Dihao at night, Room 808 on the 8th floor—
The lights inside the room were dim, with a sliver of light peeking through the champagne-colored blinds.
Under the influence of alcohol, Wen Mian's eyes, seductive as a fox's, were hazy. One red strap slid off, revealing her smooth, delicate shoulder as she slowly approached the man whose face she couldn't see clearly.
Garments fell away one by one, and she wrapped around the man like a water snake.
A suppressed voice echoed by her ear—
"Wen Mian… be sure of who I am!"
Her eyes snapped open, and Wen Mian sobered up halfway.
When her gaze fixed on that exceedingly familiar face, her heart skipped a beat.
It's over! It's Pei Zhiyao!
Wen Mian pushed the man off her as if she had received an electric shock and hurriedly donned her dress.
She really was crazy, just back in the country looking to relax with a man and she had run into this plague again.
Feeling neglected on the side, Pei Zhiyao's eyes grew even darker, a cold laugh escaping his throat.
"What? So eager to disassociate yourself from me? I remember five years ago, when you were still with the Pei Family, you used to call me 'brother'."
With a "whoosh," the zipper was pulled up.
Stripped of lust, Wen Mian looked at Pei Zhiyao with sarcastic eyes.
"I'm just afraid that, like five years ago, Young Master Pei will use a one-sided flash of passion as an excuse to send me out of the country to suffer for another five years."
On hearing this, Pei Zhiyao clenched his molars tight.
He picked up the watch from the bedside table and slid it onto his distinctly boned wrist, inquiring nonchalantly.
"When will you return home?"
Wen Mian was putting on her shoes when she heard this, and her fingertips couldn't help but tighten slightly.
"That is your family's home, not mine."
Those three years with the Pei Family were the most profound nightmare of her life.
When her mother died horribly, and her father committed suicide after committing murder, Wen Mian became an orphan overnight.
Coincidentally, the largest family in An City at the time—the Pei Family—visited the orphanage, intending to find a playmate for their frail and sickly young daughter, Pei Qingqing.
Playmate was the word used, but only the Pei Family knew that it was merely an indirect way of finding a child of similar age and birth to bear Pei Qingqing's illnesses and misfortunes.
In the end, in the Pei Family, she was just an object of entertainment, hardly even considered a servant.
Therefore, after Pei Zhiyao brought her home from the orphanage, she was given an unsavory nickname—
the scapegoat.
During those three years of adoption, she had to shoulder all the bad things Pei Qingqing did and take the blame for all the troubles she caused.
Since entering the Pei Family, there hadn't been an uninjured spot on Wen Mian's body, and punishments like kneeling and going hungry were routine.
Until five years ago, after that incident during Chinese New Year, the Pei Family turned their backs and sent Wen Mian abroad, leaving her to fend for herself.
No one knew how she had managed to survive those five years abroad.
Several times, she almost died in a foreign land.
Barely making it through five years, she received news that the Pei Family allowed her to return to the country.
But if it weren't for the need to uncover the truth behind her parents' wrongful deaths, she wouldn't have thought of coming back at all, not in her entire life and she wouldn't have wanted to see anyone from the Pei Family ever again!
As her thoughts gradually returned, Wen Mian prepared to leave.
But suddenly, the man's cold voice rang out from behind:
"Qingqing is getting engaged."
"... A happy occasion."
"The fiancé is the one you used to like, Zhao Moxuan."
"... Double happiness."
Bitches and bastards, a match made in heaven.
Wen Mian kept this thought in her heart, unspoken.
After all, Pei Qingqing always delighted in taking what was hers, from toys when they were little to men as they grew up.
Even if she had no interest in the man whatsoever, Pei Qingqing still reveled in fighting her for him.
And Zhao Moxuan, that opportunistic social climber, was indeed well-matched with Pei Qingqing!