Chapter 21

The yacht remained at sea for three days.

Most of Jiang Yao’s bones were shattered. In the end, she was a broken mess.

Her expensive white fishtail gown was stained with blood and grime, its original form unrecognizable.

When Zhao Yan came to tell Fu Liuchuan, he said expressionlessly, “Throw her into the sea.”

“…Chuan, she said… Liuliu seemed to have some last words for you.”

Fu Liuchuan looked up, stood, and walked towards the door without a word.

At the doorway, he paused and suddenly spoke. “What do you think she wanted to say to me?”

Zhao Yan’s face was filled with pity. “Chuan…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say the rest.

I think he must have seen it too.

Fu Liuchuan looked no different from his usual calm, indifferent self.

But his eyes were like burned-out embers, devoid of any life.

They could shatter at any moment.

At the edge of the deck, Fu Liuchuan saw the unrecognizable form of Jiang Yao.

Kept conscious by large doses of adrenaline, she was fully aware, and therefore felt the pain a hundred, a thousand times over.

She seemed to know she wasn’t going to make it.

And she wanted Fu Liuchuan to suffer with her.

So, in broken sentences, she recounted every detail of my last moments.

“You actually had a chance to save her. A minute before I killed her, she was on the phone, arguing with you.”

“Fu Liuchuan, you’re the one who killed your sister.”

“Oh, and right before she died, she thought you already knew her secret. She thought you found her disgusting-”

She couldn’t say any more.

One of Zhao Yan’s men had slit her throat.

Her body was thrown into the sea, and someone quickly came to clean the bloodstains from the deck.

Then the boat docked, and Fu Liuchuan took the earliest flight abroad.

In a police station in a foreign country, he saw my bloated, decaying body.

But he felt no fear.

Only an endless, boundless pain rising from the depths of his heart.

The pain was so intense it almost killed him, forcing him to double over, his fingers gripping the edge of the gurney so hard his knuckles turned white.

A police officer nearby studied him and asked in English, “And you are to the deceased?”

“Her brother, and…” He paused for a second, then continued, “her lover.”

Her lover.

That wasn’t wrong.

I had selfishly, despicably loved Fu Liuchuan.

Just as he had timidly, secretly loved me.

We just… never loved each other at the same time.

My body was cremated in a foreign land, my ashes placed in a small ceramic urn, and I flew back home with Fu Liuchuan.

“I’m sorry, Liuliu.”

The sun was bright outside the window, illuminating his pale face. “We’re going home now.”