Ling Shaoting first met Su Muyan at a lavish reception. At the time, moonlight seemed to flow from the young man’s fingertips as he played the piano, yet his eyes held a haze that would not lift.
He was the heir to the Ling family, able to command the business world with a flick of his hand, and burdened by the blood feud of his elder brother’s brutal death. The other was a piano prodigy from a fallen family, with the truth behind his father’s imprisonment lodged like a thorn in his heart.
“Become my private pianist, and I’ll investigate your father’s case for you.” Ling Shaoting offered him a hand, while concealing a poisoned chain in his palm.
He cut off every one of Su Muyan’s escape routes, disguising his attraction as indifference and engraving a mark that belonged only to him deep in Su Muyan’s soul. Su Muyan sank into the cage, thinking he had glimpsed the beast’s weakness, unaware that every beat of his heart was digging his own grave.
When the fabricated evidence was laid before him, when the brand of “enemy’s son” seared into his flesh, love crumbled to ash, inch by inch, amid hatred.
“Your father destroyed my family. You have to atone.” Ling Shaoting’s cold laugh still rang in his ears, yet Su Muyan smiled as he hid a razor blade between the piano keys.
“Ling Shaoting, what I hate most about you is that you made me fall in love with you.”
When the truth came to light, all that remained were bloodstained piano keys and eternal silence. At last, he was willing to let everything go and atone, but all he could do was keep watch over a soulless body, picking up the instrument of torture called “the rest of his life” from the ruins of memory.
