Chapter 26Â
Sunlight fell through glass onto the floor.Â
At last, the noise was over.Â
He sat in a wheelchair, face composed.Â
“Will you still hate me?” he asked.Â
“Yes,” I said.Â
“Good.” He smiled.Â
“At least I still live in your heart.”Â
My throat tightened.Â
“Where will you go?”Â
“Back to the sea,” he said.Â
“That’s where my grave is.”Â
He didn’t say “the child,”Â
but I knew who he meant.Â
A nurse pushed him away.Â
Sunlight slowly swallowed his back.Â
I closed my eyes.Â
Tears slipped down.Â
“The mad lived,Â
and the rational finally died.”Â
That night, the news ran his statement:Â
“Z Group will be chaired by Wendy.Â
I’m resigning from all positions and going abroad for treatment.Â
Wendy is my only truth.”Â
Watching the screen,Â
a slow ache opened in my chest.Â
He had finished repaying my madness.Â
And I-Â
could finally live as myself.Â
I did not see the moment he went into the sea.Â
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11:42 Sat, Oct 18Â
The wind was too strong; the surf was too white.Â
Mist devoured sea and sky.Â
When the doctors declared resuscitation failed,Â
I simply sat on the beach.Â
I even forgot how to cry.Â
Yuanzi knelt beside me, voice shaking.Â
“He… is he really gone?”Â
I watched the gray-white sea and shook my head lightly.Â
“Men like him don’t die that easily.”Â
She stared.Â
I said nothing more.Â
The wind tangled my hair;Â
my fingertips were cold and very still.Â
The sea seemed to swallow everything-Â
and take nothing with it.Â
A few days later, the hospital’s death report was delivered to me.Â
Only then did it land for real:Â
True or false,Â
I had to go on living.Â
Yuanzi handled my discharge.Â
“Are you sure you won’t identify the body?Â
Police said…Â
they found a shape.”Â
“Don’t.”Â
I cut her off.Â
“The sea will keep him for me.”Â
She didn’t press me.Â
She only took my hand.Â
“What now?”Â
“What now?”Â
I looked out the window.Â
Chapter 26Â
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Z Group’s tower burned its lights layer by layer in the distance.Â
A3 (85Â
“IÂ
goÂ
back.”Â
Z Group.Â
The day I walked into that building again,Â
everyone stared.Â
Some whispered.Â
Some looked away.Â
Some smiled with curious malice.Â
In a black suit,Â
I stepped into the boardroom.Â
The air was iron-cold.Â
Sybil was there.Â
The board had suspended her,Â
but she still held her chin high.Â
“Mrs. Gu,” she sneered,Â
“back from the dead, are we?”Â
I smiled.Â
“You’re right.Â
Only after dying onceÂ
does one learn how to live.”Â
Silence blanketed the room.Â
I set a folder on the table.Â
“Starting today,Â
internal restructuring begins.Â
Sybil, you’re suspended.Â
Your future will be decided after an internal review.”Â
Her face blanched.Â
“By what right?”Â
I turned.Â
“By the transfer he signed.”Â
She stared.Â
11:42 Sat, Oct 18Â
:Â
lifted the document; the light flashed across it.Â
“The current controlling party of Z Group,”Â
I said,Â
“is me.”Â
The room went dead quiet.Â
In that moment, I understood-Â
what he left me wasn’t regret.Â
It was inheritance.Â
That night I returned to the villa alone.Â
Wind filled the house.Â
The wedding portrait was gone from the wall,Â
a pale rectangle left behind.Â
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