Entwined With Gardenia

A dark, twisted, dangerously unstable man x a gentle, beautiful designer

Stealing someone’s partner / coercion

*

One midsummer, Xu Zhining travels abroad and meets a man.

Though he seems like a perfect gentleman, she soon discovers he is completely insane.

A month later, she finally escapes while he is out.

But on the way home from the airport, she gets into a car accident.

When she wakes up, she has lost her memory.

/

On her birthday, Xu Zhining is meeting her boyfriend for lunch when a man steps in front of her. “Zhizhi, long time no see.”

He is handsome, with amber eyes, though his features look more East Asian.

Xu Zhining looks up at him, bewildered. “Who are you?”

The man raises his brows in surprise, but quickly gives her an elegant smile. “We haven’t seen each other for half a month, and you’ve already forgotten me, Zhizhi?”

He takes out a photo and holds it up to her. “I’m your boyfriend, Qi Yue.”

Xu Zhining runs her fingers over the photo of the two of them on horseback and looks troubled. “But I already have a boyfriend.”

Qi Yue regards her with amusement.

She ran away, pretended to have amnesia, and now she’s found herself a boyfriend to use as a shield.

He had always been the one to toy with others. Now a woman had played him for a fool. He leans toward her, darkness surging in his eyes.

“That’s all right.”

“I’ll help you remember, bit by bit.”

Under the streetlights at night, he ignores the watchful eyes in the distance, grips her waist, and forces her to look up. “Kiss me.”

The day Xu Zhining gets her memory back, she realizes she has fallen into the devil’s trap all over again. On a dark, windy night, she climbs the wall, almost over the top, when he yanks her down by the ankle

“Our engagement party is the day after tomorrow.” His mask falls, revealing the cold, shadowed look in his eyes. “Where are you going, Zhizhi?”

🔖Reader advisory

📍The hero is domineering and dangerously unstable, and uses vile methods, but in love he is the one who is submissive and humbled.

📍Dog-training dynamics, lots of push and pull, happy ending

Coming next: "Know You by Heart"

Reunion at the beginning / Long-planned scheme / Taking love by force

*

At eighteen, Ye Jinqiu had nowhere else to turn. In the end, she went to the place favored by the powerful and wealthy of the capital: Qixian Residence.

Amid the music of strings and flutes, someone recognized her. “Isn’t that Ye Quzheng’s daughter? What, now that your father’s fallen, you’re here to make money?”

When someone falls, everyone joins in. Ye Jinqiu’s eyes brim with the hopelessness of someone with nowhere left to go.

Just then, the door behind her opens.

All the laughter stops, and a group of dissolute young men instantly become servile.

Shen Yanqing studies her face.

Her eyes are wet with tears, making her seem pitiful, but her knitted brows hold a trace of stubbornness.

Shen Yanqing reaches out to her. “Will you come with me?”

That was Shen Yanqing’s first visit to Qixian Residence, and the first time he had ever intervened in someone else’s business.

A man who always kept his distance from women, he took a young girl by the wrist for the first time and led her away from Qixian Residence to his villa on Beishan.

That year, Ye Jinqiu was eighteen, and Shen Yanqing was twenty-three.

In the blink of an eye, five years passed.

Ye Jinqiu never expected to see Shen Yanqing again. After all, he had pulled her out of the mire back then, only for her to turn around and push him into the mud.

She avoided him, kept her distance, but he was everywhere.

Body and soul.

But she was about to get married.

To everyone else, Shen Yanqing was famous for his gentle, refined manners. Only he knew that ever since he learned of her engagement, countless vicious schemes had been churning in his heart.

When she was once again trapped in desperation and at a loss, Shen Yanqing walked toward her, his shadow as clear and bright as the wind after rain. He asked the same question as before: “Will you come with me?”

This time, though, his gaze had changed. It was filled with the ambition of a man who could not have the woman he loved.

-If your love is bound to be mixed with lies, then I’ll take both.

Theme: Dare to stand on the mountaintop