“Uncle, I will take good care of Qiaoqiao. From now on, as long as I am around, no one will be able to bully her.”
Those familiar, forceful words startled Ye Qiaoqiao, pulling her back from the agonizing pain of death.
She snapped her eyes open.
The surroundings, both familiar and strange, made her realize with a jolt that she had been reborn!
This was the home where she had grown up, and even more specifically, it was the day Zhou Cong had come to propose!
Zhou Cong!
“Good, good, good. You were introduced by Director Zheng, and I believe she has already vetted your character. From now on, I will entrust Qiaoqiao to…” Commander Ye’s voice was full of warmth and laughter.
“Dad, I’m not marrying him!” Ye Qiaoqiao suppressed the urge to slap Zhou Cong and interrupted Commander Ye.
Zhou Cong, who was half-kneeling below her, instinctively looked up. He was puzzled but spoke soothingly, “Qiaoqiao? What’s wrong? Didn’t we agree that I would come to propose today? Are you just too nervous?”
Commander Ye was also confused by his daughter’s reaction, though his primary feeling was concern.
“I will not marry you.”
Ye Qiaoqiao looked down at him coldly, her voice resolute and her attitude firm.
Zhou Cong stood up and reached out to take her hand. “Qiaoqiao, don’t be angry. Did I do something wrong…”
Before he could finish his sentence, Ye Qiaoqiao slapped his hand away with a sharp thwack.
“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth!”
Ye Qiaoqiao’s eyes were filled with resentment and fury. She wished she could kill Zhou Cong right then and there, but she knew she couldn’t. She lowered her eyes and forced herself to calm down.
“Qiaoqiao, if there’s something I haven’t done well enough that’s upset you, why start speaking out of spite?” Zhou Cong frowned, displeased by her impulsiveness. However, he didn’t believe she was telling the truth; he assumed she was just trying to get his attention.
“Weren’t things going well between us before? Why are you suddenly unwilling?”
Zhou Cong’s expression remained relatively calm. He had long known that as the daughter of a commander, Ye Qiaoqiao was bound to be somewhat spoiled and willful. Experiencing her temper firsthand for the first time, he couldn’t help but feel a flicker of dislike.
“Ye Qiaoqiao, there’s a time and a place for throwing a tantrum.” Several military second-generation playboys standing behind Zhou Cong couldn’t help but speak up in criticism.
They all began to show their dissatisfaction with Ye Qiaoqiao.
Even though she was the daughter of a commander, Zhou Cong was already a rising star in the business world at a young age, worth hundreds of thousands. The shops under his name were doing exceptionally well. Although Commander Ye held a high rank, he lived a modest life. Ye Qiaoqiao marrying Zhou Cong would be a step into a life of luxury.
They hadn’t expected her to cause such a scene before even marrying into the family.
Was she trying to manipulate Zhou Cong on purpose?
If Commander Ye hadn’t been standing right there, they would have said much harsher things.
“Ye Qiaoqiao, you didn’t say you wouldn’t marry him before, only to reject him on the day of the proposal. Isn’t that a bit too much? Are you trying to bully Brother Zhou?”
In her previous life, Ye Qiaoqiao had argued with this group many times.
Although Zhou Cong would step in afterward and make them apologize to her, it wouldn’t be long before they were mocking and provoking her again.
Thinking about it now, if Zhou Cong had truly valued her, would these playboys who followed him have dared to act that way?
It was all a calculated move. Every time she was wronged, Zhou Cong would coax her with sweet words, leading her to believe he was a good man and making her fall deeper for him. What a brilliant scheme.
“Brother Zhou has sent you so many gifts—Swiss watches, a brick phone that you can only get in Hong Kong, gold bracelets, and so many beautiful, fashionable clothes. They’re all imported goods that many women in the military compound can’t even dream of. Why didn’t you refuse them when you received them?”
“I say, Miss Qiaoqiao, stop playing the young mistress. You should know that a woman who is too willful becomes quite unappealing.”
Ye Qiaoqiao looked at the thinly veiled disdain and dislike in their eyes. Hearing their accusations and the way they were framing her, she laughed out of sheer anger.
“Fine. I was originally going to save Zhou Cong some face, but since you insist on accusing me and slandering me, don’t blame me for being blunt!” Ye Qiaoqiao said clearly.
“What kind of talk is this? I, her father, am still right here, and you’re bullying my daughter to my face?” Commander Ye’s face clouded with anger.
The three men’s faces instantly turned pale.
Terrified by Commander Ye’s stern expression, they snapped back to reality. No matter how much money they made following Zhou Cong, Commander Ye was still their parents’ superior.
Their resentment toward Ye Qiaoqiao was nothing more than jealousy over her having a high-ranking father who doted on her.
“Xu Zhengqing, you’re saying I received many expensive gifts from Zhou Cong and that I’m shameless?” Ye Qiaoqiao asked mockingly. “But I have never received a single gift from Zhou Cong!”
Xu Zhengqing, one of the playboys, let out a light laugh upon hearing this. “Ye Qiaoqiao, even if you’re looking for an excuse, you can’t use that one. I personally mailed all the gifts Brother Zhou sent to you.”
“Who did you mail them to?” Ye Qiaoqiao sneered.
Xu Zhengqing was growing impatient. “To ‘Yaoshuang.’ Isn’t that the pen name you used in your letters with Brother Zhou? What, did you receive one set under your pen name and now you want another under the name Ye Qiaoqiao?”
Zhou Cong looked up at her. “Qiaoqiao, weren’t we getting along perfectly in our letters? I am ‘Zhouzhou.’ I am no one else.”
He was truly confused. In a letter not long ago, the two of them had been pouring their hearts out to each other.
“‘Zhouzhou’? ‘Yaoshuang’?” Ye Qiaoqiao snorted. “I’m sorry, but my name is Ye Qiaoqiao and nothing else. Who is Yaoshuang? I never exchanged letters with you.”
“What do you mean by that…” Zhou Cong hadn’t expected her to try and erase two years of friendship as pen pals. His chest burned with fury, and his eyes were full of disappointment and rage.
It felt as though his sincere feelings were being trampled upon.
“I mean, I am not ‘Yaoshuang.’ However, I do know someone with that pen name. Aren’t you curious to find out who the real ‘Yaoshuang’ is?” Ye Qiaoqiao sneered.
Xu Zhengqing and the others were shocked and confused.
They instinctively glanced at Zhou Cong.
After a moment of surprise, Zhou Cong regained his composure. He didn’t believe Ye Qiaoqiao; he thought she was just finding someone to put on an act so he would coax her.
Seeing that Commander Ye clearly wasn’t objecting, he realized that even if Ye Qiaoqiao was just being difficult and lying about not being Yaoshuang, he would have to swallow his pride and appease her today. He would have to take the loss.
Zhou Cong lowered his eyes, a flash of resentment and displeasure crossing his gaze. His dislike for Ye Qiaoqiao, who had brought him this humiliation today, deepened.
“If you’re so curious, then come with me to confront her.”
“Fine, we’ll go with you and settle this face-to-face.” Zhou Cong spoke these words while looking at Ye Qiaoqiao. In addition to his usual warmth, his eyes held a hidden displeasure.
“However, Qiaoqiao, you can be willful once, but you cannot be willful twice.”
Hearing his seemingly magnanimous words made Ye Qiaoqiao want to vomit. It had been the same in her previous life. It was clearly Zhou Cong who was climbing the social ladder by using the Ye family.
Yet everyone around him felt that she, Ye Qiaoqiao, was the one taking advantage of him.
In her past life, Zhou Cong had used her father’s status as a commander to get the green light for every business venture, easily amassing a fortune.
Eventually, Zhou Cong became the richest man in the country.
In her previous life, she had been kept at home by Zhou Cong like a hothouse flower, naturally becoming dependent on him.
But she had clearly been relying on her father!
If that had been all, it might have been fine.
But just as Zhou Cong achieved fame and fortune, he turned around and collaborated with outsiders to report her father. Her father died a tragic death in prison.
Zhou Cong, the man who had gained both fame and fortune by marrying her, had been deceiving her from the very beginning. He had been acting in front of her for ten years.
As it turned out, before Zhou Cong had ever met her for their marriage match, he had been in close contact with Jiang Yao—the daughter of the Ye family’s nanny—as pen pals for two years. During those two years, Jiang Yao had used the pen name “Yaoshuang” and the identity of the commander’s daughter to carry on a passionate romance with Zhou Cong.
Zhou Cong’s proposal today was only because he believed she was “Yaoshuang.”
In her previous life, on her and Zhou Cong’s wedding night, Jiang Yao had committed suicide by drinking rat poison. It was only after her own death, when her soul followed Zhou Cong, that she realized he had known since their wedding night that she wasn’t “Yaoshuang.”
Because he hadn’t married his beloved and because his beloved had been driven to death by Ye Qiaoqiao and Commander Ye, Zhou Cong had embarked on a decade-long deception and a long-premeditated revenge against her.
In the end, she too had been thrown into a den of thugs by Zhou Cong’s own hands, dying after being humiliated.
It was truly laughable!
From start to finish, she and her father had been innocent.
Why should they have carried the blame for Jiang Yao’s suicide? And why should they have been betrayed by an ungrateful wolf they had raised, who then stood on the moral high ground to ruin them?
Ye Qiaoqiao felt a sharp pang of anger in her chest.
Ridiculous.
It was truly too ridiculous.
She blamed herself for being blinded by Zhou Cong’s gentle exterior in her previous life, losing herself in the love he performed, and failing to see his wolfish ambitions.
She casually wiped away her tears and turned, leading the group toward the servants’ quarters in the backyard.
The group arrived outside Jiang Yao’s room.
Jiang Yao had been hiding inside, organizing the letters and gifts she had exchanged with Zhou Cong. These items were the proof of her love.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
“Jiang Yao, it’s me, Ye Qiaoqiao.”