“Can you climb out?” The man’s voice was low, his tone indifferent.
The large hand gripping her forearm, for some reason, still hadn’t let go.
Wen Li didn’t know where she’d found the nerve back then.
She had already guessed that any young man who could appear at this banquet had to be its main subject, the Ji family’s heir, Ji Zongting.
Meeting the man’s downward gaze, she pressed her lips together and gave a small shake of her head.
Water dripped from the ends of her hair. She tilted her face up slightly, looking at him from below. Her wet lashes clung together, long and thick, making those eyes look blacker and brighter, with a touch of something pitiful.
“Mr. Ji, I don’t have any strength left.” Her voice was soft and light, pleading. “Could you pull me up?”
Ji Zongting’s gaze rested on her face for a moment.
The next second, his hand slid slowly down from her forearm.
His palm was very warm. Pressed against her cold skin, it burned in a way that was hard to explain.
His long fingers moved slowly to the back of her hand, wrapping around her soaked fingers. He held them, neither too tight nor too loose, and pulled her up out of the water.
Water splashed up, soaking the neat hem of his suit trousers.
He glanced down at it, released her hand, turned, and walked off.
Without leaving behind a single word.
Wen Li stood by the pool, drenched from head to toe. The cold wind blew past, and she couldn’t help but shiver.
The gazes around her pricked at her like needles. Envy, contempt, the gloating of spectators.
She paid them no mind. She only watched that figure disappear at the end of the corridor and slowly clenched the hand he had just held.
Were all men’s body temperatures that high?
His palm had felt like it held a ball of fire. Even after he’d left, it left a burning warmth on her hand.
Just as Wen Li thought her discreet little seduction had failed, a server came jogging over and handed her a dry bath towel, manner eager and respectful. “Miss Wen, Mr. Ji has prepared a change of clothes for you on the second floor. Please come with me.”
Wen Li was led up to the second floor and changed into a clean new outfit.
She didn’t see Ji Zongting. It was as if that contact earlier had been nothing but an accident.
When she came back downstairs, the banquet hall was still brightly lit, glasses clinking, as if nothing had changed. But Wen Li noticed that the woman who had pushed her into the water had quietly vanished.
After that, Ji Zongting didn’t appear again for the rest of the banquet.
A few days later, Wen Li received word. She had been chosen.
When the news reached the Wen family, Wen Li’s father nearly fell out of his chair.
All of Haishi was talking. Had something gone wrong with Ji Zongting’s eyes? With so many noble young ladies to choose from, he had picked a girl from a small, insignificant family with an ordinary background.
At first, Wen Li assumed it was her looks that had won him over.
She had always been fully confident in her beauty, and she couldn’t help thinking that Ji Zongting, after all, was a man who judged by faces.
Men. Of course.
Then came the day they got their marriage certificate.
She was waiting for him in the lounge. Through a door left ajar, she heard Ji Zongting take a call out in the corridor. The voice on the other end was faint, carrying an anger it couldn’t suppress.
Ji Zongting’s voice came through the door panel, calm and unmoved, low and cold.
“Why her? Because she’s obedient.”
A pause. Then he added, “Not like the rest of them. Not one of them is well-behaved.”
Sitting in the lounge, Wen Li finally understood.
So that was it.
Not her looks. Not some love at first sight.
It was only that in that pool of miserable cold water, she had looked stupid enough, docile enough, easy enough to handle.
A well-behaved vase. One that wouldn’t cause trouble sitting in the Ji household.
In that moment, she found it almost funny. And a little freeing, too.
She had never expected any grand romance anyway. Ji Zongting needed an obedient wife. She needed a respectable place to land. Each taking what they needed. Fair enough.
From then on, for five whole years, she wore that mask.
No fussing, no fighting, no competing. She didn’t interfere in his life or ask about his whereabouts. At the occasions she had to attend, she took his arm and smiled appropriately. Back home, she played the gentle, considerate, understanding wife.
She was Madam Ji for five years, until that sudden car crash shattered it all.
Wen Li slowly came back to herself.
Afternoon sunlight poured in through the wide floor-to-ceiling windows, falling across the back of her hand. She looked down at her own smooth hands. The base of her ring finger was bare. The wedding ring she had worn for five whole years wasn’t there.
I’ve been reborn.
Since heaven had given her a chance to start over, this time she absolutely could not repeat the same mistake.
She and Ji Zongting had never had any feelings between them to begin with. So why should she, after playing the virtuous wife for five years in her last life, end up without even a single line of dialogue, killed off alongside him by the plot?
Divorce.
I have to divorce him.
The moment the thought surfaced, Wen Li quickly calmed down.
Bringing up divorce now wasn’t realistic.
Never mind that the Wen family’s company was still counting on the Ji Group’s help. Just consider that they had only been married three days.
Asking for a divorce three days after the wedding. Wasn’t that a slap in Ji Zongting’s face?
She had been married to Ji Zongting for five years. They had always treated each other with icy courtesy, but she had come to understand the man’s temper well enough.
Ji Zongting seemed cold and distant, but at his core he was a man of immense control, an authority who tolerated no challenge to his dignity, least of all from her, a “Madam Ji” he had plucked out with a casual point of his finger.
Wen Li couldn’t help recalling what came later in the book.
After the car crash, Ji Zongting became a vegetative patient and lay in bed for three whole years. Three years later, he woke miraculously, but he had become a complete madman.
He went after the male and female leads with a vengeance, his methods ruthless and brutal. He would use any illegal means to destroy them.
But over those three years, the male lead had already built up his own power. And Ji Zongting had been left disabled by the crash. In the end, he was driven step by step into a corner by the male lead and died full of resentment.
Remembering the methods described in the book after Ji Zongting went mad, Wen Li couldn’t help shuddering.
That kind of madness, willing to pay any price, willing to drag everyone down with him even at the cost of mutual destruction, was not something a normal person could do.
The Ji Zongting of now was still fine. Suit and tie, strategizing, the Ji family’s heir whom everyone in the business world feared. But Wen Li had no doubt that beneath it all, that mad streak was hidden in his bones. It just hadn’t been triggered yet.
So going head-to-head was absolutely out of the question.
She had to make him be the one to ask for the divorce.
Suddenly, Wen Li’s eyes lit up.
In her last life, she had spent five years scheming and pretending. Wasn’t it all to please him?
Ji Zongting liked obedient women. So this time, she would be anything but obedient.
She would act out. Act out in every way she could think of. Act until he couldn’t stand it, act until he couldn’t bear it a second longer, until he slammed the divorce papers down in front of her himself.
Once she showed her true colors, she was sure he wouldn’t tolerate her any longer.