}
the drainage tube at his collarbone swung in the air.
“Belle…” His voice was hoarse like it’d been scraped with sandpaper, and his lips were cracked
and bleeding.
The caregiver rushed over to help, but he pushed her away. He grabbed my sleeve.
“If I’d known swallowing a needle would make you come see me, I should’ve done it earlier.”
“You were worried about me, right?”
I was tired of him touching me. The moment I looked down and pulled away, I saw a lot of thin cuts on the inside of his wrist, all crisscrossed and packed together.
“Was it cut by a blade?”
“Yeah, whenever I missed you or felt regret, I just cut myself once.”
I was amused by his self-harming behavior and stood at the bedside laughing.
He didn’t get what I was laughing at, but he was really happy. He held my hand super tight, his eyes were super bright, and he looked really hopeful: “Belle, did you forgive me?”
“Don’t worry, I took good care of myself!”
“About what happened before, I knew I was wrong, just give me one more chance… I swear, I would love you well and treat you like a treasure.”
“That bitch Marcella, I locked her in the basement and beat her every day. All the abuse she did to you, I paid her back a hundred, a thousand times over!”
“Also, I never did it with her, the kid wasn’t mine, I never cheated on you!”
“How have you been lately? You looked a lot healthier than when you were with the Thornton family. I can tell the Zimmer family took good care of you.”
***
He rambled on, confessing, declaring his feelings, and showing concern.
I let him hold my hand for a while, then gently pulled it back, took a small mirror out of my bag, opened it, and put it in front of him.
The man in the mirror had high cheekbones, cracked pale lips with bloody splits, grayish stubble like moldy cotton all over his jaw, and dark circles under his eyes so deep they looked like they could drip ink.
I smiled and went along with him, “But you didn’t look so good. Look in the mirror-what’s the difference between that person and a homeless guy outside? Ugly and messy.”
“You know, I liked good-looking ones, so I turned down the ugly ones.”
Fold Up
He looked at me in shock, his Adam’s apple bobbing, veins bulging on the back of his hand
with the IV.
“Belle, I…”
“Shh-” I pressed my finger against his chapped lips.
I laughed even happier, and my voice was softer.
“You tell me, why did you mess with Marcella? You two were obviously perfect for each other, should’ve been together for life.”
“She hated me, couldn’t wait to go after me, because she was afraid I’d take her place as the heiress of the Simpson family. What about you?”
“You trusted her unconditionally, doesn’t that just mean you were stupid?”
“Wasn’t it your fault that I had several miscarriages? Didn’t you kick my shoulder? Didn’t you step on my fingers? Wasn’t it you who nodded and agreed when I was sent to be auctioned?”
His eyes went from shocked to panicked, like a balloon that just got popped.
“Jacob, stop pretending to be so sentimental! You were even more pathetic than grass right
now!”
“Also, you wanted me to forgive you… sure!”
I paused on purpose, and Jacob’s eyes suddenly lit up, like a drowning man grabbing onto a piece of driftwood.
I took a big box of silver needles out of my bag. Real silver needles, for acupuncture, and slapped them down in front of him.
“Swallow these!”
“I bought ten thousand, took twenty, and there were 9,980 left here.”
The IV tube on Jacob’s wrist suddenly went taut.
He looked at me, his eyes all bloodshot, his voice hoarse as hell: “Is there really no chance for
us?”
I never knew I was this mean before.
I forced a man who just had surgery to swallow a silver needle in the hospital room.
“Be good, open your mouth.” I grabbed a silver needle, holding the tip above his trembling lips.
“Belle!” Jacob grabbed my wrist suddenly, and the IV needle got pulled and started bleeding. “That’s an acupuncture needle. If you swallow it, it’ll poke through your stomach and
intestines!”
“I know! Didn’t you already swallow an embroidery needle? I think you’ve got experi smiled and coaxed, “Open your mouth, or I’ll help you.
Fold Up
A Thousand Needles for Love
The instinct to survive made Jacob keep his lips tightly shut.
Back then, when Jacob and Marcella messed with me, I already had a hard heart and acted
ruthless.
He wouldn’t open his mouth, so I grabbed his drainage tube hard and then let go suddenly. Blood and fluid gushed up through the clear tube. He cried out in pain.
I stabbed the silver needle hard into his upper palate. He suddenly started coughing violently, and I hurried to dodge, but the sour vomit still splashed onto the back of my hand.
“So dirty!” I frowned, wiped the sour stuff on the sheet in disgust, then grabbed a tissue and wiped slowly.
“Belle, did you really hate me like that?” There was cheap pain in his eyes.
“Yeah!” I laughed with my head down, “When I was sent to the hospital, my belly was full of big chunks of rotten flesh. The doctor cut them out one by one, and even took out a section of my small intestine.”
“Jacob, some pain, if it didn’t happen to you, you just couldn’t feel it.”
“My baby was gone, my uterus was ruined, and I could never be a mom in my life.”
Jacob looked at me, tears streaming down his scruffy face. He said, “We could not have kids…”
Us? That had to be the funniest word I ever heard.
“What made you think, after all I went through, I would still love you?”
“Jacob, in this world, no one wanted you dead more than I did!”
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The moment the last word left my mouth, I grabbed that bunch of silver needles and stabbed
them hard into Jacob’s hand.
“Ah-” Jacob’s scream hit the ceiling, and the monitor let out a sharp, long beep.
The nurse screamed and rushed in. Blood gushed from the needle hole on Jacob’s hand, staining the white sheets red. The needle tip glinted menacingly above the flesh.
I felt so great!
The thrill lasted less than five seconds, and I became the most nervous person in the room.
Because just now, the moment the nurse rushed in, I caught a glimpse of lan standing at the door out of the corner of my eye, and all the blood in my body froze.
It’s over! He saw this vicious side of me! He saw it, the girl who fought dragons finally turned into a dragon herself!
I looked at my bloodstained fingertips. What would he think of me? I didn’t dare to think about
Fold Up
A Thousand Needles for Love
But I couldn’t stay in this room any longer, so I just stiffly turned around and walked out. lan was still standing there.
Then he smiled and made a hugging gesture toward me. My worried heart finally relaxed.
I walked into his arms, and my cheek rubbed against his chest.
“When did you come.”
“Just got here.”
“What did you come for?”
“Hit him, I was afraid you couldn’t do it.”
I suddenly looked up and crashed into his eyes, dark as night. The indulgence in them almost drowned me.
“You didn’t blame me for being ruthless?”
lan’s long fingers ran through my hair and gently pressed the back of my neck. His warm palm soothed my tense nerves.
“The first rule of the Zimmer family motto: always get revenge. I think you were still too kind, you just poked them with a needle.”
I froze.
“Let’s go.” He dragged me by the hand. His palm was warm and dry, with lots of old tiny scars.
I thought of the phrase “holding your hand.”
Jacob hadn’t left the hospital yet when the news of Marcella’s death came. Same for the kid.
They were locked in the basement of Jacob’s villa. The villa hadn’t had any servants for a long time. When Jacob was around, if he was in a good mood, he’d give them something to eat. Later, Jacob was sent to the hospital and didn’t bother with them at all.
Lack of water, hunger. Plus, the assistant took Jacob to the hospital that day and turned off the villa’s AC on the way out. The summer heat turned the closed space into a steamer. On top of that, their wounds got infected after the beating. Both of them had a high fever and didn’t even make it three days.
It was still Jacob’s assistant who went to the villa to get documents for the new boss, smelled a bad stench, and then opened the basement… The rotten smell rushed out with a swarm of flies.
The assistant took a moment before seeing clearly what was in the basement. The woman Jacob once cherished, and the kid rumored to be Jacob’s son, were both dead. Not far away were their excrement, with maggots crawling between the rotting flesh and the waste
Fold Up
The assistant ran out of the villa and threw up for a while. Then he called the police.
When the police came to the hospital to arrest someone, I was reading a book. After I asked what happened, I almost couldn’t wait to get to the sixth floor.
Jacob was wearing a hospital gown and was being dragged out of the ward by the cops. The wound on the back of his hand still looked nasty.
I watched from a distance, smiling.
So satisfying! What could be better than him getting seriously hurt and then spending a long time in prison?
I never thought regret was the biggest punishment for a man. Real pain had to hit him physically to count.
Jacob saw me and started struggling like crazy, calling my name, “Belle, Belle”… He was so frantic, like a demon crawling out of hell.
I faced his direction and slowly, silently mouthed four words: “Enjoy it well.”
He saw it. His whole body slumped, and he looked at me with dull eyes.
This thing caused a huge stir.
The Thornton Group’s stock price crashed overnight. Whether it was financial headlines or social headlines, it was all about “rich family scandals” and “CEO abused prisoner to death.”
As for me.
It seemed like the Zimmer family and the Simpson family had made some kind of agreement.
Ryan and Cathy could only look at me from a distance at first, but later they were actually allowed to visit me in the hospital room. They didn’t mention my background, just said they
owed me.
“Jacob said the person he loved most was you.”
I didn’t know why lan brought up Jacob. But I was willing to answer him: “No, he just fell for a figure from behind, didn’t really know anything, didn’t see the whole picture.”
“Or maybe, what he fell in love with wasn’t even a figure from behind, but all the things he
imagined about that figure.”
“I didn’t love him.”
“I might have gotten it wrong from the start.”
lan lowered his head and looked at me.
“Did you… like someone?”
“Yes.”
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