Warming Up to the Trap

[Blurb for my next book, The Sound and Color Trap:]

In the fifth year since he met Nan Yi, he watched coldly as her life fell apart: her family declined, and her boyfriend cheated on her.

Standing a short distance away, he took a sip of strong tea and watched the whole farce unfold. His friend beside him clicked his tongue and couldn't help asking, "Aren't you going to help her? The poor girl looks so helpless."

Chen Jinzhi stubbed out the cigarette that had burned down between his fingers. "Help?"

He wasn't a good person.

He was a businessman, and he always expected something in return. But with her, he couldn't get anything back.

"Helpless?"

He chuckled. Perhaps she had fooled every one of them.

Just as he had expected, on the first night Nan Yi came to him, a few tears welled in her eyes as she took her performance to the extreme and said something rather unpleasant. "Mr. Chen, what you're doing is immoral."

He reached out and wiped away the tear at the corner of her eye. He knew she was faking it, but played along all the same.

"I have no morals. And as for your boyfriend..."

"He's not my concern."

Everyone said that Nan Yi must have had an expert guiding her to achieve so much in just a few years.

On the night she won her award, she unexpectedly called him herself. "Mr. Chen, it's time to end this game of ours."

Her voice and manner were completely different from before.

Chen Jinzhi tightened his grip on the phone. He knew she had no heart, yet stubbornly let himself get drawn into her game.

[Blurb for this book:]

That year in Britain, on a damp, cold, dreary rainy night, Guo Ni had her first lapse in judgment out of human kindness and took a man home.

After returning to China, she deliberately severed all contact with him. She told him that things between them were over.

That city had swallowed up her truest feelings, buried her old love, and dismissed her so-called new love.

She didn't believe they could ever rekindle their romance. She had never changed a decision she had made for anyone.

Later, she thought she must have hated that city with all her heart.

Old feelings and old loves ensnared her, him, and everyone they had been.

She wanted a love that was pure above all else. She never expected that one day this love, these feelings, would become the sharpest of blades, striking her and leaving her shattered at the slightest misstep.

The human world was a savage wilderness, without light from stars or moon. The human heart was a labyrinth of demons, endless and unrelenting.

In this ink-black abyss, where waves surged and countless people drifted, she was an indispensable piece on the board, and also a tiny boat bent on crossing the river.

Theme: Love comes with a delay