Chapter 12: The Arrogant Young Lady and the Brooding, Stoic Wolfhound Bodyguard

The iron rod struck her lower back directly, blood seeping slowly through the black dress.

She looked like a blood-red rose, blooming in the thick darkness of the rainy night, ravaged and trampled alive.

She couldn’t get up.

“Shen Chao Xi.”

“Weren’t you always so capable before?” Gong Xiali’s tone was laced with mockery, her eyes gleaming with triumphant malice as she fixed her gaze on the spot where blood oozed from the girl’s waist.

“Look at you now. In the end, you’re still at my mercy, beaten so badly you can’t even crawl.”

The rod, gleaming crimson, remained in her grip, as if she were deliberately drawing out the punishment, not killing Shen Chao Xi outright, but instead meeting her eyes with a contemptuous, upturned glance.

Then, she slowly assumed a golfer’s stance, and with a sudden swing, smiled down at the battered girl. “What do you think will happen if I shatter your spine?”

The spine is the body’s pillar; if it’s broken, a person is destroyed.

From her tone, Gong Xiali seemed in no hurry to kill her. She wanted to crush her bones little by little, devising new torments as she went.

“Gong Xiali, do you really have something to be proud of, taking advantage of someone when they’re down?” Shen Chao Xi’s face was drained of color, like a dying fish, clinging to her last breath.

“If you want to kill me, just do it.”

“Oh? Still so stubborn?” Gong Xiali’s gaze turned murderous at Shen Chao Xi’s words. What she despised most was this ever-arrogant, indomitable look on her face.

“Do you think I won’t dare?” Her high heel ground mercilessly into Shen Chao Xi’s fingers.

“Agh!”

The pain left Shen Chao Xi ashen, and even with no strength left in her body, she couldn’t help but cry out.

“Hurt, does it?” Gong Xiali pressed harder, her foot twisting, her expression twisted with a sneer, her voice cold and venomous.

“Oh, maybe you never knew? That car accident three years ago—that was my doing, too.”

Shen Chao Xi’s fingers began to tremble.

She saw Gong Xiali’s lips curve in a cruel smile, as though she had saved this revelation for the moment of her greatest humiliation, to savor her own pitiful sense of victory.

“Too bad, Shen Chao Xi, you really are hard to kill. Even after all that, you survived! Not only did you live, but you returned, perfectly whole, standing before me.”

“I hate you for that!”

“Ever since then, I swore, if I couldn’t finish you off that time, I’d make sure I’d design it perfectly, and one day you’d die by my hand.”

“But now, Shen Chao Xi, I’ve changed my mind.”

“I want you to realize that falling into my hands, dying is not so easy.”

Her voice was like a venomous enchantress hissing with a serpent’s tongue. Gong Xiali bent down, face hovering close to Shen Chao Xi’s.

Shen Chao Xi watched as her lips curved into a sinister smile. “I’ll shatter your bones first, leave you unable to move, and then let my men take care of you.”

“After all, you’re the heiress of the W Group, so beautiful—your body must be just as tempting.”

“If a group of men were to have their way with you, defile you until you bled out—what do you think of dying that way?”

She would humiliate her before killing her—only then would Gong Xiali truly savor her victory.

Shen Chao Xi, her face pale, lay in a pool of blood, her lips trembling. She was like a fish stripped of its scales, lying helpless on the chopping block, left to be butchered, powerless to resist.

Gong Xiali sneered.

Suddenly she tightened her grip on the iron rod and raised it high, her gaze fixed on Shen Chao Xi’s battered body.

If she brought that rod down, Shen Chao Xi would be ruined forever.

Bang—

Suddenly, the abandoned factory’s doors were smashed open!

A thunderous sound echoed through the space. Rain and cold wind swept in.

Gong Xiali was startled by the noise.

Countless black umbrellas stood outside the blood-reeking factory. Gong Xiali turned toward the doors, only to see, in the gloom of the rain-soaked night, a tall, imposing figure stepping through the misty haze, followed by a host of men in black.

The scene was overwhelming, a mass of darkness rolling in on a wave of rage.

The man wore a tailored black suit, his features cold and striking beneath the shadowy light, his skin pale and exuding a faint gloom. His long legs strode forward, eyes heavy and icy, Adam’s apple pronounced as he swallowed.

Then his gaze dropped, settling on the glaring pool of blood inside the factory, where a young girl lay dying, tormented and covered in blood. His expression darkened.

“You!” Gong Xiali froze, iron rod halted mid-air.

Before she could recover from her shock, the guards and dozens of black-clad men she’d brought were all subdued.

Corpses littered the darkness, their blood washed away by the rain.

“Don’t move!”

A black gun pressed coldly to her temple.

In an instant, a swarm of men in black surrounded her.

The scent of rain and blood filled the abandoned factory.

“Young Miss,” a low, hoarse voice sounded beside her ear. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind, but as Shen Chao Xi opened her eyes, she saw an ascetic, handsome face appear before her.

A man, scented faintly of wood and blood, draped his black suit jacket over her, wrapping her in its embrace.

Droplets of water slid down the man’s sculpted back as he crouched, his posture straight as an arrow. In his obsidian eyes, a shadow of pain flickered as his trembling hands gathered the blood-soaked girl into his arms.

Shen Chao Xi, like a rose drenched in blood, fragile and bewitching, was breathtakingly beautiful in the night.

As he held her close, a trace of color returned to his lips. His hair was soaked by the rain, his eyes glistening with moisture, his breath deep and sensual.

“I’m sorry I was late.”

Her cold body pressed against his chest and the black suit, and for the first time she felt a hint of warmth. She forced a smile. “Yu Mo.”

“At your service,” the man replied, his voice hoarse and magnetic. Rainwater trickled down his long neck and disappeared into his collar.

His thin lips were pressed tightly together, his pale, somber face clearly outlined in Shen Chao Xi’s gaze. Those long, narrow eyes met hers.

In a weak voice, Shen Chao Xi looked into his eyes. “I thought you’d arrive at the time we agreed upon.” Her bloodied fingers brushed his suit, but he didn’t care that she soiled it.

In truth, he was six hours and thirty minutes early—almost half a day before their appointed time.

“How could this be?!”

Surrounded and staring down the barrel of a gun, Gong Xiali was aghast.

“I clearly sent people to intercept Yu Mo! The group’s headquarters is so far from Sand City—he couldn’t possibly have gotten here this quickly!”

It couldn’t have been her mistake. Where had she gone wrong?

At these words, the man’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and a glint of murderous intent flashed through his shadowed, narrow eyes. His presence was chilling; his gaze alone could kill as he stared at Gong Xiali.

Just then, Shen Chao Xi stirred, slowly rising from the man’s embrace, her black hair in disarray, her eyes calm as she looked ahead.

She tried to move her bloodstained fingers, still aching from being crushed beneath Gong Xiali’s heel.

A faint, ironic laugh escaped her lips as she smeared blood across her pale mouth, shrouded in the black jacket, looking like one who had crawled out of hell itself.

“So, you sent away those around me, thinking you could lure me in without consequence.”

“What are you saying?” Gong Xiali frowned at the cold smile on Shen Chao Xi’s lips, doubting her own eyes.

What was this expression? Did she know everything?

“You knew?!”

Gong Xiali shook her head.

“No, how could you possibly know?”

No one could have expected that she would go to such lengths, orchestrating an elaborate trap for Shen Chao Xi.

“Within the company, you schemed against me in the open and in secret, sabotaged so much—do you really think your pitiful little plots escaped my notice?”

Shen Chao Xi’s lips were stained with blood, a strange red glint in her eyes.

At this moment, she looked nothing like someone feverish and mortally wounded, devoid of life.

Gong Xiali’s blow to her spine had been savage—how could she still be standing?

But she would never know; Shen Chao Xi had survived worse injuries than this. To her, this was nothing.

“So you knew all along!”

Watching her approach, Gong Xiali’s face changed, shock giving way to disbelief and the fury of being played.

“Yes,” Shen Chao Xi smiled, “Not only did I know, but I willingly played along with you, putting on a good show.”

Otherwise, why hadn’t she resisted at the Sand City Experimental Base? Did anyone really think she had no way out?

“You—!” Gong Xiali was beside herself with rage, her fists clenched tight.

“Gong Xiali,” Shen Chao Xi looked at her, her cool eyes tinged with a mocking smile, “Until the very end, what makes you so sure I would lose?”

#

Author’s note:

Ladies, listen to my advice—this book not only has a ruthless, powerful heroine, but also an array of men with wildly different styles and temperaments! (slurp slurp)

Hehe, but it’s a 1v1, both leads pure. We can look at other men, but our love is steadfast and true!

And now, for my talent show: splitting a watermelon barehanded.

Off I go to eat watermelon with a spoon—bye!