When Song Xinya looked at Qin Yuhe, he was looking at her too.
He felt that there was something strange about the way she was looking at him.
It was as if she were looking through him at someone else.
Who was she looking at?
Who was she thinking about?
Qin Yuhe keenly sensed that the person occupying Song Xinya’s thoughts was a man.
He had never asked about Song Xinya’s past relationships.
On the one hand, he felt that they belonged to her past. What was over was over, and he respected her past.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to hear about her sweet moments with other men.
As they spent more and more time together, he grew increasingly unable to tolerate the thought of her being intimate with another man.
His possessiveness toward her was growing stronger by the day.
The thought that Song Xinya was looking through him at another man sent a fierce, scorching fire raging through Qin Yuhe’s heart.
The words escaped through clenched teeth. “Which bastard are you thinking about?”
Song Xinya: “You.”
Qin Yuhe: “…”
His large hand slipped through the neckline of her black lace nightdress and gave her a sudden, forceful squeeze. His palm was searing hot.
“Are you deliberately insulting me?”
A glistening sheen of tears rose in Song Xinya’s eyes, and her delicate voice trembled. “N-No. I really was thinking about you. I really was.”
She was thinking about whether the man from a year ago could possibly have been him.
One of Qin Yuhe’s hands held her while the other moved to her neck, gripping her slender, vulnerable throat. He lowered his head and kissed her.
A wolf-like, savage light flashed in his dark eyes—the fierce gleam of a predator tearing into its prey.
Song Xinya’s heart trembled.
Tonight was sure to be another night of passion too intense for words.
Qin Yuhe had always been forceful in bed.
When he was carrying a temper, he became even more violent, like a wild beast.
Before anything had even begun, Song Xinya’s legs had already gone weak.
Just as Qin Yuhe’s lips were about to meet hers, his phone rang.
It was an emergency call from his assistant.
It concerned the resort project in the Magic City—and had something to do with Song Xinya.
Qin Yuhe knew that unless it was extremely urgent, his assistant would never call him at this hour, in the middle of the night.
The moment he answered, his assistant’s anxious voice came through. “President Qin, someone has died!”
Qin Yuhe replied, “I’m not dead. I’m alive and well.”
The assistant was practically on the verge of tears. President Qin still had the nerve to joke around at a time like this.
“President Qin, someone has died at the resort construction site in the Magic City. The section overseen by Madam’s father, Song Xuanli, is involved.”
Qin Yuhe withdrew his hand from Song Xinya’s black lace nightdress, rose from the bed, and walked toward the bedroom door.
“Tell me exactly what happened. How did the person die?”
The bedroom door closed, cutting off Qin Yuhe’s voice.
Song Xinya didn’t hear what came next.
She lay on the bed, her mind shifting between thoughts of Qin Yuhe’s business troubles and worries about whether he might have been the man from a year ago.
Countless chaotic thoughts tangled together in her mind like a ball of yarn, knots everywhere and no way to unravel them.
Her head was spinning.
Song Xinya waited a long time for Qin Yuhe, but he never came back.
By the time she regained her senses, it was the next morning.
Because he had worked through the night, Qin Yuhe went to the office later than usual.
When Song Xinya left the house, a Rolls-Royce was parked across the entrance.
Qin Yuhe was sitting inside, waiting for her so they could go to work together.
Song Xinya bent down and looked at him through the open window. “I’m not going to the office today. I have to visit a client.”
“I’ll take you there,” Qin Yuhe said.
“No need. The place is pretty remote, and it’s a long way there and back. It’s not on the way to the office either. I’ll drive myself.”
She was concerned about him and asked, “Did you take care of what happened last night?”
“I’m handling it.”
Lives were at stake. What was more, the accident at the Qin Group’s construction site the previous night had claimed three lives, not just one. It had attracted the attention of both the media and the local government. The matter was extremely serious.
Qin Yuhe was a dependable, unshakable man. He would never bring any negative emotions from work home to his family. Whatever happened, he dealt with it himself.
He didn’t tell Song Xinya how troublesome the situation was. Instead, he brushed it off with a simple sentence:
“I’ll take care of it.”
One call after another came in, yet Qin Yuhe remained steady and composed, dealing with each problem in an orderly manner.
The Rolls-Royce drove toward the Qin Group headquarters.
Song Xinya, meanwhile, drove to the home of Shen Chaoyang and her mother.
This was the first time she had met Shen Chaoyang face-to-face.
Shen Chaoyang was still wrapped up from head to toe, leaving no skin exposed. She stood in front of Song Xinya, wanting to greet her properly but not daring to meet her eyes.
A person suffering from PTSD would repeatedly relive the harm they had endured.
It was like torturing themselves over and over again.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to let themselves go—it was that they couldn’t.
It was an illness, like pneumonia brought on by a high fever. Treatment was necessary before the patient could recover.
She was not the one who had done wrong, yet she had suffered the most.
Shen Chaoyang’s eyes were filled with fear, anxiety, insecurity, and timidity. There was no trace of the lively, cheerful girl she had once been.
Song Xinya brought Shen Chaoyang and her mother to the hospital.
Han Jingyi had made arrangements in advance. Although the psychiatric specialist was not scheduled to see patients that day, the moment Song Xinya called, he came over specially to examine Shen Chaoyang.
The psychiatric expert personally examined Shen Chaoyang, provided psychological treatment, and prescribed medication based on her individual condition.
They were busy from morning until afternoon.
At last, Shen Chaoyang’s appointment came to an end.
Song Xinya wasted no time before moving on to the next task: finding the video of the sexual assault recorded by Sheng Tianjun.
She drove to the cosmetic hospital where Tiantian worked.
That was right—Song Xinya had come here to find evidence of Sheng Tianjun’s crimes.
When Sheng Tianjun had tried to take liberties with her that day, he had brought his phone with him.
Song Xinya remembered that when Sheng Tianjun had reached out to undo her clothes, he had been holding up his phone and recording.
Thinking back on it now, Sheng Tianjun must have had some kind of twisted fetish. He liked to record himself assaulting others, enjoying the thrill of violating them.
Qin Yuhe had beaten Sheng Tianjun so badly that his nasal bridge was broken, his skull fractured, four ribs cracked, and both his wrists and ankles fractured. He had been carried away by ambulance, and no one had taken his phone with him. It must have been left behind at this cosmetic hospital.
Song Xinya found the director and explained why she had come.
The director’s words confirmed her suspicion. “Sheng Tianjun’s phone is indeed here.”
“Bring it to me. I want to take a look.”
“It was soaked in disinfectant and is broken.”
“Can it be repaired?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think so” meant that he wasn’t completely certain.
That meant there was still hope.
“Bring it to me. I want to try to have it repaired.”
The director handed Sheng Tianjun’s phone to Mrs. Qin with both hands.
Song Xinya took the phone and eventually made her way to a street lined with electronics repair shops.
She asked every repair shop there, but they all said it couldn’t be fixed.
Song Xinya then went elsewhere to keep asking.
After searching all over Jingbei City, the answer she received everywhere was the same: it couldn’t be fixed.
Clutching the broken phone, Song Xinya returned home in a daze.
Once again, she came home later than Qin Yuhe, who had been waiting for her. Seeing how dispirited she looked, Qin Yuhe gently rubbed her cheek and asked, “What’s making my Yaya so sad?”
Song Xinya took out the broken phone. “I wanted to get this phone fixed, but no one could repair it.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Qin Yuhe said.
Song Xinya stared at him in surprise. “You know how to fix phones too?”
“There’s anything I can’t do?”
Even though professional repair technicians had been unable to fix the phone, Qin Yuhe repaired it in less than ten minutes.
