Chapter 4: The Emergency Contraceptive

I took one step forward, and he immediately scrambled a full step backward.

It was almost comical to see the usually aloof, untouchable CEO reduced to curling up in the corner of the seat like a frightened little wife who’d just been bullied.

His lips were flushed red, his breath coming out hot and uneven. His mouth kept moving as if he desperately wanted to deny the humiliating reaction his body had betrayed.

“No need…”

“I believe you.”

“He… He really is a shameless bastard.”

An oppressive silence settled over the two of us for the rest of the drive.

It wasn’t until the luxury car smoothly pulled into the residential complex where I lived on Wutong Road that the silence was finally broken.

Huo Xianchi suddenly asked, “Do you… like him?”

“What?” I stared at him blankly.

He still had the thin blanket draped over his lap, discreetly hiding his embarrassment. At first glance, he still looked every bit the proud, elegant, impeccably composed heir he was.

He lowered his eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Okay.” I didn’t press him. “Mr. Huo, we’re here.”

“All right. Be careful.”

I was about to open the door when Huo Xianchi suddenly spoke again.

“He… What was he really like?”

I paused, thought for a moment, then summed up his second personality in a few words.

“Arrogant. Reckless. So unreasonable you could never understand what went on in his head. And he always did whatever he wanted.”

Huo Xianchi looked somewhat bewildered.

“Over all these years, no one at the old family estate ever tried to control him?”

“They did.”

I checked my handbag as I prepared to say goodbye, answering casually.

“Sometimes they’d make him kneel in the ancestral hall until he passed out. But the moment he woke up, he’d crawl straight to the door and order the driver to take him back to me.”

“Other times, they’d enforce family discipline and beat him so badly they broke his leg. And he’d still grin at me and say, ‘Thank God my third leg is fine. Still works perfectly.’”

His second personality had done things far more insane and extreme than that.

In short, he was the kind of man who feared neither heaven nor hell.

Huo Xianchi fell completely silent after hearing all this.

His eyes shifted restlessly.

“So everyone was in on it. They all hid the truth from me and fabricated an accident to explain my memory loss…”

His voice grew quieter.

“The real reason was to treat me—to erase him completely, wasn’t it?”

Of course it was.

The Huo family had brought in some of the world’s top psychological experts and tried every extreme method they could think of to uproot that rebellious “tumor” called Huo Xianchi.

And they had succeeded.

“Mr. Huo, I’m getting out now.”

Before opening the door, I kindly pulled a clean handkerchief from my bag and handed it to him.

My eyes briefly flicked toward the unmistakable disturbance still raging beneath the thin blanket over his lap.

“You should wipe yourself down. Otherwise, it’ll be embarrassing when you get out of the car later.”

Huo Xianchi immediately turned his face away, stubbornly maintaining his haughty demeanor.

“No need. I’m not as shameless as he is.”

I awkwardly withdrew the handkerchief and gave him a polite smile.

“All right, then. Goodbye, Mr. Huo. See you around.”

Around midnight, my phone chimed.

A message from Huo Xianchi.

“Shen Tangyuan, what brand of body wash do you use?”

I sent him the name of the brand, then turned off my phone and went to sleep.

It wasn’t until three in the morning that my phone suddenly rang, the sharp, frantic sound tearing through the silence of the night.

Half-asleep and annoyed, I picked up.

“Who is this?”

There was silence on the other end for several seconds.

No explanation.

Only the sound of muffled, restrained sobbing came through the speaker.

Then the call abruptly ended.

I sat there holding my phone, staring blankly at the dark screen.

I knew it was Huo Xianchi.

That primary personality who always stood on the outside, watching everything unfold. The man who had always kept himself restrained and proper, never daring to pierce that paper-thin barrier between himself and the truth.

He was crying.

The next morning, a juicy scandal exploded across every entertainment headline.

The romantic history of the Huo heir had just gained another chapter.

I gave a cold little laugh and clicked on the article.

“Song Family Heiress Enters Huo Family Heir’s Private Villa Late at Night.”

The article even quoted a cleaner who had worked at the scene:

“They were going at it pretty hard. There were condoms all over the trash can.”

The media, ever sharp-eyed and malicious, had even given him a new nickname:

“Condom Brother.”

I stood in front of the mirror and lifted my shirt, looking down at my stomach.

There was barely any curve yet. Almost nothing had changed.

And yet, inside me, a tiny life was slowly taking shape.

The only blood relative I had left in this world.

My parents had died when I was young. The world had always felt unbearably lonely, and when I finally found something that felt like a lifeline, I had thrown myself into it like a moth into a flame.

I had always been the kind of person who refused to believe something was over until I had no choice but to face the truth.

I splashed cold water over my face to wake myself up.

Then another message from Huo Xianchi appeared on my phone.

“Secretary Shen, help me pick out a few designs.”

His second personality had always been fascinated with custom-made adult toys and restraints.

Conveniently, I had been cleaning out my apartment and kept coming across boxes of those things. They gave me a headache every time.

After seeing the news, I already knew where he had spent the previous night.

So I decided to gather all that old stuff and return it to him once and for all.

It was time to cut off contact completely.

I found his private apartment and knocked on the door.

But the person who opened it was Song Min, the Song family heiress.

There was also an unfamiliar man beside her.

His arm was casually wrapped around her waist, and the two of them looked unmistakably intimate.

Huh?

Wasn’t this Huo Xianchi’s place?

Had he just been cheated on?

The four of us stared at one another, equally stunned.

Finally, Song Min spoke first.

“I recognize you.”

But I was certain I had never met her before.

Song Min cheerfully took the boxes from my hands. She curiously peeked inside, looked through everything, and then turned back to me with an expression of sympathy mixed with horror.

“Oh my God. Huo Xianchi really is a twisted bastard.”

She patted my shoulder.

“Sweetie, if he makes you deliver this kind of stuff again, remember to bring less next time.”

“Why?”

I was completely confused.

“Well…”

She hesitated.

“The difference in your body types is just too much. I mean, the women he was with before were all petite like you. Compared to his build, the difference is huge. How could anyone handle that?”

I could only nod along.

“Is Mr. Huo not here?”

Noticing me sneaking a glance at the unfamiliar man with his arm around her waist, Song Min immediately smiled knowingly.

“Huo Xianchi went back to the old family estate early this morning. And besides, he gave me this apartment before he left.”

She lowered her voice and leaned close to whisper in my ear.

“You know how these arranged marriages between wealthy families work. There’s no way they’re all about love and mutual feelings.”

“You saw the news this morning, right? Don’t get the wrong idea. I had no idea the reporters would twist everything around like that either. Our families were thrilled. They thought we’d finally made some progress.”

So that was it.

Song Min was flipping through the things in the box when she suddenly frowned and pulled out a small box.

“Emergency contraceptive?”

I quickly explained, “Oh, the adult store gave it to me as a freebie because I bought so much. Don’t worry. It’s all genuine.”

“She probably won’t need that.”

The unfamiliar man beside her suddenly spoke.

“Mr. Huo had a vasectomy years ago.”

Song Min immediately nodded.

“Exactly. My boyfriend is a urologist, and he was actually the one who performed Huo Xianchi’s vasectomy.”

“That’s why the two of them have a bit of a personal connection. My family keeps a very close eye on me, so we borrowed this place from him as a private space for dates.”

She smiled at me.

“So don’t misunderstand the relationship between me and Huo Xianchi.”

I stood there in stunned silence for several seconds before forcing myself to nod.

“I’m Mr. Huo’s secretary. I know how to keep things confidential. I won’t say anything.”

She was about to say something else.

“Since you’re willing to keep it a secret…”

Suddenly, my stomach clenched violently.

A wave of nausea surged up my throat, sour and bitter.

I couldn’t hold it back anymore and quickly covered my mouth.

“I’m sorry, Miss Song. I suddenly feel a little sick. I’ll head home first.”

“Do you have gastritis?”

I forced a smile and nodded vaguely.

“Probably. I’ll go to the hospital and get it checked out myself. Goodbye, you two.”

I hurriedly said my goodbyes, then grabbed a taxi straight home.

The truth was, I was a very considerate person.

I only rebelled once in a while.

Maybe it was because I had grown up alone. I had never truly experienced being loved by anyone, so I was always afraid of becoming a burden to others.

My phone chimed twice.

My best friend, Qu Qu, had messaged to tell me she had just arrived in the capital for a business trip and was planning to come visit me.

That was wonderful.

Once my resignation was officially processed in a few days, the two of us could leave this city together and go back home.

That evening, Qu Qu curiously ran her hand over my still-flat stomach.

She looked utterly shocked.

“You said that Huo Xianchi had a vasectomy, and you still ended up pregnant?”

“The odds of getting pregnant after a vasectomy are ridiculously low. Unless the two of you were doing it constantly and some incredibly stubborn sperm somehow managed to break through!”

“Oh, speaking of vasectomies, that reminds me of my cousin.”

“He’s a senior executive and famous for being devoted to his wife. After she gave birth to their second child, he rushed off to get a vasectomy because he didn’t want her to suffer through getting an IUD.”

“For years, the whole neighborhood praised him as the ultimate husband.”

“But guess what happened?”

The two of us lay sprawled on the sofa, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Exactly.

There weren’t that many beautiful acts of unconditional sacrifice in this world.

Every choice had a hidden motive behind it.

It was only a matter of time before the truth came out.

Qu Qu clicked her tongue and continued.

“Turns out, he got the vasectomy so he could buy himself half a lifetime of freedom!”

“He didn’t want to wear condoms when he went out cheating, and he was even more afraid that one of his mistresses might get pregnant and show up demanding a share of the family assets.”

“He was the one who married into the family, and they had a prenuptial agreement. If his cheating and illegitimate child ever got exposed, he’d walk away with absolutely nothing…”

After rambling on for a while, Qu Qu turned to me and seriously changed the subject.

“The Huo family is one of the most powerful elite families around. With the way Huo Xianchi plays around, there’s no way he’s actually a decent guy underneath it all.”

“His vasectomy was probably nothing more than a precaution. He was afraid some nameless, powerless woman out there would get pregnant and come after him for money, trying to stake a claim on the Huo family’s assets and inheritance.”

“He had it done to eliminate the risk and protect his own interests.”

“Ningning, don’t let that crazy, lovesick second personality fool you.”

“If a man were truly as good as you think he is, how could he have this many scandals and switch girlfriends like he changes clothes?”

“The real Huo Xianchi…”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Seriously, he reeks.”