gazing at him through a haze.
Perhaps the fever was too high—she obeyed on instinct. She raised her hands and wrapped them around the warm walls of the cup, which happened to land right on top of Song Hanzhou’s fingers before he could pull them away.
Shi Miao swallowed her fever medicine in small sips, her lashes casting a small shadow over her eyelids.
Song Hanzhou pressed his lips tightly together and didn’t move, letting her hand rest over the back of his own.
His gaze fell on those fair hands of hers, and his eyes darkened inch by inch.
Her hands weren’t as smooth as they used to be.
He could clearly feel a layer of thin calluses pressing against him.
After feeding her the medicine, Song Hanzhou dimmed the light and prepared to go sleep in the guest room.
Just as he turned around, a very soft, very faint murmur suddenly came from the bed behind him.
“Xu Zhinian…”
Song Hanzhou’s steps froze abruptly, his spine instantly going taut. A thousand emotions surged up, only to be forcibly suppressed by him.
He told himself he must have misheard.
Shi Miao called out again: “Xu Zhinian, don’t go.”