After My Husband's Death: I Set My Sights on the Marquis's Youngest Brother

On the night the Jing'an Marquis's household held a wedding to bring good fortune, the heir coughed up blood and died. The new bride, Shu Yixiao, was thrown into the woodshed by the Marchioness, who gave her seven days before she was to be buried alive with her dead husband.

Dragging her injured body, she escaped her cage. At the last possible moment, she ran into Wen Jin, the household's second young master, a notorious playboy in the capital, a despised illegitimate son and good-for-nothing.

Behind the rockery, beneath the moonlight, she deliberately tore her clothes and threw herself into his arms for help. He clamped a hand around her chin and coldly exposed her: “What a devious mind you have, sister-in-law.”

He had never been drunk. She was no fool.

She traded the secret that the Marchioness planned to poison her illegitimate son for his protection. In front of the Marchioness, he kissed her, then used an absurd act of “mistaking her for someone else while drunk” to erase her name from the list of those to be buried alive.

She became a lowly widow-bride confined to a side courtyard of the marquis's manor, while he was a lone wolf hiding his claws beyond the mourning hall.

It was only a partnership. She was his blade, and he was her shield.

She seemed tearfully helpless and easy to pity, but with a single move she sent her enemies to hell, their every escape anticipated. He appeared to live a life of wine and women, carefree and debauched, but in truth he bent over the board beneath lamplight, calculating every move.

Secret kisses during the mourning period, clandestine meetings behind the rockery. Their forbidden desire burned like oil in a cauldron; every step closer risked their ruin.

And yet, the more forbidden it was, the deeper their hearts fell.

She thought this was merely a transaction in which each got what they needed, until she glimpsed the unshakable tenderness in his eyes amid the flashing blades.

He thought taking in a sharp blade would solve everything, never realizing that the pitiful little white flower would grow into a thorn lodged in his heart, one he could never pull out.

From the woodshed to the side courtyard, from a pawn to the one directing the game. She climbed step by step over the schemes and bloodshed throughout the manor, and finally took her seat in the main hall of the Jing'an Marquis's residence: the Marchioness's chair.