Jiang ngYao gritted his teeth. The things he had done to AiLin... those weren’t so easy to forget. After all, he had done them for years, always enjoying deep down when there was pain across AiLin’s face. He could still rember how her face, marred with tears and her eyes wet from all the humiliation she had endured and he saw it all with joy and pleasure.
What he did not expect was how now there was soone who would drag him back and punished him for those things he had done, the ones he had done with full knowledge for his own pleasure.
Li ZiChen leaned back and settled his broad shoulders on the window glass again. He watched Jiang ngYao with the patience of a predator that already knew its prey was cornered. He could have killed this man here but then he would have to go to jail. Though he could have escaped those responsibilities, Li ZiChen was raised and taught not to use all his authority and power as easily by his parents. Their fear was that he would use that authority to do sothing heinous, such as erasing a responsibility of murdering soone.
His fingers drumd lightly against the polished wood of the round table beside him, a faint rhythm that did nothing to mask the heavy silence between them.
"You look nervous," he noted, tilting his head. "Good."
Jiang ngYao’s nails dug into his palms. He refused to break eye contact, refused to show the fear creeping up his spine, but the weight of Li ZiChen’s gaze made it impossible to ignore the truth. He was trapped. No way out, no way to run. If he refuses to answer, he could tell Li ZiChen wouldn’t hold back in the dia he uses, and it would be worse if his pasts were dug. Specially what he had done.. when he was young.
He tremble, because deep down, beneath the frustration and the rage, there was sothing festering inside him.
Regret? No.
Fear.
"What would you do if you knew about what I have done to her?" Jiang ngYao taunted, smiling. "You can’t change what happened in the past and the things I have done wasn’t entirely my fault."
"Oh really?" Li ZiChen tone was trained but his eyes spoke the opposite. It was filled with rage, rage that was too difficult to be controlled. "Then start speaking. Hearing your filthy voice for too long will make lose my temper."
Jiang ngYao gulped. To confess the things he had done was no less different than diving to death. He thought he could lie and smiling, he answered with ease, "It was just a fight between sister and brother. I thought of her as my own sibling, so I have taken care of her well. I wouldn’t have raised my hands if it wasn’t for what she had done."
"What she had done," he repeated, "And what is it that she had done? I doubt it’s sothing such as breaking a vase. AiLin has always been careful, always. She wouldn’t have done things that would have caused soone else trouble or pain."
"What do you know?" Jiang ngYao let out a stifled laugh, "Just so you know she wasn’t as docile as now. She was spoiled in the past."
"A child being spoiled to their family is nothing," Li ZiChen gripped the glass whiskey that was new on the table, his veins flexing over his skin, "Now cut the chase. Speak."
Biting down his mouth, Jiang ngYao sighed, "Whenever she gets into a fight with mother and father, they leave punishing her to . I did what I had to do, I taught her what is it she should do and what she shouldn’t have done."
"By words?" Li ZiChen let out a brief smile, "We know that it’s not only by words that you have punished her with. Just out with it." He raised his glass, "Now." he demanded.
Jiang ngYao could tell that even if he avoided this glass, Li ZiChen would then rush to fight him. Jiang ngYao himself believe that even if they fought he would still be able to fend himself off and fought off against Li ZiChen. It was easy to do so considering that Li ZiChen himself didn’t look so muscular.
He shrugged, feeling more confident in himself as he spoke, "Well I hit her, a few tis. Have you slept with her?"
The sudden question didn’t only anger Li ZiChen more but made his eyes turn pitch black with rage.
He didn’t respond and Jiang ngYao laughed, "You think you’re special? That you’re different from the others? Considering how she easily got pregnant at such a young age, you should think twice whenever she whispers the words of love to you. But if you haven’t slept with her, you should be concerned. She can allow so many n to sleep with her to the point that she couldn’t even figure out the father of the baby inside her stomach back then. Maybe she treats you more like an asset?"
Li ZiChen didn’t answer and the night sky had turned darker as the storm brew closer. JJiang ngYao was too lost in his gloating to notice the shift in the air, the fact that the storm wasn’t just outside anymore or that Li ZiChen had stopped looking at him and had crushed the glass under his hands.
From where he stood, Jiang ngYao only saw how Li Zi Chen’s head had bent down, staring at the floor, possibly regretting everything as doubt creeped into his heart. This was enough to cause Jiang ngYao to jump in joy and he couldn’t help but talk more, feeding into the doubt that he was sure he could see. Jiang ngYao was too lost in his gloating to notice the shift in the air, the storm wasn’t just outside anymore.
He was speaking too fast, too eager, his lips stretching into a grin as he fed into the doubt he thought he saw in Li ZiChen’s face. The darkness outside thickened, the night swallowing what little light remained, but inside, sothing far more dangerous brewed.
"AiLin was always oddly colder to people kinder to her, don’t you know that?" Jiang ngYao sneered. "She might have only used you for her benefit, that’s why you wouldn’t know the marks on her back."
His voice dripped with pleasure as he continued, too absorbed in the past he thought he controlled. "We first found out that she was in a relationship with soone. A kind friend of her who then turns out to be my blood sister had expressed her concern because she had caught pictures of AiLin going to hotels with random n. We tried to stop her and out of disappointnt, my father had given the belt to whip her back."
Silence.
The silence was suffocating.
Jiang ngYao didn’t notice at first, he was still riding the high of his own words, but sothing felt wrong. His skin prickled. His mouth, open and ready for another taunt, suddenly found itself dry. He noticed finally how... Li ZiChen wasn’t looking at him anymore.
He sat perfectly still, his fingers loosely curled over the shattered remains of the whiskey glass. A single drop of blood trickled down his hand where the shards had sliced his skin, but his grip remained.
He should have responded by now.
A flash of doubt flickered in Jiang ngYao’s chest, but he smothered it down. Maybe he had won. Maybe Li ZiChen was regretting everything.
Jiang ngYao grinned, emboldened. "So I whipped her," he exhaled, his voice filthy with pleasure. "I didn’t have fun doing that, of course, but those things had to be done so she could change."
"Didn’t she explain to you that those pictures were false?"
Li ZiChen’s voice was chilling, a blade sharpened in ice.
Jiang ngYao’s smile faltered. His breath hitched as the shadows around Li ZiChen seed to twist, curling around the rage he had barely held back.
"She did, but she was lying. We knew because not even less than a week after that, we found out she was pregnant."
"You didn’t whip her that ti for the first ti, right?" The words that left his mouth was cut throat.
Jiang ngYao hesitated. His pulse pounded against his skull. He lied, forcing his voice to remain steady. "No. That was the first."
"If it was, AiLin wouldn’t have been scared of you."
The room felt colder, the tension rose as Li ZiChen had called on his bullshit.
"She was also scared of a cara that you once had. A broken cara."
Jiang ngYao’s throat went dry.
"What have you recorded there?" The words struck like iron against bone. He felt it in his chest, a shudder deep in his marrow. He opened his mouth, but before he could even think of a lie—
CRUSH. The glass shattered.
By the ti Jiang ngYao’s mind caught up, it was too late. Li ZiChen moved so fast he was a blur of fury and force. One second, he was seated. The next, his fist was twisted in Jiang ngYao’s collar, yanking him off his feet as if he weighed nothing.
Jiang ngYao barely had ti to gasp before his body was hurled across the room.
The impact was devastating. His spine collided with the kitchen slab with a sickening crack. Pain exploded across his back, his ribs screaming in agony. His head snapped backward, dazed from the force of it, but the pain didn’t stop there.
A hand, iron-like, simply far too powerful, grabbed his chin, forcing his face upward.
There was no hesitation in Li ZiChen’s movents. No restraint.
His fist drove forward.
Jiang ngYao’s vision flashed white as a brutal punch shattered against his jaw. Sothing cracked. His teeth clattered against the floor, spit and blood mixing with the fine polish.
His ears rang. His skull felt like it had been split apart.
"What have you recorded from that damned cara?"
The voice was grim, murderous. Gone was that control that cald Li ZiChen’s head, now it was just a deadly need to destroy this bundle of filth in front of him.
Jiang ngYao tried to swallow, but the taste of iron filled his throat. His body was screaming, his bones fractured, but it was nothing compared to the terror sinking into his lungs.
Because for the first ti tonight, no, for the first ti in his life, Jiang ngYao realized he had miscalculated.
"Speak." Li ZiChen demanded. One punch after every words and that had crushed Jiang ngYao’s nose, causing it to turn bloody while his skin beca blue and purple, an unimpressive but fitting look on the man’s face.
Reviews
All reviews (0)