Chapter 17 #3
“But things are different now,” he said, conviction tightening his tone. “This time, I didn’t let anyone stop me.”
“I never blamed you,” I murmured.
It was the truth—simple, clear, painful. Through all the nights I woke screaming, through the years when the memory was a foggy, twisted ache—I never once blamed him. He was the real target. I was the collateral damage.
Wrong place.
Wrong time.
Wrong family.
My voice cracked. “Who did it?”
His breath left him slowly, bitterness curling around it. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “It does. Tell me.”
His gaze dropped, shoulders stiffening with tension. The silence stretched—long enough that my heart hammered with impatience.
“My uncle,” he finally said. “He thought killing me and my father would push him next in line for the throne.” A bleak, humorless chuckle escaped him. “But he was wrong.”
I leaned closer, the gentle lamp glow catching the tremor in his fingers. “I thought it was Auntie Five.”
He gave a slow, deliberate shake of his head. “She was just a pawn. Controlled by him.”
The name churned through the room like smoke. Auntie Five… the woman I’d suspected. The woman whose shadow still tightened around my throat in nightmares.
A sharp jolt of adrenaline shot through me. “What happened to your uncle?”
Our gaze locked. His eyes were darker now, deeper—carrying stories I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.
“My grandad found out,” he said, each word dropping heavier than the last. “Killed his accomplice. Then framed him.”
He leaned back slowly, the chair creaking in protest. For a moment, neither of us breathed. The air was thick, heavy with ghosts, with memories and the kind of truth that could break a man twice.
Silence lingered between us—dense, unspoken, familiar.
Two boys once trapped in a hut.
Outside, the faint hum of the city bled through the walls—distant engines, sirens, the muted rhythm of life continuing as if ours hadn’t just been cracked open and rearranged. The contrast made my skin crawl.
“But my mother…”
The words scraped out of my throat before I could stop them, rough and uncertain. “So where does she fit in all this?”
His expression shifted—just slightly, but I caught it. A flicker of something dark behind his expression. Regret, maybe. Or warning.
He inhaled deeply before answering.
“She wasn’t in the planning of it. If that’s what you’re asking.”
His words were steady, but there was a hitch there, a hesitation he couldn’t quite hide. “She overheard my aunt’s conversation somehow, and insisted that we be together that day. But I had no idea why.”
My stomach tightened, a slow, sick curl.
Just a little scare, she’d told me.
Just a scare.
A lesson.
A punishment for being disobedient.
No.
A setup.
Deliberate. Thought-out. Manipulative in a way only an evil person could manage.
“And Auntie Five?” I asked, though part of me already knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
“She’s alive,” he said quietly. His gaze dropped to the floor. “But not really living.”
A frigid silence wrapped around us. Heavy. Suffocating.
I studied him then—really studied him.
This was Xiao Wu.
My sworn brother.
The kid who chased fireflies with me under humid summer skies, who scraped his knees climbing the neighbor’s fence, who cried when his schoolbook tore.
That child was gone.
Burned away. Replaced by a man carved from something brutal and unyielding.
His shoulders were broader, posture sharper, eyes carved out in places I didn’t know could empty. Even his presence felt… dangerous.
“So what happens now?” I asked, trying to keep my tone steady.
“It’s up to you.”
My brows pulled together. “Meaning?”
He leaned back slightly, gaze molding into something unreadable. “I’ll let you deal with your mother and your little fiancée.”
A jolt shot through my chest.
“What happened to them? Are they hurt?”
The words tore out of me too quickly. Too instinctively.
Guilt hit me a second later—deep, burning guilt.
After everything she’d done—drugging me, trapping me, destroying every shred of trust—I still asked about her first.
And I wanted her safe anyway.
Part of me still wanted to protect the woman who’d destroyed me.
“No,” Dannie said with a faint shrug. “Not really. Minor scrapes, maybe—but nothing serious.”
He tried to smirk, some attempt at humor, but instead a harsh choke ripped through him, folding him forward. The sound was raw and wet, like something inside him was tearing.
I stepped forward without thinking—but he held up a shaking hand.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not dying… not yet.”
I waited, watching him pull himself back together. Breathing even. Shoulders squared. Mask back on.
“I can feel there’s a ‘but’ coming,” I said quietly.
A ghost of a smile flickered. “Still reading my mind, huh? That’s what brothers do.”
I didn’t smile back.
I couldn’t.
“Spit it out, Xiao Wu. Tell me what you want?”
His expression sharpened—clean, decisive, cutting like a blade catching light.
“Leave June alone.”
The words landed like a punch to the sternum—quiet, final, as undeniable as a death sentence.