C1 Chapter 1

Under the dim, yellow light, two figures moved in and out of focus by the bed. A heavy, heated air spread through the room. The woman on the bed was delicate and small, her slender arms weakly hooked over the man’s shoulders, broken murmurs slipping from her lips...

The rough, unfeeling way he took her made Anan frown. She tried, on instinct, to push him away, only to realize she’d already lost the strength to fight back. Her face flushed a deep red.

This was her husband. She’d been married to him for a year, and all she’d gotten in return was cold indifference.

He didn’t want her. And whatever was left of Anan’s heart had been ground down until there was nothing left.

What a brute.

Then Yubai pulled away. The haze from moments ago was gone from his hawk-sharp eyes. As he fastened his buttons one by one, he slipped back into that restrained, untouchable version of himself.

“I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

The casual way he said it made bitterness rise at the corner of Anan’s mouth. Three years into this marriage, the times they’d actually seen each other were few and far between. She knew he’d only married her because his grandfather ordered it.

After all, her father had once saved the Luh family. Thinking of it now, she couldn’t help a quiet, bitter laugh. Maybe this really should end. She was sick of living like this.

“Yubai…” Anan bit her lip. After struggling with it for a long time, she finally asked the question she wanted answered more than anything. “Have you ever loved me?”

The coldness in his eyes made her chest ache. She didn’t know why, but all at once she felt ridiculous.

Love?

Yubai’s gaze darkened. There wasn’t a trace of warmth on his ice-carved face. For the wife forced on him, he felt only disgust—no love at all.

“Anan, don’t push your luck.”

Qiu Anan’s face stiffened, a flash of humiliation sliding through her eyes. In Luh Yubai’s eyes, she was nothing more than a woman who didn’t know her place—someone shamelessly squandering the favor the Luh family had once shown her.

But now—

She was tired.

Qiu Anan forced herself to keep smiling, hoping to end things with some shred of dignity. Yet at some point, her clear eyes had turned blurry. “Luh Yubai… let’s get a divorce.”

Just a few words, and the whole room seemed to drop into a colder, heavier silence.

The silence stretched on for what felt like forever. Just as it started to crush the air out of her lungs, someone suddenly gripped her chin, tilting her face up. A strikingly handsome face filled her vision—

“Qiu Anan, what kind of stunt are you pulling this time?” The man’s expression turned icy in an instant, his narrow, cold eyes flickering with something unfamiliar.

Qiu Anan froze, as if she hadn’t expected him to say that at all.

“I’m not,” she said, her heart sinking at his suspicion. She clenched her teeth and finally let it all spill out. “Luh Yubai, I’m done. I mean it—let’s get a divorce.”

Luh Yubai clearly hadn’t expected the woman in front of him to bring up divorce. A trace of doubt flashed through his deep-set eyes, and for reasons he couldn’t name, her suggestion irritated him.

“Mr. Luh, if you divorce me, you won’t have to keep that woman behind you hidden in the shadows anymore. That way, Jingya will probably be happy too…”

Jingya was the moonlight in his heart. Back then, he’d been willing to give up his status as the Luh family’s heir for her. And Qiu Anan—what was she, really? Just a nobody who’d clawed her way into the role at the right moment.

Three years had passed. His pure, innocent darling still stayed close by his side, while she—the rightful Mrs. Luh—was nothing but a title. Even when she watched the two of them come and go together, she still had to wear that polished, graceful smile.