Chapter 18 - ​Chapter 18: The Poisoned Memory

​"Do you remember the night of the accident?" Xuan asked suddenly, his voice eerily calm as he stroked Ning's tangled hair. They were sitting on the floor now, surrounded by the wreckage of the room. Ning froze, her heart skipping a beat. "I remember the smoke... the sound of the metal crushing," she whispered, her eyes widening with the trauma. "And I remember Wei Chen appearing like a ghost out of the dark." Xuan's hand stilled. His jaw tightened until the muscles stood out like cords. "He didn't appear, Ning. He was waiting." The misunderstanding took a new, darker turn as Xuan began to weave a narrative of conspiracy. "He knew your father's route. He knew the brakes would fail. He 'saved' them so he could own the daughter." Ning looked at him in horror, her mind spinning. "Xuan, that's a heavy accusation... do you have proof?" The moment she asked for proof, the jealousy exploded anew. "Proof?" he laughed, a jagged, broken sound. "You ask for proof because you want him to be innocent! You want to keep your 'hero' on his pedestal!" He pushed her away, his face contorted with extreme anger. "A woman who truly loved me would believe my word over the evidence of the world! But you... you still hold a candle for the man who put your parents in that hospital bed!" Ning fell back, her hands over her ears. "Stop it! Stop it! I can't think when you scream like this!" She felt the extreme level of lovingness she held for him being shredded by his lack of trust. She was drowning in his suspicion, a sea of black ink that stained everything they had ever shared. "I hate him, Xuan! I hate him for what he's doing to us! But I can't hate him for things I don't know are true!" This was the ultimate betrayal in Xuan's eyes. To him, love was blind, deaf, and mute to anything but the partner's truth. He stood over her, a silhouette of towering possessiveness. "Then you are already his in your mind," he whispered, the words dripping with a cold, lethal misery. "Because you grant him the benefit of the doubt that you deny me." He walked to the corner of the room where a small monitor displayed the perimeter of the house. He saw the Wei family's cars circling like vultures. "They are coming to claim their prize," he muttered. "And you are sitting there, waiting to be claimed." Ning screamed in frustration, a primal sound of a soul pushed to the brink. She lunged at him, not to hurt him, but to wrap herself around him like a shroud. "I am not a prize! I am your wife in every way that matters! If you don't believe me, then kill me now! End this misery!" She was hysterical, her extreme crying turning into a fit of gasping for air. Xuan caught her as she collapsed, his anger vanishing into a black hole of despair. He cradled her, rocking her back and forth amidst the broken glass. "I can't kill you," he whispered, his voice broken. "I can only keep you until the world burns us both." The misunderstanding was a wall of fire between them, and they were both content to let it consume them rather than step apart.