Cherished in the Palm of His Hand

[Possessive Love + Obsessive Devotion + The Wrongfully Accused Vindicated]

Her parents were unjustly condemned and died in the Grand Canal. Xu Wanqing observed mourning with her young brother for three years, then went to Jinling for one reason: to break off her engagement to Fu Mingshen, the sitting Minister of Justice.

Everyone says Fu Mingshen is Jinling’s living King of Hell. He commands the courts and prisons, and kills without hesitation. Even the sound of his name can stop a child from crying at night.

But only Xu Wanqing knows how obsessively mad this man can be.

He buries the truth about her parents’ case and cuts off every path of escape, imprisoning her in the marquis’s residence with a marriage contract. He kisses her by force on a rainy night and confines her at a country estate, leaving her nowhere to turn.

She hates him to the bone and thinks only of escaping, never realizing that:

He secretly thwarted every assassination attempt during her three years in Hongzhou;

He risked his life to protect her from the deadly dangers at court;

And the wrongful case that seemed to have been hastily closed was part of a grand scheme he had patiently laid over three years.

Only after the treacherous chancellor is brought to justice and her family’s name is cleared does she understand that the man she has hated for three years had already carved her into his very bones and blood, protecting her for fifteen years.

“Xu Wanqing, in life you belong to me, and in death you’ll be my ghost. You will never escape me in this lifetime.”