I had been with the crime boss for six years.
Yet on my birthday, he brought home another girl.

He was covered in blood, a delicate girl cowering in his arms.
From that day on, the man who had once indulged my every whim never looked at me again.

Everyone thought I was heartbroken, devastated by my unrequited love for Xu Chang.
I just smiled, toying with the watch on my wrist.

I was an undercover officer, planted by the police within the largest criminal syndicate in Western China.
After all these years lying in wait by his side, my sole purpose was to send him to prison.

So how could I ever… have fallen in love with him?

1

Late at night, yet the villa was ablaze with light.
I sat on the sofa, relighting the candles on the cake.

“Sister Qing, don’t wait any longer.”
“The Boss said… he’s not coming…”

The lighter in my hand clicked open and shut, its bright flame flaring and dying, again and again.
I stared at the flame.

“If he doesn’t come back, I’ll just keep waiting.”
“He promised to spend every birthday with me. What kind of man breaks a promise like that?”
“…”

In reality, the clock on the wall already read three in the morning.
He wasn’t coming back.
And so I waited, making a whole crowd of his men wait with me in the villa.

To those who knew, I was waiting for him to come home for my birthday. To those who didn’t, it must have looked like I was waiting for him to come back and start a fight.

Finally, just as the clock was about to strike four, the roar of a car engine erupted from downstairs.
“Sister Qing! The Boss is back!”
Someone rushed upstairs to shout the news to me.

I stood up and walked to the staircase to look down.
Yes. He was back.

I frowned, addressing the man standing downstairs, who was watching me with an inscrutable expression.

“Xu Chang, who is the woman in your arms?”

2

A long, jagged scar ran from the end of Xu Chang’s eyebrow to his cheekbone.
It was still oozing blood.
The wound, in a way, added a touch of ferocity to his otherwise refined and handsome features.

I pressed a gauze pad to his wound, but he caught my wrist.
“A-Qing, have I spoiled you too much all these years, hmm?”

His fingers trailed suggestively over my wrist.
That was his way: all his malice and threats were hidden within gentle gestures.

I lowered my eyes.
“Spoiled? I wouldn’t say that.”

He chuckled softly, the pad of his thumb pressing and kneading the bone in my wrist with a light, languid touch.
“No? Then bringing all these people to my house…”
“Anyone would think I was some kind of gangster.”

As if he wasn’t one.
He had clawed his way up from a life of licking blood off knives, his empire built on a foundation of corpses and skulls.
Oh, but now he had gone legit, a young entrepreneur.
The papers were all praise, calling him a prodigy, a paragon of success.
It was sickening.

“Who’s the girl you brought back?”
I gave a slight tug, and he let go of my hand.

And successfully changed the subject.
But he just relaxed his brow, turning away from me.

“None of your business.”

The man stood, took the gauze from my hand, then leaned down to plant a kiss on the corner of my mouth.
“You have the energy to worry about what woman I brought back…”
“But no energy to worry about how I got hurt?”

With that, he gave my neck a punitive nip.
“Such a waste raising you.”

3

The wind in Qubei City had been strong these past few days.
Or maybe it was just this derelict building I was in, with its drafts coming from all sides. From nearby, I could still hear the faint sounds of a beating. Someone offered me a cigarette.
I pushed it away.
“Xu Chang doesn’t like me to smoke.”

…
“Find out everything you can about the girl Xu Chang brought back last night.”
I turned and said to the man beside me.

He had been with me since he joined the organization. Because he was ranked seventh, they called him Li Laoqi. I usually just called him Xiaoqi. He’d been with me so long that he would sometimes say things others wouldn’t dare to.

“Sister Qing, sigh…”
“You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”
“So you should understand even better that things like love and romance have no place in our lives.”
“…”

He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out with me at the empty plot of land, nothing but ruins.
“Which of us doesn’t have blood on our hands?”
“The Boss has gone legit now. He’d never marry someone like us, with blood-stained hands.”
“We’ve taken the fall for him, so of course he treats us well. But as for a real title, a proper status… that’s impossible…”

Right. The reason Xu Chang trusted me so much, the reason he had spoiled me all these years, was because I had taken the fall for him.
Over the years, so much blood had stained my hands that sometimes, late at night, when I caught my own reflection, I could almost see vengeful ghosts lurking within.
So much so that sometimes, I almost forgot who I really was.

An undercover officer. A nail driven deep into dark soil. A long, lethal fuse.
Paid for with thirteen years of my life, and the blood of my colleagues.

No one would come to this derelict building. The sounds of the beating had stopped just a short while ago.
I looked up, gazing at the bright, white clouds in the clear blue sky.

I didn’t care how many women Xu Chang had. I was just afraid.
Afraid that decades of meticulous preparation would be washed away in an instant by a single, unpredictable variable.

“Let’s go. It’s time to meet this little girl he brought back.”
I turned and said to the person behind me.

4

Unlike the derelict building, haunted by cries and screams, Xu Chang’s villa was serene and peaceful.
As soon as I walked in, I saw a girl with braided hair lying on the sofa, reading a book.

When she saw me, she flinched, immediately becoming tense and reserved.
“You…”

The girl’s eyes darted away, and she lowered her lashes.
“Are you his wife?”

I was surprised she would describe me that way. I sat down beside her.
“No.”
“Oh…”

The girl shrank back into the corner of the sofa, a little disappointed.
“I thought… I thought only someone as beautiful and outstanding as you would be worthy of Brother Xu.”
“…”

There was an almost childlike innocence in the girl’s eyes.
I smiled bitterly to myself. Just another girl, completely fooled by Xu Chang’s appearance.

I was about to reach out and pat her head when someone stopped me.
“Sister Qing, the Boss said you’re not allowed to touch Miss Lin.”

The man beside me moved quickly, getting right in my face. If it weren’t for his residual respect for me, he would have physically dragged me away.
“He asked that you not come to this villa anymore. It belongs to Miss Lin now.”

The girl shrank into an even tighter ball of fear, while I simply raised an eyebrow.
Tsk, tsk. Such protection.

“Fine. I’ll leave.”
Xu Chang had brought back his share of women over the years, but this was the first one who was ever guarded so closely.

5

“Sister Qing, this is all the information we could find.”
In the car, Xiaoqi bent over and handed me a file.

The file was thin. But even this little, I knew, was only what Xu Chang wanted me to find.
The girl’s full name was Lin Manzhi. She was three years younger than Xu Chang.
And she… grew up in the same hometown as him.
Before Xu Chang brought her back, she had been an employee at an orphanage. Her record was squeaky clean—they might as well have stamped “A hothouse flower” across the front page.

“The Boss seems… different with her.”
Xiaoqi whispered in my ear.

He was right. Could this Lin Manzhi really be Xu Chang’s “white moonlight,” the one pure memory in the darkness of his heart?
I chewed on a fingernail, thinking.
As far as I knew, Xu Chang had very few weaknesses left.
He had no parents, had clawed his way up from the very bottom. He had even joined the organization later than I had.
Young, but ruthless. I had watched him climb his way to the top, and I had followed him. I chose the right person, and I chose the wrong one.
Right, because I became his confidante. To cut me down would be like cutting off his own arm.
Wrong, because I never anticipated his explosive rise.
By the time I realized it, it was too late.

My thoughts were interrupted by Xiaoqi’s next words. He patted my shoulder.
“The Boss said…”
“He wants you to cook for him.”
“…”

If Xu Chang wanted it, I had to cook for him.
I gave a small smile and told the driver to turn the car around.
To the market. To buy groceries.