Chapter 20

The moment she landed in a certain airport in M Country, Jiang Wei excitedly called Wen Ji.
They could finally see each other. She couldn’t wait to tell him that from now on they wouldn’t have to be like the Cowherd and Weaver Girl…
“What?”
When she arrived at the address Wen Ji had given her and asked someone outside for directions, the answer she got was that there was no such person.
“What do you mean there’s no such person? That’s impossible, sir, think again!”
She grabbed the man’s sleeve in panic, the world spinning, stumbling through her not-quite-fluent English as she pressed him again and again.
“He’s a boy with black hair and black eyes. Tall, thin, very refined-looking. His skin is very fair. He’s a student, Professor S’s specially recruited student. How can he not exist?”
“Miss, please calm down. I can check for you.”
He checked.
Still nothing.
Dragging her suitcase, Jiang Wei walked down the street, travel-worn, hair a mess. Amid a sea of blond hair and blue eyes, she looked completely out of place.
She made a call.
“Weiwei, you can’t run. As long as you come back, I’ll have the doctors operate on your grandmother immediately.”
That familiar voice, Ling Ze.
Grandma?
Wasn’t her grandmother in M Country, with her boyfriend taking care of her?
But her boyfriend was… a ghost on paper.
She was about to lose her mind.
She didn’t see the sports car speeding toward her. The driver’s eyes gleamed with triumph as he hit her, clearly aiming.
Jiang Wei’s body flew like a puppet yanked by invisible strings. Even as chaos swallowed her mind, a fierce will to live clawed its way up.
She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live.
She’d studied with an IV drip in her arm. Got into the best university. Been cut off and blackballed, and still never gave up.
Her only relative, the grandmother who’d raised her, had fallen gravely ill just as life was about to get better. Everything had twisted into some grotesque farce.
But she had never thought of giving up,
“Everything’s done. Wire me the rest of the money,” the middle-aged driver said later, reeking of alcohol.
He climbed out of the car and waved a hand in front of Jiang Wei’s nose, confirming she wasn’t breathing. Cigarette dangling from his lips, he made the call.
“Weiwei, let’s end this on good terms.”
“The check on the table and Villa 36 in Bishui Bay, they’re yours. Don’t bother coming again after this.”
Jiang Wei woke in a fog, realizing she was lying on a big bed. A broad-backed man sat at the edge, slowly buttoning a shirt, damp hair falling over his forehead, his expression full of post-coital satisfaction.
The words out of his mouth were glacial.
??? Jiang Wei was completely lost. Who?
The man turned his head, and when she saw his face, she almost screamed.
Ling Ze.
How could it be him?
What was going on, the bed, her body… She looked down and realized she was completely naked under the covers.
Jiang Wei felt like she was going insane. Maybe the horror in her eyes was too obvious, because Ling Ze assumed she was just unwilling to accept it.
“I’m getting married soon.”
Those familiar fox-like eyes rested quietly on her, a soft, distant gleam in his gaze.
“What does your marriage have to do with me?” Jiang Wei snapped. “And why am I here?”
There it was again, that look. The way people regarded a pet: a little possessive, a little condescending.
“Playing amnesia now?” she bit out.
“Be good, Weiwei,” Ling Ze said mildly. “My patience has limits.”
The way he said it was exactly like some rich scumbag tossing money at a gold-digger to send her away. She lowered her head, not sure what to think.
Ling Ze assumed that meant she’d accepted reality. On his way out he leaned down, bestowing a light kiss on her forehead like a magnanimous benefactor. It was perfectly in line with his usual poise.
Jiang Wei’s thoughts were spinning, but in the haze she managed to piece together a few brutal facts: she had slept with Ling Ze; there was some sort of kept-woman arrangement between them, or at least something like it.
Was this a dream?
Had that loop of nightmares started again?
She pinched the tender spot at the inside of her thigh as hard as she could. Pain shot up her spine, so sharp she jolted.
Too real. Way, way too real.
When she stepped out of the hotel, the noon sunlight was blinding. Instinctively she raised a hand to shield her eyes. If she’d been a vampire, she’d probably have disintegrated on the spot.
The street outside was a noisy mess of traffic and billboards. A glowing movie star smiled down from one of the giant screens. For a moment she honestly couldn’t tell dream from reality.
A van screeched to a stop in front of her. The second she saw the big men climb out, faces hard and mean, her gut told her they were here for her.
She was tired. Bone-deep tired.
She didn’t run.
They grabbed her. Tied her to a rusted, abandoned pipe in some deserted place. The knife they held caught the light as it slid past her cheek, a cold streak of white on her pale skin.
A rough, calloused hand grabbed her chin, jerking her head up. The man’s voice was distorted through a voice changer, stiff and strange.
“Sorry, little miss. But you really had to go and seduce another man’s fiancé, didn’t you?”
Seduce another man’s fiancé… What a joke.
Jiang Wei lifted her eyes, her expression edged with mockery.
All this sudden “interest,” all this sudden hostility, it made less and less sense. In the dream she’d accepted being his mistress, gotten sucked into this tug-of-war between Ling Ze and Mu Yang, and that was when Wen Ji had vanished, her grandmother had fallen ill…
Then she’d been hit by a car.
Then she’d woken up as Ling Ze’s mistress and been “dealt with” by his fiancée.
Weird. It was all too weird.
The blade traced her face. A sharp sting, then another, then more, lines of pain cutting across her features. These guys were clearly experienced. The knife tip moved almost lazily, painting over her face until it was a crosshatched ruin. Someone not far away was recording video, the proof they’d need to show whoever had hired them.
It hurt. It really, really hurt.
Even after everything she’d been through, this kind of inhuman pain pushed her past her limits. She could feel the urge to beg rise up in her throat.
She forced it back down.
If she had to go, she’d go on her own terms.
“Boss, why’re we cutting up her face first? Kinda ruins the fun…” one of the underlings muttered.
So they weren’t planning to stop at mutilation.
Jiang Wei’s eyes flashed with raw hatred and refusal.
Fine then. If this world wanted to be this twisted, she’d make it even more interesting.
Her lips curled.
She was no one’s puppet, no matter whether the strings belonged to people or something else entirely.
The men huddled together, arguing about the order in which they’d “go first.” Given the state of her face, like a freshly unearthed mummy, it wasn’t exactly an appealing scene. The boss was already regretting not “having some fun” before carving her up.
The first man to step up consoled himself: at least the body was still excellent.
He stripped off her clothes. Pale skin, a champagne-colored French lace bra, the perfect fullness of her chest, every line screamed temptation. He finally felt a little stir of interest.
But something was wrong.
She wasn’t struggling. Wasn’t crying. Wasn’t cursing him or begging for mercy.
She was still.
Too still.
Then a drop of something warm hit the back of his hand. Blood?
He reached up, feeling along her neck.
Cool skin. No breath. No pulse.
“Boss… I think she’s dead.”
“What?!”
The boss grabbed her by the hair and lifted her head.
Her face, ruined by those bloody cuts, was frozen in a bright, almost sweet smile, lips curved, a smear of scarlet at the corner of her mouth.
Matched with the chaos of blood and slashes across her skin, the expression was unnervingly eerie. Every hair on the boss’s body stood on end. The scene looked like something straight out of a horror movie.
“B-Boss, is she gonna come back as a ghost?” one of them whispered.
“It’s broad daylight. What ghost, for fuck’s sake.”
But even he was rattled. How did a perfectly good hostage just… die? And right in front of him. A dead body meant trouble. He’d have to charge more.
He stared at the blood at the corner of her mouth and suddenly had a thought.
She bit through her tongue?
The woman was tied up this tightly, barely able to move, and still managed to bite through her own tongue without a sound.
Savage.
When Jiang Wei woke, her face was still throbbing with phantom pain. For a moment she thought she’d survived somehow, but then her blurry vision cleared.
And she saw that wild, arrogant, troublemaker face twisted by anger.
Mu Yang.
His expression was furious, but more than that, disgusted, scornful, high and mighty.
He was looking at her the way someone might stare at a sewer rat or a cockroach in a public bathroom, as if someone like her shouldn’t even be allowed to exist.
“Bitch. Get out. And if I ever hear you bothered Zhi Ning again…”
“You look a bit like her, and you think that’s enough to replace her?” he said coldly. “There’s a chasm between you two you’ll never cross. A whore who sells herself could never compare to a princess in a castle.”
“Ling Ze dotes on you because Zhi Ning’s crush is me, and he can’t steal that. You’re just useful. If I ever catch you upsetting Zhi Ning again, you don’t want to know the consequences.”
Wang Zhi Ning…
Jiang Wei burst into laughter.
She’d bet right.
She had to follow the very first dream to the letter. Whenever she tried to break away from it, any happiness she gained was erased, her life rebooted from the start.
It was… almost funny.
She stayed on her knees and laughed like a lunatic. Mu Yang’s gaze darkened. He thought she was about to pull some new trick.
“Little Mu, why are you so angry?” Jiang Wei smiled, lips curved, voice suddenly soft and smooth. “Isn’t it because you realized you’re not that important to her? Isn’t it better with me here?”
Her tone shifted, silk and poison, like a siren crawling up from Atlantis.
“There are so many things you can’t bring yourself to do to her,” she said softly. “But you can do them to me. Try anything you like, test out whatever you don’t dare show her.”
“Ridiculous. I’m not Ling Ze. I don’t eat any random garbage shoved in front of me,” Mu Yang snapped.
For just a moment, he’d been pulled in. Then he caught himself and felt a wave of disgust. How could he ever be attracted to someone like her?