"Pain..." A tearing agony shot through Yun Anan, wrenching a cry from her lips. Before she could speak, the overpowering stench of alcohol assaulted her nostrils, so sharp it momentarily dazed her. It was him. “Xinyue, Xinyue…” The low, tender murmur escaped Huo Siqing’s lips. His dark eyes—the same eyes that always regarded Yun Anan with nothing but detached loathing—were now impossibly soft. Yun Anan’s body went rigid. Her eyes widened as she stared at Huo Siqing in disbelief, her chest instantly flooding with a mortifying shame. “Xinyue…” Huo Siqing whispered again, lost in a drunken haze, completely oblivious to her shock and the change in her expression. Smack— Unable to bear it a moment longer, her shoulders trembling, Yun Anan raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face. “Huo Siqing, look at me! I'm Yun Anan, the wife you legally married into the Huo family—not my sister, Yun Xinyue!” In the six months since their wedding, their marriage had been a sham. He never even came home unless they had to visit Grandpa Huo. To this day, Yun Anan could still remember the venom in his voice on their wedding night, how he’d humiliated her, calling her nothing more than a commodity traded between their families. He’d warned her that even though she had schemed her way into the Huo family, she should never expect him to touch her. Her heart already belonged to someone else, just as his did. Yet here they were, inexplicably bound together. But no matter what, she could not endure the degradation of being treated as a substitute. The slap was hard enough to shock Huo Siqing out of his stupor. He lowered his head, and as his dark eyes landed on Yun Anan’s humiliated yet defiant face, the tenderness in them instantly vanished, replaced by sheer, cold disgust. “Yun Anan,” Huo Siqing seethed, his handsome face contorted with rage. “You know damn well how many of your schemes it took to arrange this so-called 'legal marriage'!” His words stung, and Yun Anan’s eyes reddened. “You think I wanted to marry you? Xinyue was the one who ran—” “Shut up!” Huo Siqing snarled, cutting her off contemptuously. “Even now, you're trying to blame Xinyue? If you hadn't done something, why would she have disappeared without a trace?” Who else benefited most from Yun Xinyue’s disappearance if not Yun Anan? If his grandfather hadn’t forced him to marry her, he would never have allowed her to set foot in the Huo family home. “I didn’t!” Yun Anan bit her lip, desperate to defend herself, but the memory of her parents’ life-or-death plea made the words die in her throat. She couldn’t tell him. If she hadn't married Huo Siqing six months ago, she would still be a student at the College of Traditional Medicine, not forced to abandon her studies because the Huo family looked down on her chosen field. No matter how much the injustice stung, she had no choice but to swallow it. Seeing that Yun Anan couldn't offer a single word of defense, Huo Siqing grew even more certain he had exposed her true motives. He sneered. “You schemed so hard to take Xinyue’s place, didn’t you? Then drop the act and endure it all!” Yun Anan struggled, trying to push him away, but her strength was nothing against his frenzy. And in that moment, she saw it in his eyes: the cruel pleasure of his revenge...