Her fiancé personally sentenced her to death for treason, ordering her to be executed at once.
On the day of her execution, he sat on the executioner's platform. His vermilion brush hovered for three breaths before finally coming down.
Three years later, she returned to the capital with three cartloads of leather goods and a chest of account books, under the identity of Shen Wan, a Jiangnan merchant's wife. In just half a year, she captured thirty percent of the northern frontier's trade, and her books were so spotless that no one could find a single flaw.
No one knew that the copy of her sentence in her sachet bore handwriting she recognized perfectly: Pei Jingzhi's own.
He thought she was dead. In secret, he spent three days digging up her grave, only to find a pile of pig bones.
From that day on, he searched the whole city for an old acquaintance, never realizing she had already come knocking.
This time, he would be the one kneeling and begging for forgiveness.
