After that...
Dan Song clenched his hands on his knees, as if he had thought of something, and his eyes suddenly turned cold.
After returning to China that year, Shan Song's mother, Shan Zhen, was immersed in grief and was depressed for a while. Then she started going on blind dates arranged by her family.
Shan Song said, "Zhou Muyuan appeared at this time. At that time, the Zhou family was far inferior to the Shan family. Zhou Muyuan somehow got in touch with his maternal grandfather's family and managed to meet his mother. His mother was unwilling to get married, so he discussed with his mother an arranged marriage, and after the marriage, they would live separately and not interfere with each other."
With a calm gaze, Shan Song recounted the past of his mother that he had investigated.
From his words, Tong Zhao gradually gleaned the outline of the events of that year.
Shan Zhen originally didn't want to pay attention to this person, but she couldn't stand the frequent harassment. In addition, Zhou Muyuan pretended to be a handsome man, and his maternal grandparents had a high opinion of him, so the two got married quickly.
In the two years before their marriage, Zhou Muyuan was very attentive to Shan Zhen. Although Shan Zhen didn't have any feelings for him at first, as time went on, she would eventually start to think about just making do with him.
In the past two years, the Shan family has helped the Zhou family a lot, and Shan Zhen's softened attitude has fueled Zhou Muyuan's desires.
In the third year, Zhou Muyuan had someone use illegal drugs to design Danzhen, thereby marking it for life, and that's how Dansong came to be.
Perhaps out of physiological instinct and gratitude for being cared for for a long time, Shan Zhen gradually began to accept Zhou Muyuan.
At this point, Dansong remained silent for a long time.
When Tong Zhao looked over, he saw that Shan Song's back was like a bowstring stretched to its limit. He didn't know how to comfort Shan Song, so he simply reached out and gently covered the back of Shan Song's hand, looking up at him with some helplessness.
Dan Song gripped his hand back, rubbing his wrist twice with his thumb. He closed his eyes to suppress his emotions, then spoke again, his tone calm to the point of being cold: "Zhou Muyuan is insecure, sensitive, jealous, vulgar in thought, and despicable in behavior."
“He was jealous of my mother, who was an omega, had a better family background, and was more capable than him, which made him, as an Alpha, feel ashamed in the community. So, less than six months after I was born, he started cheating on me. On one hand, he gained a sense of admiration from his various lovers and regained his dignity as an Alpha, and on the other hand, he colluded with outsiders to scheme against the Shan family.”
"When I was eight years old—"
Dan Song swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing as the light and shadows shifted before his eyes. In a moment of clarity, he seemed to return to that peaceful weekend when, as a young boy, he opened the door at his mother's instruction. His young stepmother, carrying the still-infant Zhou Xinlin, arrived with an air of arrogance.
He couldn't remember what his mother's expression was like at the time.
All he remembered was that day when his gentle mother broke her promise to take him out to play for the first time. When she came out of her room again that night, she threw a stack of documents at his father's face, and at the same time, the most intense argument he had ever had since he could remember broke out.
My father never came back after that.
Later, his mother also started leaving early and returning late, until one day after school, he was picked up by the nanny and brought home. No one was home, but the front door was open.
From the second-floor staircase to the living room and then to the stone steps at the entrance, drops of blood formed a long line, reflected in his pupils like a slowly writhing, blood-red monster, and then all that remained was a blinding white.
Dan Song frowned, pulling himself out of the vortex of emotions.
He transformed the scenes from his memory into a series of unemotional narratives: "At that time, the mistress came to our door with her illegitimate child who was less than a year old. My mother finally learned about the deception over the years and demanded that Zhou Muyuan divorce her, but by then Zhou Muyuan had already been planning this for a long time."
"That year, my mother died of a miscarriage due to his coercion. My maternal grandmother and the others were already old. He had taken away most of the Shan family's assets. It was from that time that the Zhou family replaced the Shan family and became one of the six major families."
Tong Zhao listened with furrowed brows the whole time, his expression growing increasingly somber. It wasn't until Shan Song casually mentioned his mother's death that he gasped for breath, his nose suddenly stinging. He leaned his head against Shan Song and hugged him in the same way Shan Song had comforted him earlier.
"Actually, I—" Shan Song suddenly received a belated, comforting hug. His face went blank, the words on his lips stopped, and the corners of his mouth mechanically curled up, but there was no smile in his eyes.
He lowered his head in silence, enjoying a moment of comfort in the omega's arms.
a long time.
He said, "Thank you."
"You said thank you, not the other way around," Tong Zhao said sullenly.
"Um."
After holding her quietly for a while, Tong Zhao raised her head and scolded her harshly with a nasal tone:
"Zhou Muyuan is a scumbag! He's been scheming for so many years, and all that talk about losing dignity and face is just an excuse. It can't hide his ungrateful and hypocritical nature! He's a despicable villain! A heartless ingrate! I shouldn't have been so nice to him just now!"
Shan Song was a little stunned by his rare outburst of anger. He looked at him for a long time before reaching out to pull him back, his voice hoarse with a hint of coaxing: "There's no need to be angry because of him. I will get back everything he owes the Shan family, little by little."
Shan Song cupped Tong Zhao's face in his hands and solemnly promised, "Give me a little more time, and I will avenge the Qin family for you."
Tong Zhao didn't flinch at all and said solemnly, "Okay, tell me what you want me to do, anything that can help you."
Shan Song stared at the sincere face in front of him for a while, his brows slowly relaxed, and a faint smile appeared in his eyes: "For now, you just need to play the role of my plastic wife."
"Plastic wife" is a self-coined term. Tong Zhao breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that he could even make fun of her. Then, realizing their current posture, she quickly pulled her chin out of his palm, took a step back, and her ears were burning.
After a moment, he hesitated before asking, "So, your mother... did you have a very hard time afterwards?"
Shan Song's expression softened considerably at this point, and he spoke calmly and slowly: "After my mother passed away, Aunt Yuan contacted me immediately. She had been following news about my mother and me all these years, and knowing that we were doing well, she didn't bother us too much."
“I just didn’t expect that all of that was a facade created by Zhou Muyuan. She was very silent during that time, hardly shed any tears, and almost never communicated with me like that. After helping to handle my mother’s funeral, she asked me if I wanted to live with her or with my grandmother and the others.”
After considering the current situation, Tong Zhao roughly guessed his answer, but still asked, "So what did you say?"
"I refused."
It seems that Shan Song embodies the spirit of that young boy who, despite experiencing family hardship, remained steadfast.
“I want to stay in the Zhou family to avenge my mother. Zhou Muyuan brazenly allowed his mistress to move into the house less than three months after my mother’s death. My grandparents were almost sick with anger. I’m the only one left in the Shan family. How can I let him squander my mother’s fortune and enjoy himself so peacefully?”
“My grandmother and Aunt Yuan couldn’t persuade me, so they could only respect my opinion. Over the years, they have provided me with a lot of help, both overt and covert.”
“But you were only eight years old then…” Tong Zhao frowned, seemingly thinking of something.
“When I was little, it was fine, after all, I was the eldest son of the Zhou family.” Shan Song said nonchalantly, “But after I became an adult and joined the company, Zhou Muyuan began to belittle me without any attempt to hide it, because I inherited my mother’s business talent to some extent, which made him very unhappy.”
“He made excuses to me many times, so I pretended to cut off contact with my grandmother and others, and repeatedly pledged my loyalty to him. Finally, after working as a janitor at the company for nearly two years, I made Zhou Muyuan lower his guard.”
After thinking about it, Shan Song felt that this statement was not quite accurate, so he added, "Actually, he didn't trust me that much. He just felt that through me he could see how my mother fawned over him, how I was unwilling to be subservient to anyone but could only be controlled by him, which satisfied his perverted desire for control and his vanity."
Zhou Muyuan's jealousy turned into hatred. He hated Shan Zhen and her child. He saw that those who were once stronger than him could now only obey his orders. His vanity was satisfied, and his self-esteem swelled.
Shan Song seized on this point. He said, "I used this to slowly infiltrate the company. It took me a full eight years, and now I can gradually close the net. The marriage arrangement happened because there was a small mistake in this process, and he accidentally discovered my connection with the Shan family."
Zhou Muyuan was paranoid and overly sensitive. When he discovered that Shan Song was secretly getting close to his maternal grandparents, he was furious and immediately dismissed Shan Song from his position in the company as punishment. But he was still not satisfied. Just then, the Qin family proposed to form a marriage alliance with the Zhou family. So, at the instigation of Shan Song's stepmother, he arranged it against Shan Song's wishes, just to prove his authority as the head of the Zhou family.
When Shan Song spoke of these things, he was calm, as if he wasn't talking about his own affairs. This gave Tong Zhao the feeling of an outsider recounting someone else's fate, yet it also inexplicably made her feel uneasy.
"I just didn't expect to involve you." Shan Song looked at Tong Zhao, who was staring at him with a pained expression, with some guilt.
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