The Time Difference of a Heartbeat

In the corners Pei Yu could not see, Zou Qingyu watched him for seven years.

He was the head of the Ruisheng Group, a venture capitalist with a razor-sharp eye, a world-class race car driver, and a rising young star constantly covered by the news media. She was the illegitimate daughter of the Zou family’s jewelry business. Marrying him had seemed like a pipe dream.

In an “accident,” a car crash left him disabled because of her, and the marriage alliance between their families was called off. After they married, outsiders mocked her for a peasant girl who had become a princess. He looked down on her and treated her with contempt, ignoring her completely.

She cried all night, then finally summoned the courage to ask for a divorce.

After hearing her out, Pei Yu’s handsome face darkened. He tossed aside the documents and flung his still-lit cigarette butt at her shoes. When she was so startled that she fell to the floor, he gave a cold laugh.

“Want a divorce?”

He took his cane and stumbled toward her. Looking down at her, he used its tip to lift her face, then traced it along her neck to her collarbone and nudged open her neckline. He greedily surveyed her fair, jade-like, creamy skin, then spat out contemptuously,

“You know what to do.”

Zou Qingyu bit her lip, swallowed all the humiliation, stood, and leaned toward his lips.

The next second, he shoved her roughly to the floor.

“Do you think you’re worthy?” He stared at his slightly limp leg and sneered, “You owe me this.”

Hearing those words from him, she squeezed her eyes shut in pain. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she broke into sobs.

…

Later, when she was gravely ill, he resolutely cast aside his cane and, on a night of raging wind and snow, knelt every five steps and kowtowed every ten.

In front of the most efficacious temple, he clasped her hand tightly.

“Zou Qingyu, you are not allowed to die. You’ll spend your whole life repaying what you owe me.”

Reader’s guide: Old-school, melodramatic, Mary Sue. The male lead’s leg will recover.

Theme: Love is pride