Chapter 10

The heavy rain did not stop all night. Jiang Zhinan held onto the carved railing as she descended the stairs, hearing fierce arguing from the study. Jiang Xingzhi’s mother, Su Yue, lowered her voice: “Your father’s obsession back then caused the death of my daughter. Are you still going to repeat the same mistake?!”

The cup of medicine for pregnancy maintenance in her hand suddenly slipped and shattered, the sound startling those inside the room. Jiang Xingzhi suddenly flung open the study door, his face iron pale. Behind him, Su Yue was stuffing a document into her handbag — it was a family photo taken when Jiang Zhinan was six years old. The right half of the photo, which should have been blank, had an old yellowed baby footprint pasted on it. The ink color matched exactly with the paternity test report kept in Jiang Xingzhi’s safe.

“Zhinan, why are you downstairs?” Jiang Xingzhi instantly changed to a gentle expression, but when helping her up, he grabbed her waist tightly, “Didn’t I tell you not to go downstairs alone? What if you fall?”

Jiang Zhinan stared at the jade ring on Su Yue’s ring finger and suddenly recalled seeing the exact same style at the orphanage when she was a child. Su Yue avoided her gaze and handed the document bag to a bodyguard: “Tomorrow at this time, I will bring a lawyer.”

In the deep night, Jiang Zhinan was awakened by a twisting pain in her abdomen. The pregnancy medicine bottle on the bedside table was empty, and next to Jiang Xingzhi’s pillow lay an empty syringe labeled “Oxytocin.” She broke out in a cold sweat and struggled to press the emergency call button on the bedside, only to find the line had already been cut.

“Awake?”

Jiang Xingzhi’s voice came from the shadows. He was sitting in a rocking chair, slowly swirling the whiskey glass in his hand. His tie hung loosely around his neck, revealing a freshly inked tattoo below his collarbone — the outline of a baby with the letters “JM” carved beside it, the initials of Jiang Zhinan’s English name.

“Why…” Her question was interrupted by another wave of pain. Jiang Xingzhi squatted down, his fingertips brushing the sweat on her temple as if admiring a fragile piece of art: “Mother said you need ‘redemption,’ but I think letting our child die inside you is the real relief.”

Jiang Zhinan shivered all over. Only then did she recall the note Su Yue had slipped into her pocket earlier that day: He knows you discovered the footprint — it was a keepsake of his biological sister. It turns out that the one who tampered with the paternity test three years ago wasn’t Jiang Xingzhi but his sister who “died in childbirth” — the real Jiang family heiress, Jiang Mian. And he was merely a substitute who willingly bore the blame to protect his sister.

“Jiang Mian…” she murmured the name, seeing Jiang Xingzhi’s pupils suddenly contract. The rocking chair abruptly stopped moving; the whiskey glass cracked under his grip, amber liquid dripping onto her bedsheet — eerily resembling the bloodstains from the memory of the fighting ring.

“Who told you?” He grabbed her chin, his fingertip pressing against her trembling lips. “Was it my mother? Or your dying father?”

Jiang Zhinan wanted to shake her head but was pinned down on the pillow by him. A sharp pain in her abdomen and warmth below struck her at the same time. She finally understood why the recent “nutrient injections” made her feel like she was having contractions — this madman was using oxytocin to simulate labor pains, just to punish her for trying to get close to the truth.

“Please…” she grasped his wrist, her nails digging into his old wounds. “The child is innocent…”

“Innocent?” Jiang Xingzhi suddenly laughed, the sound mixing with the rain, especially grating. “When I took the blame for Jiang Mian and was sent to the juvenile detention center, who cared about my innocence? When your father kept me like a dog in the basement, who cared about my innocence?” He tore open his shirt, revealing whip scars all over his back. “These wounds were to protect your ‘good sister.’ Now you want me to spare her substitute?”

Jiang Zhinan’s vision went black and her consciousness gradually faded. In a daze, she heard the sound of the villa door being kicked open, Su Yue’s screams mixed with the wailing sirens. Jiang Xingzhi was pressed to the ground by several people, but he still stared at her; the madness in his eyes only intensified: “Zhinan, even if I go to hell, I’ll drag you down with me—”

“Bang!”

The blue light of a stun gun flashed, and Jiang Xingzhi’s body crashed heavily to the ground. When Jiang Zhinan was carried onto a stretcher by medical staff, she saw Su Yue holding up the paternity test report. The words “not biologically related” were circled over and over in red ink. Next to the baby’s footprint in the photo, a line of small characters had been added without her noticing: Jiang Xingzhi, adoption record dated March 15, 2000.

When the shadowless lamp in the operating room lit up, Jiang Zhinan finally recalled Jiang Mian’s last phone call: “Sister, the one in the white shirt isn’t my brother; he’s a stray dog I picked up at the orphanage. He said he wanted to become your sword…”

The ticking of the heart monitor grew clearer. She touched her flat belly and felt, for the first time, so at ease. Outside the ward, Su Yue was talking with a lawyer; the document folder in her hands was labeled “Change of Inheritance Rights of the Jiang Group.” Meanwhile, in the detention center, Jiang Xingzhi was scratching a string of numbers into the wall with his nails — it was Jiang Zhinan’s birthday, and the only coordinate he had for the rest of his life.