Chapter 1 Father’s Imprisonment
Father had been locked in prison for many days.
We still did not know what crime he had committed.
Stepmother said, "This situation looks bad. If they raid the house and convict us, I will not escape."
"But you are still young. You cannot suffer with us."
She thought it over and decided the only way was to marry me off quickly.
She worried I would suffer in the marriage, so she thought of Pei Zhao, her nephew from her maiden family.
He was twenty-one years old, ran the family business, and was the richest man in Jinling.
He was a bit of a profligate but not a bad person, and we knew his background well.
If the family could survive this crisis, a divorce later would not be too humiliating.
She asked for my opinion.
"You played together as children. Do you still remember him? His courtesy name is Suizhi."
Suizhi...
The name brought everything back.
When I was ten, my mother fell ill and passed away.
Not even a month later, Father took a new wife.
The new wife was from Jinling, in her twenties, and it was her first marriage.
She brought her nephew with her.
I had been spoiled since childhood.
Grieving for my mother, I hated Father for marrying again.
I hated Stepmother, and I hated her nephew even more.
So I pranked Pei Zhao many times.
The last time, I deliberately locked him alone in the schoolroom.
It grew late. Stepmother sent people everywhere to search for him.
Father knew me too well. He grabbed a willow branch and beat me. "Was it you again? Where is Suizhi?"
I talked back at first.
After the beating left me with no choice, I confessed.
That night, while I knelt in the ancestral hall as punishment, I cried and shouted at him, "This is my house! What right do you have to be here?"
"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"
Later he left.
I heard he left on his own.
My thoughts returned to the present. I asked Stepmother with a troubled face, "Will he agree?"