Chapter 2

"Big Dad! Quick, Little Dad's gone crazy! He actually hit me! He must have another son out there! Waaaah... ah!"

He took another hit.

Hearing this, Bo Tingyuan knitted his thick brows in displeasure.

He strode over to steady Wen Cishu, his tone unusually gentle, utterly at odds with his aggressive features and cold demeanor. "Why are you so angry?"

Thinking he had been saved, Bo Yiming hurried to scramble up.

Naturally, the bodyguards moved to release him.

Bo Tingyuan said coldly, "Hold the young master down."

Those words were like a huge block of ice crashing coldly into a lake. The bodyguards instinctively kept him pinned.

"Awooo-"

Bo Yiming let out a pitiful wail.

Bo Tingyuan helped Wen Cishu sit on the sofa, reached for a glass of warm water, and brought it to his dry but soft, thin lips. "Have some water."

Wen Cishu's emotions had fluctuated too violently. His vision went dark, leaving him unable to make out Bo Tingyuan's face. He only felt a powerful, cold presence surge toward him and envelop him all at once.

He did not refuse, drinking half the glass from Bo Tingyuan's fair, slender hand.

Behind his lenses, Bo Tingyuan's eyes watched the tiny movements as he sipped the warm water.

Little by little, the water moistened his thin lips, bringing out their soft pink color.

When he finished drinking, Wen Cishu turned his face away, and a few strands of long black hair fell from beside his ear.

Bo Tingyuan handed the glass to the housekeeper, raised a hand to tuck the black hair at his temple behind his ear, and pulled over a round cushion to place behind his lower back.

After those gentle gestures, he turned toward his son and began taking off his suit jacket as he towered over him, revealing a black shirt.

Bo Yiming strained to lift his head, looking in confusion at his big dad, who stood like a towering wall.

Still utterly uninhibited, he demanded loudly, "Big Dad, what are you doing? Hurry up and make them let me go!"

Wen Cishu also tilted his head up slightly, frowning at the man's tall back.

Then Bo Tingyuan tossed aside his jacket and bent toward his son.

To the others, the large man looked like a fierce beast bending toward a weak little cub.

"Yiming, what did you just say?"

That single question made everyone except Wen Cishu and Bo Yiming sense intense danger. Every gaze turned toward the father and son.

"Huh?"

Bo Yiming had been doted on since childhood. He was quick-witted, but simple too.

He gave his naturally stern-faced big dad an innocent, adorably clueless look, completely failing to detect the subtle danger in his words.

Uncle Xu's eyelid, however, twitched hard as he recalled the little young master's unfiltered remark.

[Little Dad must have another son out there.]

He was just looking up to check the eldest young master's reaction when he saw him pull the white handkerchief off the frying pan's handle, grip it tightly, and raise it for a swing-

"AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

The piercing sound stabbed into Wen Cishu's ears. Already suffering from ringing in them, he frowned and leaned backward, bracing himself against the sofa.

"Second young master?!" Auntie Zhong hurried forward to support him.

"No, I'm fine..." Wen Cishu took a moment to recover, his deathly pale complexion looking far from well.

Bo Tingyuan tossed aside the little pan and immediately told Uncle Xu, "Call the doctor."

With that, he turned, bent down, and scooped Wen Cishu up with one arm.

Gathered into his embrace, Wen Cishu unconsciously leaned the side of his face toward his.

Bo Tingyuan stood 190 centimeters tall, with long, powerful arms, while Wen Cishu, though long-limbed, was slender as bamboo.

After sliding one arm beneath Wen Cishu's knees, he could still support his side, while his other broad hand held his shoulder.

Wen Cishu's long black hair cascaded down, draping like silk over Bo Tingyuan's strong arm and blending into his ink-black shirt.

Carrying him, Bo Tingyuan started up the stairs.

His steps were so steady that Wen Cishu felt no jolting at all, and even his pounding heart miraculously settled.

Everyone in the living room lowered their eyes.

Whenever the eldest young master and Mr. Wen appeared together at home, they were always this intimate.

They should have grown accustomed to it long ago, but the sight was so visually striking that everyone still consciously kept their eyes lowered and their attention to themselves.

On the sofa, Bo Yiming wept with tears and snot streaming down his face, his features scrunched together.

He had been born with a gold ingot in his mouth. Who could bear to lay a finger on him?

Today, he had truly suffered the greatest ordeal of his life-his bottom had been beaten raw.

Uncle Xu and the housekeepers crowded around, unwrapped the blanket, and began soothing him.

"Don't cry, little young master. The eldest young master has called for the doctor. You'll be all right."

Standing at the turn of the staircase, Bo Tingyuan said in a low voice, "I called the doctor to examine my husband."

Even the normally composed Uncle Xu involuntarily blurted out, "Huh?"

Immediately afterward, Bo Yiming began sobbing so hard he could barely breathe. "AAAAAAAAAAH-"

Chapter 2

Upstairs, in the bedroom.

Bo Tingyuan gently carried Wen Cishu onto the bed and carefully drew the blanket over him.

His broad, long-fingered hand brushed over the thick black hair. Behind his lenses, his gemlike dark green eyes watched the reddened corners of Wen Cishu's eyes.

"Is your heart feeling very uncomfortable?"

Wen Cishu let out a long breath. "No."

As his heartbeat steadied, however, he remembered the original novel's descriptions. His whole body stiffened, and his expression froze.

In the book, after Wen Cishu died of heart disease, Bo Tingyuan, who already suffered from some hidden ailment, could not accept it. At first, he refused to let anyone near his body.

Only through the strenuous efforts of both the Wen and Bo parents was Wen Cishu's body cremated according to procedure.

That night, Bo Tingyuan acted before anyone else could, taking the ashes back to the French estate where they had held their wedding. From then on, he shut himself away, becoming a strange, sinister invalid.

Even his biological son, Bo Yiming, was turned away.

Over the following two years, Bo Tingyuan developed severe dissociative disorder, spending his days in the fantasy that Wen Cishu was still alive.

During a lucid moment one day, he personally dug a grave in the estate's lawn, lowered a coffin into it, and lay down inside with the urn in his arms.

Bo Yiming had a premonition that something would happen that day, but arrived a step too late and witnessed his father shoot himself.

Wen Cishu dared not dwell on those tragic scenes, his emotions momentarily clogged.

He slowly raised his faintly reddened eyelids and glanced at the man before him, confirming that he stood there alive, then lowered them again.

The already distinct creases of his double eyelids deepened further, like a Chinese folding fan opening and closing as his gaze shifted.

Bo Tingyuan sensed the subtle change in his mood, but could not fathom its cause.

Wen Cishu opened his mouth, suddenly unsure where best to begin.

They had lived together for ten years, yet he did not really understand Bo Tingyuan.

A vast haze had always hung between them.

In the past, he had always been trapped in a certain depressed mood, unable to think for himself.

Now he understood why.

The original author had summarized the fathers' story in just a few words, solely to flesh out Bo Yiming.

After all, they were a family of villains.

Readers did not want to know what their story really was.

As Wen Cishu lowered his eyes in thought, his long lashes cast phoenix-tail shadows over his flawless white cheeks. Those faint shadows trembled with his eyelids, so beautiful they invited a kiss.

Bo Tingyuan noticed that he seemed particularly unusual today, showing a rare trace of "vitality."

He took the initiative to ask, "What do you want to say?"

Meeting his deep green eyes, Wen Cishu remembered that this man loved him deeply enough to defy ordinary understanding, and actually felt a little embarrassed.

He hurriedly brought up their child. "I'm fine. Go check on Yiming. His little bottom must hurt."

Standing beside him, Bo Tingyuan saw a flush appear at the base of his porcelain-white ears.

A trace of puzzlement passed through his eyes behind his lenses.

"I'll go down after the doctor examines you. Yiming is fine."

Listening to his Chinese, Wen Cishu found it excessively precise, but his tone was stiff and rigid. Paired with his deep, cold voice, it was like a current flowing in the depths of a pool.

That was why, whenever Bo Tingyuan spoke in the past, he had always struck him as unfeeling, aloof, indifferent, even impatient.

The crucial thing was that Bo Tingyuan never said anything, either.

Was he mute?

And he himself had turned a blind eye to Bo Tingyuan's meticulous care, like a blind man.

What was all that talk of "first

marriage, then

love"? It was nothing but "a blind marriage to a mute."

Wen Cishu silently grumbled:

A mute paired with a blind man-who wouldn't call them a perfect match?

Seeing his brows draw together, as though another elusive little emotion had arisen, Bo Tingyuan could not help frowning too.

Outside the bedroom door.

A little monkey clutched his bottom with exaggerated movements and leaned against the door, asking softly and pitifully, "Grandma Zhong, is Little Dad okay? Why aren't Uncle Chen and the others here yet?"

Uncle Chen was a Western medicine doctor who often visited the house, accompanied by a traditional Chinese medicine doctor surnamed Lin.

The Bo family mansion was in the city center. Both the country's best specialist cardiac hospital and the Bo family's private hospital were within three to five kilometers.

It would not take the doctors long to come over from the hospital with their assistants.

Bo Yiming had barely finished speaking when the two doctors arrived.

Uncle Xu stepped forward and asked, "Little young master, would you like Doctor Lin to take a look at your-"

Bo Yiming widened his eyes anxiously, signaling him to keep it secret.

He simply pushed the door inward. "Uncles, hurry and check on my little dad. He... he fainted because I made him angry."

On the large bed, Wen Cishu had recovered his strength. He said mildly, "Daddy didn't faint."

"Oh!" Not forgetting the pain in his bottom, Bo Yiming avoided his big dad, ran to the other side of the bed, and took his little dad's hand.

Although the two doctors visited the Bo household often, every time they entered this bedroom and saw the frail yet exceptionally handsome young man, they felt as though they had stepped into another world, unconsciously softening both their footsteps and their voices.