[Younger mad dog + long-planned pursuit + possessive love + unrequited love turned mutual + one-on-one, mutually devoted]
[A blade concealed in warm water · unyielding black swan x polished scoundrel · possessive, lovesick puppy]
When she was fifteen, the real heiress returned.
Only then did Jiang Sui learn that she was merely an adopted substitute for her parents’ real daughter.
Her fiancé, Li Ziyao, pulled her back from the brink of being cast out with the words, “I love you, not your family background.”
She was grateful to him.
*
Until the day Jiang Sui caught Li Ziyao in bed with his young stepmother.
Straightening his disheveled collar, he smiled cruelly and disdainfully. “Jiang Sui, you didn’t really think I loved you, did you? An adopted daughter with no parents, living under someone else’s roof, is much easier to control than that spoiled real heiress.”
Five years of self-deception became a joke overnight.
*
Jiang Sui drank herself into a stupor, never noticing the figure that quietly approached.
Darkness lurked in Li Shaoxuan’s eyes, far beyond his years. “Sister-in-law, is someone like my brother really worth crying over?”
With bleary, drunken eyes, Jiang Sui corrected him. “Don’t call me sister-in-law. I have nothing to do with him anymore.”
In the darkness, Li Shaoxuan’s lips curved into a long-awaited smile.
He leaned close, his scorching breath brushing her ear as he spoke with possessive tenderness:
“Big sister, you should have had nothing to do with him a long time ago.”
“From the very beginning, you should have been mine.”
*
Only later did Jiang Sui learn the truth.
The boy who had spent years pretending to be obedient and harmless in front of her was, deep down, a madman whose yearning for her had driven him to obsession.
Ever since that ballet performance,
throughout all the years she was his future sister-in-law,
whenever Li Shaoxuan met her eyes, he was hiding the same crazy thought: “If my brother died, you’d be mine.”
