Chapter 2: The Family They Stole

My hand stopped above the screen.

Physical betrayal was enough to make me sick. What truly chilled me was that they had turned all those stolen days into an ordinary life.

4.

The first time Zhao Wanting appeared before me, she was only fifteen.

Her father had died early, her mother had remarried, and there were two older brothers at home waiting for money to spend.

Gu Yanzhou had once advised me not to support her.

“You can help her for a while, but you can't satisfy her whole family's greed.”

I took his words to heart, but I didn't abandon her.

I asked a lawyer to free her from her biological family's control, paid all her expenses until she graduated from college, and arranged an internship for her.

In the year she graduated, she turned down a job at Gu Group.

“Sister Zhiwei, I don't want to work too close to my brother-in-law. I don't want people gossiping.”

Her eyes had been clear when she said it. I had even praised her for knowing her boundaries.

After Gu Yanzhou's car accident, she often stayed with me.

Whenever I went on a business trip, she volunteered to visit the patient in my place. Every time, she sent me a photo of Gu Yanzhou sleeping peacefully to reassure me.

Grateful for how considerate she was, I sent many business opportunities her way, helping her small company.

Now I knew those photos had been taken to cover up their dates.

On the security footage, Zhao Wanting sat on Gu Yanzhou's lap. The two of them were intimate for a long time.

Then she glanced at the clock.

“Stop fooling around. Mom and Dad are bringing An'an over soon.”

I thought I could no longer be surprised, but at the words “Mom and Dad,” my fingertips still went cold.

Ten minutes later, the Gu parents entered the house, leading a boy of about five or six by the hand.

The child ran into the living room and threw himself into Gu Yanzhou's arms, calling him Dad.

Mrs. Gu laughed and told him to slow down. Mr. Gu set the food he had brought on the table.

The five of them gathered around the dining table I had chosen myself, like a family that had rehearsed the scene countless times.

All these years, my in-laws had always said that staying in the city would remind them of painful memories, and insisted on returning to their hometown.

Every month I sent them living expenses. During holidays, I even went back to visit them in person.

Sometimes a child's voice came through during video calls. They said it was the neighbor's grandchild.

I had never suspected a thing.

The year Gu Yanzhou had his accident, I was pregnant, too.

One shock and exhaustion after another caused me to lose the baby at three months.

The day the doctor told me, Mrs. Gu held me and cried, saying the Gu family was not blessed.

It turned out they were not without a blessing.

They had simply regarded someone else's child as the Gu family's hope for a long time.

After dinner, Gu Yanzhou and Zhao Wanting took An'an to the children's room.

It was the room we had designed together before our wedding. Even the star-shaped lamp on the wall had been sketched by me.

My child could never sleep in that room, yet Zhao Wanting's son could hug the toy Gu Yanzhou had picked out and listen to him tell a bedtime story.

After the boy fell asleep, the two of them returned to the master bedroom.

Zhao Wanting opened the closet to look for the blanket my mother had left me. When she found it was gone, her expression darkened at once.

Gu Yanzhou leaned against the headboard and laughed at her. “Got used to it?”

“It's just an old blanket. Only Shen Zhiwei treats it like a treasure.”

Zhao Wanting kicked him. Then her expression suddenly turned serious.

“I'll give you two more months. An'an is about to start primary school. I don't want people to keep saying he has no father.”

Gu Yanzhou squeezed her waist and promised nonchalantly, “I've arranged everything this time.”

“If she agrees to let go, fine. If she doesn't, it won't be up to her.”

Outside the screen, I bit my lip until it split.

The comments argued over how they planned to make me disappear. Gu Yanzhou had already discussed with Zhao Wanting which room they would live in after my funeral.

I muted the audio and saved a copy of the camera footage. Then I contacted the person in charge of the emergency center.

“Keep the highest-level emergency room empty.”

The other person thought Gu Yanzhou's condition had worsened, and immediately agreed.

“Also prepare the paperwork to withhold resuscitation.”

On the very day the negotiations in South City ended, I received a call from the nursing facility.

The nurse was speaking incoherently. She said Gu Yanzhou had suddenly lost his vital signs and told me to come back immediately.

When I reached his room, his face was deathly pale. The monitor showed little more than a nearly flat line.

The doctors said the chances of resuscitating him were slim.

The comments appeared slowly.

[The supporting female character really is pitiful.]

[At first the male lead only wanted to fake his death to get away. She was the one who insisted on saving him, so later he had to arrange a car accident.]

[Last time she had the doctors use an experimental treatment and woke him from the fake coma, but it left him with side effects.]

[The male lead was afraid his secret would come out. He could only get rid of her first.]

According to the original plot, I would insist on using the new treatment, even though its chance of success was one in ten thousand.

Gu Yanzhou would wake up, but he would blame every bit of pain from the medication on me.

Not long afterward, he would have an out-of-control truck ram my car. I would survive the impact, only to see him holding Zhao Wanting's hand in the hospital. That was when I would learn our ten-year marriage had been a lie from beginning to end.

That time, I hadn't even had the chance to hear a full explanation.

I suppressed the hatred roiling inside me and kept up the appearance of a wife who couldn't bear to give up on her husband.

“Transfer him.”

The nursing facility staff immediately stopped the bed.

“Mrs. Gu, the patient can't withstand transport. The best thing now is to let him pass quietly.”

“He was stable a week ago. Why did his condition suddenly deteriorate?”

I threw the medical records onto the table.

“Why wasn't I notified of a single abnormality during that period? Where are the cameras? Where are the medication records?”

The staff looked at one another. No one could answer.

Gu Yanzhou hadn't actually been in that room for the past few days, so of course they couldn't produce complete footage.

I immediately ordered them to seal every record and told my assistant to file a report with the police.

The employees who had been urging me to accept the facts only moments earlier began to panic.

I gave them no more time to stall. I called security to escort the bed out of the facility.

At the end of the corridor, someone hid behind the fire door and made a phone call.

Less than a minute later, Zhao Wanting texted me.

“Sister Zhiwei, I just got to the nursing facility. Where's my brother-in-law?”

I listened again to the feigned confusion in her voice message, then replied:

“He's in critical condition. He's at the new emergency center.”

By the time the ambulance reached the center, I had a drug analysis report in my hands.

To make his death look real, Gu Yanzhou had used a prohibited drug that could suppress breathing and heart rate for a long time.

Ordinary equipment could barely detect it, but once we knew the drug's name, there was a way to bring him around sooner.

The analysis came from an unregistered vial beside his hospital bed.

Before leaving the nursing facility, I had someone photograph every medication in the room as evidence.

An employee had hurriedly stuffed the empty vial into the medical waste bag, but the label had not been completely removed.

The emergency center's pharmacology team traced the batch number to its source. A blood test on Gu Yanzhou also found the corresponding compound.

When the department head handed me the report, his expression was grim.

“This drug isn't approved for treatment. His current condition may well have been caused deliberately.”

I asked how long it would take him to wake up if we did absolutely nothing.

“It depends on the dose. It could be two or three days—or he could actually die because his breathing is suppressed.”

To deceive me, Gu Yanzhou had even gambled with his own life.

He was certain I would do what I had done before: save him at any cost. He was also certain Zhao Wanting and his parents would help him keep the secret.

I asked the department head to seal every test sample so it could be handed directly to the police if needed.

He agreed, then asked whether I wanted to administer the antidote immediately.

I looked at Gu Yanzhou lying motionless on the transfer bed and remembered the truck that was supposed to hit me in the comments.

“Prepare the antidote. Wait for my word. Don't let the nursing facility know.”

I wanted to make sure he stayed alive to face the consequences, but I would no longer help him evade every step he had planned.

I didn't have the doctors give him the antidote right away.

First, I wanted him to walk the path he himself had chosen.

6.

The emergency team prepared two plans.

The first was to maintain basic life support and wait for the drug to leave his system.

The second was an experimental treatment I had funded ten years ago. It might force someone out of a deep coma, but the risk was extremely high.

When the department head asked whether we should use the second plan, I covered my face and kept silent for a long time.

“Let's not try it again.”

I made my voice sound exhausted and broken.

“He's been lying like this for ten years. Even if he survives, he'll only suffer.”

The doctors were clearly surprised.

They all knew how stubbornly I had insisted before. They also knew why this emergency center had been established in the first place.

Someone confirmed my decision again. I simply picked up the “Consent to Withhold Resuscitation” forms and signed each page.

As soon as I put the paperwork down, Zhao Wanting arrived with the Gu parents.

All three were out of breath. The alarm on their faces didn't look fake.

I pretended to be surprised. “Dad, Mom, weren't you two in your hometown?”

Mrs. Gu clutched her chest and said she had been having nightmares for days, so they had come to see their son.

Mr. Gu hurriedly added that they had only learned Gu Yanzhou had been transferred when they went to the nursing facility.

Zhao Wanting supported me, though her fingers kept trembling.

“Brother-in-law will be fine, Sister Zhiwei.”

She saw the consent form on the table. The tension in her eyes finally eased.

Mrs. Gu glanced at my signature, too, and immediately wiped her tears.

“You've been by his side for ten years. You've done everything you could.”

“We're his parents, and we can't bear to lose him either, but we don't want to see you suffer any longer.”

Before, when they took turns urging me to let go, I had thought they were concerned for me.

Now I could hear what every word really meant: they were urging me to clear the way for Gu Yanzhou.

Just then, the emergency room door opened and a bed covered with a white sheet was wheeled out.

The Gu parents looked at each other, then rushed over and began to weep.

Zhao Wanting put her arm around my shoulders and choked out that I should look to the future.

The sheet slipped down—but the person on the bed was a stranger.

All three of their cries stopped at once.

I explained that it was a long-term research patient sponsored by the center, whose resuscitation had just failed.

Mrs. Gu had no mind to keep acting. She grabbed my hand and asked where Gu Yanzhou was.

I closed my eyes, and let a tear fall at just the right moment.

“He's already been taken to the funeral home.”

“I couldn't bear to watch him suffer any longer, so I chose the fastest cremation process.”

Zhao Wanting went white.

Mr. Gu staggered into a chair. Mrs. Gu shoved me away, and the three of them rushed out in a panic.

I watched them disappear at the end of the hall and sent a message to the doctor who had been waiting.

“You can give him the antidote now.”

The trip usually took forty minutes by car, but it took the Gu family more than an hour to reach the funeral home.

On the way, they fought for the road and hit a passerby. They didn't stop to help; they fled the scene instead.

I stayed behind to call an ambulance for the injured person and gave the traffic police the vehicle's location data.

The comments disappeared for a long time. When they returned, their tone had completely changed.

[The more frantic they get, the worse they drive. By the time they arrive, the crematorium will be closed.]

[Those comments were defending that scumbag before. Why are they silent now?]

[He faked an illness for ten years to cheat his wife out of money for his mistress. Isn't ending up in the cremator something he chose himself?]

[Don't worry about him coming back to life. The real wife picked the expedited cremation.]

When I reached the funeral home, the Gu parents and Zhao Wanting had all collapsed in the lobby.

An employee said they had fainted on the spot after hearing that Gu Yanzhou had been pushed into the cremator.

I had no choice but to take all three of them to the hospital.

Mrs. Gu woke first. As soon as she opened her eyes, she raised a hand to slap me.

She had injured her leg when she fainted. Her hand hadn't even reached me before the pain sent her falling back onto the bed.

I pulled the blanket over her.

“Mom, be careful. The doctor said your leg needs several months to heal.”

Mr. Gu had injured the back of his head and could barely speak, but he still managed to force out the cruelest thing he could think of:

“Women are truly heartless.”

I poured him a cup of warm water and reminded him he'd soon have to answer questions from the police.

“You hit someone on the way here and didn't stop.”

“The victim isn't in life-threatening condition, but fleeing after an accident is still a serious matter.”

Their faces stiffened at once.

The hospital-room door burst open. Zhao Wanting came in with her hair in disarray.

“You killed Yanzhou!”

She grabbed my collar and shrieked curses at me, completely forgetting that she had always played the role of my sweet, considerate little sister.

I didn't push her away. I only looked toward the camera in the corner of the room.

When she'd finished yelling, I gently took hold of her wrist.

“Wanting, what right do you have to demand justice for my husband?”

Her breath caught. Mrs. Gu immediately shouted at her to stop.

The three of them looked at one another, finally realizing they had lost control of themselves.

I straightened my collar and smiled as I told them there was good news.

“Gu Yanzhou isn't dead.”

“He woke up in the cremator and crawled out by himself.”

Mrs. Gu's lips began to tremble violently.