My Private Lao Jiazhuo

I was once infatuated with Lao Jiazhuo.

The first time I dealt with him, he overturned all my defenses effortlessly, leaving me utterly exposed. Yet, I was too distracted by his dazzlingly beautiful face to care. After that, no one else’s face ever had the same power to take my breath away as his.

I was once blindly in love with Lao Jiazhuo.

His assistant said he doted on me—doted on me so much that even if he laid down twelve layers of silk bedding, he’d still search for the one offending pea to make me comfortable. And I believed it.

I was once filled with hatred for Lao Jiazhuo.

His tenderness and affection for me were all a lie. He never truly intended to marry me. His revenge was thorough, cruel, and merciless, leaving me utterly shattered in both body and soul.

Later, I drifted across the ends of the earth, yet he still refused to let me go.

By then, he had risen to the heights of power, yet he humbled himself to win me back. He was wealthier than royalty, yet he stayed with me in a cramped little apartment. He begged me to return to him, but why would he think that I, Jiang Yiying, would spend my life at his beck and call, coming and going as he pleased?

Many, many years later, when I saw the familiar and glaringly conspicuous wedding ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, I summoned all my strength to say the line I had rehearsed over countless nights, even if it meant hurting myself in the process:

“Mr. Lao, are you in Europe on business? Zurich is beautiful—did your wife come along with you?”

A lifetime’s worth of effort, and I still couldn’t escape unscathed.

Such was the price of a single love.