C3 Chapter 3

In the last year of Hee Yu’s mother’s life, Hee Yu was the only one by her side.

Her husband, Hee Zheng, was in the state capital, living a loving, comfortable life with his “properly married” wife, Zhuh Qingwen.

One day, a middle-aged man in a suit showed up in their rural town. The town chief brought him to Hee Yu’s home. When it was just the three of them in private, the man took out a box. Inside were a deed and a will.

Hee Yu’s mother had been born and raised in that town and had never set foot anywhere else.

So the sudden appearance of a will made no sense at all.

“You don’t need to misunderstand,” the man said. “If I were trying to take something from you, I could’ve just taken the deed and forged a will to go with it.”

At the time, it was still just a widowed mother and her child getting by in poverty. There was nothing worth scheming over.

“Your father really is from this town,” the man continued, “but your mother isn’t. Back then, she refused to accept the marriage her family arranged and ran away. When she left, there was still a younger brother at home. Unfortunately, the boy died young, which made your mother the only remaining heir by blood. Over the years, your maternal family was left with only your grandmother, barely holding the household together while guarding it from relatives who were circling like vultures.”

Finding the daughter who had vanished became the one thing Hee Yu’s grandmother couldn’t let go of until the day she died.

As the years passed, the people involved died one after another—some naturally, some not. That final deathbed request was handed down from the man’s father to him. Out of a sense of duty—and maybe because fate had finally shown a little mercy—though the daughter who ran away was long gone, she had left behind a bloodline.

That Hee Yu’s mother was the rightful heir was something the man could now confirm. All Hee Yu and her mother had to do was accept it—no strings attached.

It felt like money falling from the sky. Hee Yu’s mother, who had always lived quietly and never fought for anything, wanted to refuse. She couldn’t make herself believe it. But when she thought about how little time she had left, and about her young daughter who still couldn’t take care of herself, she finally accepted it calmly—and made sure to explain everything to Hee Yu.

She couldn’t be there to watch her daughter grow up, and she didn’t trust the ungrateful Hee Zheng to take good care of her. So if that was the case, the only thing she could do was give her daughter an ironclad guarantee for the future.

That was the real reason Zhuh Qingwen agreed to let Hee Zheng take Hee Yu in.

Unfortunately, Hee Zheng’s cold-heartedness and Zhuh Qingwen’s ruthlessness had already carved scars into Hee Yu that would never fade. No matter how they coaxed her or threatened her, Hee Yu chose to stay silent.

Over time, the girl who should’ve been bright and bubbly gradually turned into a woman with ice in her chest.

Staring at Hee Zheng as he started to lose his temper, Hee Yu’s face was hard. “Go back and tell that woman: even if she’s got the power to keep me locked up here for the rest of my life, I’m never handing over the deed.”

It was the only thing her mother had left her. Even if she died, she would never give it to the woman who’d driven her mother to her death.

But Hee Zheng suddenly let out a cold laugh. “If you won’t tell me where you hid the deed, then I’ll have to dig up your mom and ask her myself who she gave it to.”

Hee Yu’s expression changed instantly.

She’d thought she knew Hee Zheng. She’d never imagined he could say something so inhuman.

Hee Yu’s mother was buried in the rural town where they’d depended on each other to survive. Every year, only Hee Yu went alone to pay her respects. It was the only place in this world that still felt warm to her—and the one place Hee Zheng had never been willing to set foot.

Her trembling fingers gathered every ounce of strength she had. Eyes wide, she pointed at Hee Zheng, shaking with fury. “If you so much as disrespect my mom’s grave, just wait. Even if you’re begging to get me out of a police station, I won’t leave. I’ll report you—every bit of tax fraud and evasion your company’s been pulling all these years.”

“Spit. You ungrateful little brat!” Hee Zheng spat on the floor. His eyes flicked to the camera, its power light blinking, and then he snarled, “What kind of nonsense are you running your mouth about? Stay right here!”

To keep Hee Yu from doing something reckless, Hee Zheng—after a tense, unproductive exchange—had no choice but to storm out and slam the door behind him.

When the interrogation room door shut again, the sudden silence hit hard. It was like all the strength drained out of Hee Yu at once. She collapsed onto the tabletop, her shoulders shaking as she let out soft, broken sobs.

A helpless, suffocating sense of powerlessness surged up inside her. After all these years of struggling, of scraping by and paying for every step the hard way—had the world really never noticed? Why did decent people always get the short end of the stick, while the worst ones stayed fearless, certain they’d never face consequences?

Her mother had made her promise to live well before she died. But what was the point of living like this—so painfully, with nothing to hold on to?

She didn’t know how long she cried. Then Hee Yu suddenly sat up, as if something had clicked. She wiped the tears off her cheeks with one swift motion and turned her gaze toward the trash can in the corner.