◎ Seduction and Conquest | Pregnancy Before Love | Childcare from the Start
◎ Scheming, flirtatious, delicate beauty 🦚 x Rigid, old-fashioned, powerful patriarch 🐯
Five years after she had a child with another man, Jiang Zhi was finally discovered by her husband's family.
The senior members of the clan put her and her daughter on trial, with her spineless husband standing alongside them as they discussed and settled on divorcing her and throwing her out.
With nowhere left to turn, the widowed mother of a fatherless girl could only look to the child's biological father, Fu Xun.
She had misjudged him, thinking he was a nobody she could easily manipulate. She had schemed to drug him, and one night together had given her a sweet, clever daughter. She hadn't expected him to turn his fate around in just five years and rise to the highest levels of government.
She knew he must hate her. He wouldn't want that night of helpless humiliation brought up again. After all, when she'd tossed a purse of money at him that night, his sweat-damp eyes had been as dark as a deep pool, as if he wanted to devour her alive.
Sure enough, when they met again, the tall, slender man stood on the jade steps. As soon as he heard her innocent daughter call him "Daddy," his gaze turned cold as frost.
Jiang Zhi broke out in a cold sweat as he reached out and lifted her chin. "Since you're the child's mother, I can grant you the status of a favored concubine."
For a woman divorced once already, becoming a concubine in Chancellor Fu's household was a rare stroke of fortune.
She quickly thanked him, but after a night of passionate lovemaking, she pushed aside the arm resting across her waist and tried to sneak away.
Ridiculous. She was young and beautiful. How could she possibly be content to become someone's concubine?
She thought she was being careful enough, but the man who should have been fast asleep suddenly wrapped his arms around her from behind. Resting his chin in the hollow of her shoulder, he said in a trembling voice, "Don't go..."
*
Finding the bed empty in the middle of the night, Fu Xun's eyes darkened. He knew Jiang Zhi, that woman who never told the truth, wouldn't stay put.
How could she? How could she abandon him yet again?
When it came to coldheartedness, he could never beat her. And yet, even knowing how heartless she was, he had still fallen helplessly in love with her.
"Don't you love climbing the social ladder?" He coaxed her to drape her snow-white arms over his shoulders, then kissed her fiercely. His voice was hoarse as he said, "Hold on tight."
Hold on tight.
Gold hairpins and jewels, embroidered silk, the position of a noblewoman.
Everything her useless ex-husband couldn't give her, he would.
On a day she could no longer count since becoming Madam Fu, Jiang Zhi traced the scratch marks on the man's back, the springtime flush still lingering at the corners of her eyes and lips.
This flowing wealth and splendor might have seemed to come easily, but it sure took a toll on her waist...
Blurb written on April 26, 2026
Reader's Guide:
1. The female lead is not a virgin; the male lead is. More to be added.
Theme: Honesty is a virtue
