I turned on my heel and walked away without a single backward glance. Right at that moment, his phone screen lit up with two WeChat notifications from a contact saved as 【Song Ting】—the real heiress.

It was just a fleeting glance, and before I could even process the text, Song Qingchen snatched his phone back with lightning speed, fixing me with a sharp, guarded glare.

Creepy, I muttered under my breath. According to the original storyline, Song Qingchen was supposed to spoil the real heiress to the heavens, but I never expected him to shield her to this degree—protecting her messages like top-secret intel.

The moment brought me straight back to the day I landed at the airport. Somehow, the real heiress had managed to get my phone number and dropped a condescending, territorial text straight into my inbox: 【For your own good, stay the hell away from Song Qingchen.】 I’d simply scoffed, hit block, and moved on with my day.

Yet, if I was being entirely honest with myself, even after three long years, Song Qingchen still knew how to throw my mind into total disarray. After all, he was the man who had occupied every single page of my embarrassing teenage diary—the buried secret of my foolish youth. Truth be told, the one who had wanted to cross the moral line all along… had been me.

But so what? In the end, I was the one who pulled off the role of the innocent victim, while he became the family outcast, universally despised as a boundary-crossing creep.

Stepping out of the corporate headquarters with a storm brewing in my chest, I headed straight for the high-end lounge where my bestie had booked a booth for my welcome-back party. To drown my frustration, I threw caution—and my wallet—to the wind, ordering a line-up of eight broad-shouldered, six-pack male models to entertain us.

Except before I could even lay a finger on a single piece of eye candy, those eight guys ended up taking turns plying me with drinks to hit their sales quotas. By midnight, I was dead drunk, my brain completely checked out and operating strictly on my hardwired weakness for handsome men.

I latched onto the hottest guy in the group, wrapping my arms and legs around him like an octopus, throwing every last shred of dignity straight out the window.

“Yup… hic… exactly my type…” I slurred, grabbing his tie in one fist and digging my nails into his shoulder with the other. Driven by a wave of drunken spite, I leaned in and sank my teeth straight into his collarbone.

The next second, the tie was forcibly ripped from my grip. With practiced, terrifying efficiency, he pinned my wrists together and bound them tight.

“Be good. Stop squirming.”

The man made a move to stand and leave, but in my alcohol-fueled haze, there was no way I was letting my prize slip away. Channeling every ounce of strength I had, I yanked him back down, flipped us over, and straddled his waist. Breathing heavy with the sharp stench of alcohol, I muttered, “I paid big money for you. Where do you think you’re going?”

“Chen Shuyan, look at me. Look closely at who I am.” A voice as cold as ice sliced through the air, sending a sudden jolt through my system.

“I wanna kiss…” I whimpered, melting against his chest. My body temperature began to spike unnaturally, and a hazy flicker of survival instinct warned me: Crap. That last drink was spiked.

“Answer me first. Who am I?” He clamped a hand around my jaw, forcing my head up to meet his abyss-like eyes.

I blinked repeatedly, fighting through the foggy blur, staring at the enlarged face hovering over mine. The reflex buried deep in my bones took over, spilling out the name I always cried when I was in trouble: “Uncle…”

“Open your mouth.” I submissively complied.

“Good girl, Nhan Nhan…” A low, lethally seductive chuckle rippled through the dark, blending with his heavy, scorching breath as he claimed me completely.

When my consciousness slowly drifted back, I shifted my wrists, only to hear the distinct, metallic clink-clink of tiny bells. The sensation of being restrained made me snap my eyes open in horror.

Just as I feared, I was tied down to a bed, wearing nothing but a flimsy, amber-colored silk nightgown. The sheets beneath me had been freshly swapped for clean, crisp linen.

I stared at the crimson ribbon bound tightly around both my wrists. I tried to sit up, but a sudden, blinding ache in my lower back sent me collapsing right back onto the mattress. I cursed silently in my head: That bastard model from last night—was he some kind of psycho robber or what?!

The bedroom door swung open. I was just about to unleash a barrage of curses when Song Qingchen strolled inside, completely unbothered. He calmly removed his suit jacket, carrying a few takeout boxes of gourmet breakfast before setting them down on the bedside table.

My brain short-circuited for three whole seconds as every embarrassed cell in my body went into full revolt. There was truly no rock big enough to crawl under, face-to-face with my pseudo-ex in a setup this unhinged. Yet he was the picture of composure, standing there with his arms crossed, tracking me with an unreadable gaze.

“Get out!” I snapped, trying to project a icy tone to salvage whatever dignity I had left.

The corner of Song Qingchen’s mouth twitched upward into a faint smile—gentle, yet packed with lethal bite. “Shuyan, you’d do well to remember that this is my house.”

I whipped my head around to scan the room. Sure enough, the architecture and sleek minimalist decor belonged to Song Qingchen’s private villa. Given his extreme obsession with privacy back in the day, he had never allowed me near his master suite, which was why I hadn’t recognized it immediately.

Wait, hold on! Could someone please explain how the hell I ended up here?! I was supposed to be in a five-star hotel suite! Did that male host last night have some personal vendetta against the Song family and ship me here as a hostage for ransom?!

“Shuyan, which flavor do you want? I’ll feed you.” Song Qingchen systematically unpacked an array of gourmet porridge boxes—all my personal favorites—arranging them on the nightstand.

“Feed me my foot!” My remaining patience evaporated into thin air. I gave my bound hands a hard yank, and the little bells on the ribbon let out a cheerful clink-clink. In this heavily charged atmosphere, the sound carried the distinct, scandalous vibe of an adult plaything.

“Watch your language,” Song Qingchen murmured, sinking onto the edge of the mattress. He reached up to loosen his tie, his gaze sweeping slowly down my body before settling on my swollen, bruised lips.

I was utterly bewildered. Yesterday in the conference room, he was playing the aloof stranger, promising never to cross my path again. How did he transform into this full-blown criminal mastermind overnight?

“Song Qingchen, the guy I hired last night clearly didn’t know any better and delivered me to the wrong address,” I said, forcing my temperature down and adopting the most reasonable, negotiating tone I could muster. “How about you untie me first, and we can talk this through like adults?”

“A male host?” His eyes darkened into an abyss of profound, terrifying obsession as he leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. “There was no host. From start to finish, the only man servicing you was me.”

“You little scammer… You certainly didn’t look disgusted back then. In fact, you were clinging to me all night…”

A deafening crack of thunder seemed to split my brain wide open. Fragmented, chaotic memories from the previous night came rushing back like a cinematic masterpiece: the “host in a military-style uniform” whom I had pinned down, bitten, and offered to buy out for the night… was Song Qingchen himself!

The shock hit me so hard I thought I was going to suffer permanent brain damage. A wave of heat rushed straight to my face, turning my complexion from ghost-white to deep crimson under his deeply amused stare.