Chapter 4: A Luxury Named Trust

My mind raced through rapid-fire crisis management calculations. Maybe it was still too early. The female lead had only just shown up, and Xie Yun’s feelings for her hadn’t fully bloomed yet. But from his perspective, me suddenly trying to abort our baby looked like nothing short of a betrayal.

A cold sweat broke out across my back. Oh God, no! Even if I was doomed to die later, I at least needed to keep my legs fully functioning right now. Once the main lead and heroine fell madly in love, Xie Yun would naturally find me an eyesore. Slinking away quietly then would be the ultimate play.

Having thought it through, I immediately reverted to my tried-and-true tactics. Turning around slightly, I pressed a soft, delicate kiss against the palm of his hand. “Xie Yun… don’t be mad, okay?”

I tilted my head, catching his eye in the mirror while making my voice as sweet and submission-soft as humanly possible. Xie Yun stood directly behind me; I couldn’t see his face directly, but in the reflection, those pitch-black eyes were locked onto mine without so much as a blink.

I gritted my teeth and scrambled to pull a semi-plausible excuse out of thin air. “It’s true… I didn’t want to keep the baby. But… it was only because…”

I choked on my words. Because of what?!

Say I thought he didn’t want the kid? Terrible idea—he was literally the one who had growled “have my baby” in my ear.

Say I wasn’t emotionally prepared to be a mother? Even worse. People who aren’t ready for motherhood throw a fit or have an argument; they don’t secretly book a midnight abortion.

Say I was scared of having a baby without a ring on my finger? …Nope, still wouldn’t fly.

Damn it! What was I supposed to say? “Sorry babe, I was just worried you’d hire a semi-truck to flatten both of us in eight months”? Saying that out loud meant I wouldn’t even need the abortion. I’d be dead before I left the room!

“Because why?” Xie Yun asked, his hand continuing to lightly stroke my lower belly with a patience that was downright terrifying. “Sweetheart, have you come up with an excuse yet?”

I took a deep breath, deciding to gamble using every last ounce of my IQ. “Because… the pregnancy takes way too long.”

In the mirror, Xie Yun’s head tilted slightly, his gaze practically radiating four words: Are you insane?

I did my best to maintain a deadpan, dead-serious expression. “It takes ten whole months! Three months of no sex at the beginning, two months of no sex at the end. That’s almost half a year… could you really hold out that long?”

I paused for effect, dropping my ultimate trump card: “Besides… your fiancée is back in the country, isn’t she?”

Deep down, I knew this excuse was completely bogus. If Xie Yun wanted it, he’d be reckless enough to go at it even when I was eight months along. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t almost died at his hands a few times before. Miscarriage risk? Please—that didn’t sound like the ruthless CEO Xie at all.

Still, it was the only excuse I could manufacture to throw the blame back onto him. At least this way, he wouldn’t snap and execute me on the spot… probably.

I subtly shifted my feet. These legs were far too young to live out the rest of their days in a wheelchair. A slashed cheek heals, a bruised waist fades after a week, but if my legs actually got broken, my life’s soundtrack would permanently switch to a funeral march.

Nervously, I scanned his face for a reaction. My logic was flawless! It framed him as the center of my world while creating this dramatic ‘two women fighting to the death over one billionaire’ tension, the literal holy grail of dark romance tropes! Now, drop a few insincere scoldings, transfer some hush money to my bank account, and let’s call it a day. I’m very easy to appease!

Instead, Xie Yun froze. He stared at me for a long, quiet moment, his eyes looking like they’d been pierced by something sharp. His rough fingers gently brushed against my cheek, his voice dropping an octave. “Yingying. I told you. She is not my fiancée.”

I blinked, caught off guard. Huh? I hadn’t even mentioned who the girl was—how did he automatically connect the dots?

I immediately nodded like a chicken pecking at grain. “Right, right, right! I know! You don’t have a fiancée, you only have me!”

With that, he gripped my shoulders and turned me around. This time, I was no longer looking at him through the glass; I was staring straight into his actual face.

The hospital bathroom reeked of harsh disinfectant, that distinct, sterile coldness seeping into every corner of the room. Strangely enough, I kind of liked it. Hospitals saw people being born every day, and they saw people leave forever. You hear enough crying, see enough death, and eventually, you go numb. So right now, I genuinely had no idea what Xie Yun was looking so broken about.

He lowered his gaze, pulling me gently into his arms. The embrace was softer, more tender than anything he’d ever given me before.

“Lu Yingying,” he whispered, his tone so faint it made goosebumps break out across my arms. “You were the one who told me that if there’s a misunderstanding, we have to talk it out. I explained it to you… but you refuse to believe me.”

His voice trembled ever so slightly. “You’ve never trusted me. Not once. Yingying… can’t you just try trusting me, just this once? I would never hurt you.”

Me: “…”

A giant, cosmic question mark slowly materialised in my mind.

Bro… do you even hear yourself right now? The guy who used to hold a knife to my face, who choked the life out of me, who literally threw me off a yacht into the ocean… is standing here telling me “I would never hurt you”? Hello?!

Terrified out of my mind, I immediately backed down. “Okay, okay, fine! Let’s just go home. I won’t get the abortion, alright? If you want a baby, I’ll have it. I’ll pop out as many as you want!”

(Just please, for the love of God, don’t lose your mind in a public hospital. I still want to live!)

I took the initiative, reaching out to wrap my fingers around his. Xie Yun stared at me for an eternity before the corners of his lips twitched upward into a faint, hollow smile. “Okay.”

No matter how I looked at it, that smile felt painfully forced.

As we stepped out of the hospital, a sudden burst of icy wind blew past us. The tail end of Xie Yun’s next sentence was almost completely swallowed by the gust, leaving me to barely catch his low whisper:

“Are we… really only ever going to be like this?”