Chapter 18

“You think I don’t know?”

He stared at me relentlessly, lips curling into a cold sneer, yet the tears wouldn’t stop streaming down:

“You’ve been waiting all along for me to cheat, haven’t you?”

“That way, you’d have a reason to divorce me, to get rid of me fair and square, so you’d never have to love me again, right?”

“What exactly did I do wrong?”

He let out a low roar, nearly collapsing under the weight of his emotions.

“I’ve loved you for sixteen years. Just because I wanted a child, just because I wanted us to have a complete family, you’re going to deny me, abandon me?!”

He forced me into the corner, burying his trembling voice in the hollow of my neck, utterly lost:

“What do I have to do for you to forgive me… I’ve done everything…”

“I really love you, why can’t you believe me?!”

I let my strength fade, stopped struggling.

Let him hold me so tightly, not a gap left between us.

Only in this moment did I truly see it.

Zhou Heng is a thoroughbred egotist.

All his selfishness, betrayal, trampling-

He labels every act with “It’s for your own good” and “It’s for the family”.

He weaponizes morality to intensify my guilt.

Makes me think: all of this happened for my sake.

Justifies his infidelity.

Justifies every absurd act.

I stared at the numbers on the elevator, my voice calm:

“Love me?”

“So when you slept with someone else, that was out of love for me?”

“Zhou Heng, do you want to say, even when you were with her, your mind was still on me?”

Irritated, he slammed the wall, then turned around and paced, agitated:

“I told you-I did it for this family!”

“Believe it or not, I don’t care.”

He wiped his tears, as if the performance could go no further, brows faintly furrowed as he scrutinized me:

“And what about you?”

“What have you done to keep this ever-duller marriage afloat?”

“Do you even know how many nights I lay awake, watching you sleep with your back to me, unable to sleep?”

“The guilt suffocates me, everyone looks at me with that expression, as if they’re all saying, ‘You wronged Shu Yan, you wronged Shu Yan.'”

“What do they know? What right do they have to judge me?!”

“I work my ass off to earn money, to make up for things. When we first married, I gave you a 3,000 yuan gold necklace, and you wore it for eight years. Now I give you a twenty-million-yuan bracelet, and you don’t even glance at it.”

“Heh… so is it me who’s changed, or are you just too greedy?”

He stood with his back to the light, his expression dark and unreadable:

“If only one person tries, anyone would get tired.”